This short presentation will help you understand why project management (PM) is so useful and so easy to learn. You'll learn some of the basic PM tools that will make it easier to handle complex projects with a team. You'll also get to practice these skills through a quick exercise that takes place within Ludopolis, an online simulation game.

Completing a project can be tricky! Over time, people who have managed hundreds of projects have invented many ways of making it easier and avoiding common mistakes. All of this useful knowledge is called "project management."

Although project management is easy to learn and incredibly powerful, unfortunately only a few people get to study it... and out of these people, only a few will get to repeat parts of the project management process to make it second-nature to them. Why? A project can take a long time! These training exercises are designed to be short and easy, so you can focus on learning PM without the extra work of doing a real project.

Project management is used mainly in business, but you can it anywhere else in your life to make things easier and more fun.

In the game Ludopolis, players create countries and cities. These cities are filled with simulated people who have minds of their own. These simulated populations will choose where they want to live and where to trade their food and goods. Players will have to adapt their plans to the actions of population.

Ludopolis requires players to set their own long-term goals and to think on a large scale. Managing to meet their goals in a timely manner is a perfect arena for practicing project management. Unlike most other games, the Ludopolis simulation is complex and dynamic, and even experienced players can still be challenged, just by setting higher goals. But unlike real life, each game lasts only an hour at most. You can quickly get feedback to help you improve your skills.

Projects tend to go through 4 stages. Skipping any of these stages can lead to problems in complex projects. Without being clear about the goal, disagreement or confusion can arise later. Without taking time to plan, it takes longer to get things done. Without paying attention to the work process, a failing project can't find new life. And without learning lessons from the project, our skills won't improve!

The times given here are just a suggestion for a quick 1-hour exercise. If you have more time, you might use 2 hours for the whole exercise (divided something like 15/30/60/15).

To start the project off, you'll write a project charter. It should answer "What will the outcome be? Why is it worthwhile?"

The timeline specifies how long will you spend in each part of the project. For example, "5 minutes on the charter, 15 minutes planning, 20 minutes building our empire, and 10 minutes evaluating our project."

You should then select a team leader. The team leader merely needs to focus on project management (they are the "project manager" for this exercise). Their goal should be that team members enjoy themselves and the project is a success. If team members have particular skills that will be useful during the project, it may help to note them here.

The third section should make up a the purpose that fits the imaginary world you will create. For example: "At the bequest of the pie-loving King Ermine of the Old Country, we are founding an empire in the newly discovered valley. Our empire will have at least 4 cities, and each city will have at least 10 pies for sale."

• If you can't decide on a leader, you can use random choice

To create your milestones, think backwards from your goal. What will you need to achieve before you achieve your goal? Each milestone should have a timeline attached to help you know if you're on the way to success. For example, "The first pie has been baked (by 10 minutes)."

What tasks will lead to these milestones? Include supporting tasks such as helping each other, handling risks/surprises, and figuring things out. You can save time by adding these tasks below each milestone. For example, "Build enough housing for the workers."

Who is in charge of each of these milestones or tasks? Add their name next to the item or section.

As you get more experienced with making plans, you'll find yourself getting creative and making adaptable plans that give you flexibility and anticipate problems.

Be sure to set regular intervals, such as 5 or 10 minutes, for team members to give progress reports. Are the milestones being met, or are things behind schedule? Have any unexpected problems come up? The project manager should change the plan as needed so that team members can help each other when they have problems.

This can be by chat within the game, or added to a shared progress reports document.

Take some time to look over your country, re-read your original plan, and to think about how the project team handled the project. If you were going to do this project again, how could you do it better? What worked this time?

Saving these reflections, along with the other documents you made during the exercise, will make it easier and faster to do future exercises. You will often be able to recycle parts of past plans.

Although you can practice project management on your own, you'll learn faster if you collect a team, and take turns being the project manager.

Even if everyone is in the same room, it helps if everyone can edit a document at the same time. You can place all PM documents in one etherpad at etherpad.mozilla.org (simply click on "Create a new public pad" and send the URL to your teammates). You can also use collaborative tools for drawing or mindmaps.

Here is a blank template, including the charter, plan, progress report, and evaluation on one etherpad.

Before your first exercise, at least one person in the team should visit the Ludopolis website so they can act as a consultant for the other team members. They should have some idea about: action points, players vs. citizens vs. traders, goods, and terrains.

Don't make it too easy for yourselves, and have fun!