C722 Project Management is MGMT 3400 in the WGU catalog and carries 3 competency units, covering the management of projects from start to finish across organizational structures, including project profiling and the project phases. It is one of the most artifact-heavy undergraduate business courses, and artifacts are scored on whether they would function in a real project rather than on whether they look thorough. Each rubric aspect needs its own 2. The School of Business runs this course as C722; a separate project management course exists in the IT college under its own code, so check your Degree Plan for which one your program lists.
What C722 builds toward
Project management is the discipline of delivering something that has never been delivered in exactly this form before, under constraints that fight each other. Scope, time and cost move together, and the whole craft consists of making the trade-offs visible before they are forced on you. The phase structure is the scaffolding: initiation defines the thing, planning establishes how, execution does it, monitoring catches drift, closing captures what was learned.
Project profiling, named explicitly in the catalog description, is the part students underestimate. Not all projects should be run the same way, and profiling is the assessment of what kind of project this is, how uncertain it is, how many parties it touches, and therefore how heavy the governance around it should be. Adjacent work sits in C721 Change Management, since most projects are also changes, and in D469 Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Lean Six Sigma, where improvement projects follow their own method.
Aspects that ask for artifacts
WGU keeps assessment types and task requirements in the Course of Study inside the portal rather than in the catalog. If a performance assessment carries your version, the planning difference in project management is that several aspects are likely to be satisfied by structured documents rather than by prose, and structured documents take longer per word than paragraphs do.
A worked example. Ten aspects, of which four are satisfied by artifacts such as a charter, a work breakdown, a schedule and a risk register, with a 2,000 word prose target alongside them. Give the six prose aspects the words: two contextual at 180 each is 360, three analytical at 320 each is 960, one lessons-learned or closing aspect at 380. That is 1,700, leaving 300 for framing. Then schedule the artifacts separately, because a defensible work breakdown and a risk register with real entries are each an afternoon of thinking, not a page of typing. A plan that assigns them zero time is the reason project management tasks run late.
The documents a project task usually wants
| Artifact | What it must contain to be usable | The tell of a weak version |
|---|---|---|
| Project charter | Objective, scope boundary, sponsor, success criteria, constraints | Scope described without stating what is excluded |
| Stakeholder register | Named roles, interest, influence, communication expectation | Everyone listed as high interest and high influence |
| Work breakdown | Deliverables decomposed to assignable work packages | Activities listed as a flat task list with no hierarchy |
| Schedule | Durations, dependencies, and the critical path identified | Every task starting on the day the previous one ends, with no parallelism |
| Budget | Cost by work package with a contingency stated | A single total with no build-up behind it |
| Risk register | Risks with likelihood, impact, owner and response | Generic risks such as delays, with no owner and no trigger |
| Closing report | What was delivered, what varied, what was learned | A summary that reports success and no variance at all |
Evidence in project documents
Project artifacts carry their own evidence internally, which is why they are scored so directly. A schedule is credible when durations are justified and dependencies are logical. A budget is credible when it is built from components rather than declared. A risk register is credible when its entries are specific to this project, since a register that would fit any project demonstrates nothing.
Where methodology sources are needed, cite them in APA and use them to justify choices rather than to explain concepts. The stronger move is to say why this project's profile calls for a particular approach, referencing the literature, instead of describing what the approach is. If your task supplies a scenario, its figures are binding and should appear unchanged in your artifacts; a schedule that quietly assumes a longer window than the scenario allows fails the aspect it was meant to satisfy. Submitted files run through WGU's Similarity Checker, so charters and registers must be built rather than adapted from templates found online.
What a Competent project submission looks like
WGU records Competent or Not Competent, with no letter grades and no GPA, and every aspect needs a 2. Project tasks return for reasons that are unusually easy to prevent. The critical path is never identified. The risk register has no owners. The work breakdown lists activities rather than decomposing deliverables. Or the charter's scope section says what the project will do and never what it will not, which is the half that actually controls a project.
Passing submissions share a quality of restraint. The project is small enough to plan properly, the artifacts are consistent with each other, and the numbers in the budget reconcile with the work packages in the breakdown. Internal consistency across artifacts is the fastest thing an experienced evaluator checks, because inconsistency is where a document that was assembled rather than planned reveals itself. Returned work comes back with aspect-level comments and resubmission carries no penalty at WGU.
Six mistakes that cost time in C722
- A project too large to plan. Choosing a company-wide transformation means every artifact stays at slogan level. Pick something that could finish in months.
- Scope with no exclusions. The exclusion list is what prevents scope creep, and its absence is visible immediately.
- Sequential everything. A schedule with no parallel work has no critical path worth identifying and no float to manage.
- Generic risks. Budget overrun and staff turnover appear in every weak register. Name what could specifically go wrong here and who watches for it.
- Artifacts that disagree. A budget that does not match the work breakdown tells the evaluator the documents were written separately.
- Closing written as celebration. Lessons learned aspects want variance and its causes, not a summary of a triumph.
Charter, schedule, risk register, all due together
Send the rubric and the project scenario. Every artifact comes back consistent with the others, with prose sections mapped aspect by aspect.
Project profiling, and why it changes everything downstream
Profiling asks what kind of project this is before deciding how to run it, and the answer changes the artifacts you produce. Four dimensions do most of the work. How well understood is the goal, since a project with a clear specification can be planned in detail while an exploratory one cannot. How much technology risk is present, meaning how much of the method has been done before. How many organizations or departments must cooperate, since coordination cost rises faster than headcount. And how severe are the consequences of failure, which sets how much governance is proportionate.
A project that scores low on all four can be run with a light charter, a simple schedule and a short register, and over-documenting it wastes effort that an evaluator will read as bureaucratic rather than thorough. A project that scores high on uncertainty and coordination needs staged commitment, explicit decision gates and a communication plan with real cadence in it, and under-documenting that project is what an aspect on appropriate project approach will catch.
Writing the profile explicitly, in a short labeled section before the artifacts, does two things at once. It satisfies any aspect that asks about the project's characteristics or the suitability of your approach, and it gives you a defensible answer to every later question about why your plan looks as it does. When an evaluator asks implicitly why the schedule has three gates rather than continuous execution, the profile section has already answered.
Three questions C722 students ask
What makes a good project to write about?
Do I need project management software?
How is this course usually supported?
Three CUs and a flat six month term
Project management is one of the few undergraduate business courses where the work is genuinely front-loaded: once the artifacts are built and consistent, the prose comes quickly. That makes it a good candidate for an intensive first fortnight followed by parallel work on a second course. Since WGU charges one flat rate per six month term, courses closed early convert directly into additional capacity, and this course rewards the pattern more than most. The business management page shows where it usually sits in the plan.
Where C722 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 10 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.