Spring 2027

Project Management

Equips students with project management concepts and tools, emphasizing quantitative aspects alongside qualitative topics like initiation, scheduling, and agile methods.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Tom Burkard3.5/5

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Tom Burkard

The course was described as hard and tough, with the professor cold-calling students in lecture and pressing into them to maintain high engagement.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Evaluate a project’s benefits utilizing net present value and other analysis tools.

  • Initiate a project including task breakdown and estimation, stakeholder analysis, resource allocation, and creating a project schedule.

  • Monitor and track projects utilizing Earned Value Analysis and other project management tracking tools.

  • Utilize and compare Agile and Waterfall project management methodologies.

  • Demonstrate use of collaborative project management tools such as GANTT charts and related software tools (i.e. SmartSheet), and others for project tracking and resource planning.

  • Collaborate in a team environment while applying various project management techniques to a real-world project.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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AB
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Sophomore standing

  • Sophomore standing
OTM 452

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Sophomore standing

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.00/5 from 9 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

For this course: 3.5/5 raw quality · 2.5/5 difficulty · 4 reviews

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

Past student reviews · Tom Burkard

Tom Burkard taught a difficult course where students reported he cold-called and pressed them intensely, describing him as tough but valuable if approached with the right mindset. One student felt he treated class like employees without HR and had to contact the Dean over exam scheduling, while another found his realistic pressure helpful for professional settings. A third student said they would not take him again, highlighting significant disagreement on his teaching style.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.70 GPA, 84.3% A/AB (n=89 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.80 GPA, 97.8% A/AB (n=45 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.78 GPA, 90.4% A/AB (n=83 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Past student reviews · Peter Commons

Historical instructor Peter Commons taught a fast-paced, lecture-heavy course where students noted he did not record lectures but posted slides. Reviewers described his grading as harsh and his office hours as unhelpful. One student reported that four homework sets with vague instructions were worth 30% of the grade, while another found the quizzes extremely specific compared to the lectures.

AMIR FARD BAHREINI is recorded teaching in Fall 2025, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

PETER COMMONS is recorded teaching in Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

TARIQ MUGHAL is recorded teaching in Spring 2024, Spring 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

TOM BURKARD is recorded teaching in Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

XIUJUAN ZHANG is recorded teaching in Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 002Classroom Instruction0 / 500
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 480
LEC 004Classroom Instruction0 / 500

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Tom Burkard

Professor Burkard used an intense, realistic style to simulate professional pressure. One student found the course incredibly valuable, while another described the professor as funny and realistic in his approach to intimidating students.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.71 GPA, 84.8% A/AB (n=112 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.73 GPA, 93.1% A/AB (n=116 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.76 GPA, 89.1% A/AB (n=101 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Tom Burkard

The course was described as hard and tough, with the professor cold-calling students in lecture and pressing into them to maintain high engagement.

Past student reviews · Tom Burkard

One student felt the instructor treated the class poorly, specifically citing issues with exam scheduling that required them to contact the Dean.

Topics

  • Project Initiation, Scheduling, Resource Management, Monitoring, Valuation, Rework, Agile Project Management, Project Management Analytics, and Contracting.

Skills

  • Project initiation, task breakdown, estimation, stakeholder analysis, and scheduling.
  • Evaluating project benefits using net present value and other analysis tools.
  • Comparing and utilizing Agile and Waterfall project management methodologies.
  • Using collaborative tools like GANTT charts and SmartSheet for tracking and resource planning.

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records
OTM 452 · Spring 2027

Project Management

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:238:025092",
    "course_id": "OTM 452",
    "course_uid": "course_384e1df5801ad031fc0f7908",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "025092",
    "source_subject_id": "238",
    "title": "Project Management",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Fall"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "28031dcf19e6464fc6edfccd1954e22bcd383f7c68c11dd9f5b657f11dec9073",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}