Courses

The Master Class in Project Management is an advanced, in-depth program designed to take your project management expertise to the next level. It combines PMI-based project management principles with essential knowledge in finance, decision-making, and optimization techniques, enabling you to evaluate projects more effectively and make better strategic decisions.

The course goes beyond traditional training by integrating project management with broader business functions such as finance, operations, procurement, and customer interaction. Through a structured and practical approach, you will explore the full project life cycle, enriched with concepts such as agility, linear programming, and Critical Chain Project Management to manage complexity and adapt to changing environments.

By the end of the course, you will be equipped to improve both project execution and strategic project selection, positioning yourself for leadership roles. The program also supports certification goals, covering a substantial part of PMBOK® content and allowing you to claim up to 45 PMI PDUs, strengthening your professional profile and career opportunities.

The Project Management Tools and Techniques course provides a clear, practical introduction to the art of project management. You will learn essential terminology, core concepts, and a structured approach based on PMI standards, enabling you to confidently understand and manage projects in today’s fast-paced environment.
Through a logical, step-by-step framework, the course guides you across the full project life cycle—from project selection and definition to planning, execution, monitoring, and close-out. It combines proven tools and techniques with real-world application, covering both traditional (waterfall) and adaptive (agile and lean) approaches to help you manage projects effectively in different contexts.
By the end of the course, you will be able to apply key project management tools directly in your daily work, improve project outcomes, and strengthen your professional profile. The course also supports certification preparation, covering a substantial portion of PMBOK® tools and techniques and offering recognized training hours for PMI credentials.

Teacher: Ir. Luc F. De Ceuster, PMP
Provider: De Ceuster Academy @ APraCom, s.r.o.

Short Course Description:

The online course “Master Class in Earned Value Management” provides the tools and techniques to evaluate the project's project performance related to schedule and cost. Based on the financial parameters and estimations, we can evaluate the financial performance of the project and provide the project manager with objective information to make the necessary decisions and implement measures.

Earned Value Management is a method developed to better understand project progress. The classical approach to project follow-up, based on schedule and cost, does not provide a good understanding and leads to wrong interpretations.

Earned Value Management was introduced to better understand the progress by introducing the concept of “earned value”.
With this new concept, it is possible to estimate the expected end date of the project and the final cost.

Many years of experience with Earned Value Management and its application in many projects have proven successful and have positively impacted project success.

Teacher:
Prof. Dr. Ing Miroslav Svítek, d.h.c.

Course Description:
The objective of this course is to provide the technological, social, business, and sustainability knowledge and skills that will allow participants to act as enablers of smart cities with a local and global perspective.

This course will introduce the principles of Earned Value Management and provide you with an understanding what EVM is about and how you can develop a project plan in which Earned Value Management is integrated.
The participants of the course are expected to have a basic understanding of project management and should be able to create a project schedule, create a Gantt chart and determine the project budget.
The course will start with the definition of the EVM parameters like Planned Value (PV), Earned Value (EV) and Actual Costs (AC) and how they can be calculated and interpreted.
From the EVM parameters, we will define the derived parameters like variances and performance indices. Finally, you will be able to estimate project duration and expected costs at completion.

Teacher:

Luc De Ceuster, MSc, PMP

Short Description:

The course "Introduction to Time Value of Money" is part of the larger course "Introduction to Finance," which will be available later.
The course provides you with the necessary information related to the principles of interest, compounded interest, and discounting of cash flows.
When dealing with investments and projects, it is important to evaluate their financial performance, and the elements in this course will provide you with the necessary knowledge.
Starting from investments, cash flows, and interest rates, basic principles like simple interest, compounded interest, discounting of cash flows, present value, and future value are defined practically.
Based on this, basic parameters (payback time and return on investment) and more advanced parameters like Net Present Value, Performance Index and Internal Rate of Return will be defined that you will need to evaluate the financial performance.

Content of the Course

• Investments and Cash Flows
• Simple and Compounded Interest
• Different Compounding Periods and Effective Annual Rate
• Present and Future Value, Annuities
• Discounting Cash Flows and Calculations
• Payback of Loans
• Simple Financial Parameters (PBT and ROI)
• Advanced Financial Parameters (NPV, PI, and IRR)
• Final Quiz
• Certificate of Successful Completion (after passing the Quiz)

Learning Outcomes
After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Describe how investments and future cash flows are spread on the timeline
• Explain the simple and compounded interest
• Calculate the compounded interest over different compounding periods and determine the Effective Annual Rate
• Determine the Present Value of a series of Future Cash Flows
• Find the Future Value of Cash Flows and Annuities
• Define different Financial Parameters like PBT, ROI, NPV, PI, and IRR
• Explain the Limitations of and Differences of the Financial Parameters

The course “Independent Demand and Inventory Management” is a course dedicated only to inventory management and related topics. Project Managers, Operations Managers, and other managers and people within the company are actively involved in inventory and supply chain management.

Inventory is very important, but it can lead to high costs and loss of profitability and business opportunities. Managing inventory is an important part of operations and production managers' work.

In this course, we introduce the definition of inventory, the different types of inventory, the total value of inventory, cash and cost cycles, cost of inventory, economic order quantity, uneven demand and variability, and safety stock.

Project management is essential in today's business. Companies and organisations rely on people with project management skills to complete projects on time, within budget, and as defined, which means being successful.
This course is ideal for people who do not have any basic knowledge of project management and who want to learn more about the terminology and the principles.
After this course, you will understand what projects are about and how project management will be able to help you understand what your colleagues who are working with projects are talking about, and you will also have a flavour to decide whether you want to continue your career in project management or not.

The course "Quality for Operations and Project Managers" is a course dedicated only to quality management principles and statistical process control. Project Managers, Operations Manager, and other managers and people within the company are actively involved in quality management, inspection, and assessment.

Quality has become a very important element in competition, and producing quality products and/or services can make the difference.

In this course, we introduce the definition of quality, describe the difference between quality and grade, and why quality is so important today. There is a historical overview of quality management, and the accomplishments of the quality gurus are explained.

Quality also involves statistical methods, and a part of the course is dedicated to repeating the different aspects of statistics that you have to understand when dealing with quality. We look back at statistical parameters such as the mean, median, and mode; standard deviation and variance; and the normal distribution, its use, and interpretation. In this part, we also introduce the Seven Basic Quality Tools.

Since quality management also involves sampling, these principles are reviewed, including hypothesis testing, which is also on the basis of statistical process control or SPC.

Evaluation of processes is important, and we have to verify if the selected process is capable of providing the desired quality output. Evaluating the capability of the process can be done using the Process Capability Ratio and its sigma level during operation can be determined by calculating the Process Capability Index.

The last part of the course is about Statistical Process Control, and the principles of building control charts and their use and interpretation are explained, including some practical exercises.