Keep the plan true.
Tell it straight.

The agency and its eleven projects; the team and what each person needs from you; the line between coordinating and deciding; the tools of the desk; the four projects on your seat; the West African and US lanes.

• What a project coordinator does all day, and for whom
• The coordinator's line: coordinate, never decide; make the plan true and the people informed
• Reading a project file: charter, scope, plan, budget, contacts, and what is missing
• Where West African coordinators work: fit-out contractors, telco rollouts, NGO programmes and bank projects [NG]

Projects, programmes and retainers; the charter and what was promised; scope in and out; the work breakdown structure; milestones and dependencies; the schedule as a network; the baseline; stakeholders.

• The charter: what was promised, to whom, for how much, by when
• The work breakdown structure: phases, deliverables and the work packages under them
• The schedule is a network, not a list: predecessors, successors and the path that cannot slip
• Stakeholders: who cares, who can stop you, and who needs to hear first

From the WBS to a board with owners and a definition of done; sprints and the retainer cycle; the schedule in the twin; the critical path and float; the two-week slip found three ways; re-planning with the manager; the same board in five tools.

• Opening a Fennelwood schedule in the twin: activities, relationships, the calendar
• Float: how much a task can slip before the end date moves
• The two-week slip nobody mentioned: how you find it on the board, the schedule and the hours
• Jira, Asana, Monday, ClickUp and Smartsheet: the same board with different words

The stand-up and minutes someone can act on; chasing without nagging; the Friday status report and its rubric; green, amber and red with the reason; the client update; async updates across time zones; the escalation message; bad news early.

• Minutes someone can act on: decisions, actions, owners, dates
• The Friday status report: the rubric Nadia grades against
• Green, amber, red: the rule, and the reason that always goes with the colour
• Bad news early: the message Nadia would rather get on Tuesday than Friday

RAID: what goes in each column, and the risk that became an issue; scope creep from a call to the budget; the change request, costed by the manager and decided by a named person; the change-order log; the decision log that settles an argument.

• A risk has an owner, a trigger and a response; an issue has a date and an owner
• Scope creep: how it starts on a call and ends in the budget
• The change request: written, costed by the manager, decided by the named person, never by you
• When two people remember a decision differently: the log settles it

The budget, burn and forecast; the finance sheet where the truth about hours lives; the report that says green while the hours say red; reconciling before reporting; purchase orders and invoices; what a coordinator may approve, and the refusal script for what they may not.

• Burn and forecast: spend to date, plan to date, and what the end looks like from here
• The report that says green while the hours say red: how it happens
• Purchase orders and invoices: what a coordinator checks and what a coordinator never approves
• The refusal script, and routing the request to the person who can decide

The shared drive down on report morning and the drill in order; a build that will miss by three weeks after the client announced the date; what you never promise; client data and who decides where it goes; the post-mortem that blames process, not people.

• Communicate, deliver the last dated snapshot, document: the drill in order
• Bad news reported as it is: to Nadia and Tobias first, with reasons and options
• Client data on a project: what stays inside, what may leave, and who decides
• The post-mortem that blames process, not people

A clean project file and a handover someone can pick up on Monday; the portfolio of reports, logs and a post-mortem; the CAPM outline and a timed practice exam with a domain readout; the West African and US markets honestly; interview answers from your own work; the practicum brief.

• The handover: leaving a project someone else can pick up on Monday
• The CAPM: what PMI asks for, what the exam covers, and what the Academy certificate proves
• The practice exam: how it works and how to read your score by domain
• Interview questions answered with your own reports