Most of this course and the PMBOK are pretty  much motherhood - how organizations and project management interact.  I've managed projects in so many companies and with such differing processes I'm quite used to scoping out the organization and culture before I really dig into a project.  This is especially true as a consultant, whether I'm managing projects, coaching project managers, helping set up PMOs, or creating/re-engineering project management processes.  It's nice that there's a chapter on it - it would probably be more helpful for newer project managers to have some information on what to look at and how to interpret what you're seeing.  The class itself wasn't really incredibly interesting.  One thing that did stand out for me is the definition of stakeholders.  Probably because I grew up professionally in IBM, the term stakeholder has a very specific meaning to me.  In general, I expect the stakeholders to have an explicit vote in any major decision and for each to have to actually approve the project before it officially completes or deploys.  The PMBOK definition is much more general - really anyone touching the project from any direction.

 

 

So, this one didn't provide much new information for me, but there's a gotcha for me on the definition of stakeholder that I need to remember.