Project Management: Intermediate Skills (4 day)

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Course Overview

Today's project managers and teams must deliver under increasing pressure. Organising scarce resources, managing tight deadlines, controlling change throughout projects and generating maximum team performance are key aspects of effective project management.

Through a simulated case study, you learn how to successfully plan, manage and deliver projects. You also learn how to implement project management processes, develop leadership skills and respond to real-world scenarios. At the end of the course, you take away templates and checklists for use back at the office.

Audience

This course is valuable for professionals new to project management or those who wish to refresh their knowledge of project management best practices. Those with strong project management experience should consider taking other courses focused on specific, targeted project management skills or tools.

Skills Gained

Through a multimedia-enhanced four-day simulation, you manage an extensive and comprehensive project. You use real-world PC- and paper-based tools and templates to actively plan, control and close the project. Experiential activities include:

• Defining clear project goals and measurable deliverables
• Brainstorming the work breakdown structure
• Estimating task duration and work
• Determining task dependencies and schedules
• Assigning and optimising resources
• Developing risk management plans
• Producing the implementation plan
• Evaluating motivation and team-building issues

Course Outline

Introduction

• Managing the project processes
• Creating high-confidence plans

Launching Your Project

Applying a project framework for success

• Identifying the project life cycle stages
• Working with the challenges of project management
• Selecting and applying best practices

Core project leadership skills

• Identifying stages of team development
• Building and managing team effectiveness

Building a project charter

• Defining clear project objectives
• Determining and clarifying the goals
• Defining key project deliverables
• Running the objective-setting meeting

The 6-Step Planning Method

Defining the project workload

• Determining project scope with work breakdown structures (WBSs)
• Driving the plan down to task level

Building high-confidence estimates

• Three ways to make better estimates
• Three-point estimating to refine accuracy
• Managing the estimating process

Scheduling the project

• Converting WBS to precedence networks
• Determining the critical path
• Calculating the project duration

Creating the project timeline

• Building Gantt charts
• Using slack effectively in the schedule
• Setting key milestones to track and control the project

Developing a risk management process

• Identifying the project risks and assumptions
• Evaluating risk impacts
• Strategies for managing risks
• Managing key risks with the Risk Register
• Reducing risks through contingency plans

Effectively matching resources to work

• Identifying and assigning resources to tasks
• Analysing resource use in the schedule
• Optimising the use of resources
• Preparing and agreeing on task contracts

Running the Project

Establishing an effective control process

• Establishing change control procedures
• Setting the baseline schedule

Implementing the plan

• Monitoring actual task progress
• Analysing progress against the baseline
• Correcting the project plan to achieve the objectives
• Picking up warnings of trouble ahead

Tracking and reporting progress

• Tracking planned vs. actual task performance
• Avoiding the 90-percent-complete trap
• Communicating project status to stakeholders

Leading throughout the project life cycle

• Coping with common project scenarios
• Building ownership, motivation and commitment across the team

Successful Project Closure

• Managing systematic project close down
• The payoff of post-implementation review
• Transferring project and personal lessons learned
• Documenting project experience for process improvement

Project Management: Intermediate Skills (4 day) / PMIS3