Project Management: Advancing your Skills (4 day)

Course Overview

To avoid delay, disruption and rework when managing large, complex projects, project managers need strong leadership, communication and problem-solving skills to make sound business decisions. Through an intensive four-day project simulation, you experience real-world situations in which your decisions impact the outcome of your project. You also take away productivity tools and templates for use back at work.

Audience

Project and program managers who are responsible for managing large, complex projects. Experience, including creating Gantt and PERT charts, and performing basic risk analysis at the level of Course 296, "Project Management: Skills for Success", or Course 340, "Project Management for Software Development", is assumed.

Skills Gained

You Will Learn How To

• Manage large-scale, complex projects involving substantial budgets and cross-functional teams
• Determine business benefits and project feasibility
• Align your projects with organisational strategy
• Communicate effectively with key stakeholders to ensure project success
• Monitor and report project progress using Earned Value Management
• Measure project quality and make adjustments using effective change management

Course Outline

The Art and Science of Project Management

• Comparing simple and complex projects
• Diagnosing and measuring project complexity
• Structuring a complex project

Assessing Project Viability

Selecting projects based on financial assessment

• Payback
• ROI
• NPV

Determining project feasibility

• Validating project priorities
• Managing the capacity load balance

Examining costs and benefits

• Appraising business benefits
• Establishing technical and organisational readiness

Navigating Organisational Structures

Analysing organisational issues

• Leveraging the strengths of existing matrix organisations
• Working with weak, strong and projectised environments

Adopting a stakeholder management process

• Managing stakeholder priorities
• Determining stakeholder significance and impact

Planning and Managing Effective Project Communication

Defining a communication plan

• Mapping information needs
• Selecting the appropriate media

Implementing the plan

• Drawing RACI diagrams
• Choosing a communication channel

Developing a Project Process

Creating a project life cycle

• Identifying APM, PMI and PRINCE2 components that support your project
• Employing best practices for managing your project life cycle

The role of the Project Management Office (PMO)

• Defining the functions of a PMO
• Leveraging the advantages of a PMO

Managing Strategic Risks

Developing a risk management process

• Identifying strategic risks in the project
• Employing checklists

Analysing strategic project risks

• Evaluating the impact of risk on your plan
• Qualitative vs. quantitative techniques
• Choosing the best course of action

Procuring Products and Services

Planning procurement strategies

• Applying a vendor selection process
• Evaluating "make or buy" decisions
• Calculating cost of ownership

Soliciting external contracts

• Evaluating vendor proposals
• Negotiating contracts to manage risk

Employing Earned Value Management (EVM)

Reporting project status

• Leveraging the power of EVM to keep projects on track
• Computing CV, SV, CPI and SVI measures
• Predicting likely outcomes
• Charting project performance

Tracking against time and budget

• Avoiding common traps of EVM
• Interpreting EVM charts for decision making

Controlling Project Change

Defining quality standards

• Mapping deliverables to standards
• Measuring adherence to standards

Implementing change management

• Identifying sources of change
• Crafting a change management process
• Avoiding "gold plating"

Putting It All Together

• Becoming a strategic project manager
• Championing professionalism and ethics
• Closing and evaluating the project

Follow On Courses

• 286 Project Risk Management
• 299 Microsoft Project Comprehensive Introduction
• 280 Finance & Accounting for Non-Financial Managers
• 346 Project Team Leadership
• 290 Management Skills
• 248 Project Scheduling and Budgeting
• 315 Developing User Requirements
• 177 PRINCE2 Practitioner Certification

Project Management: Advancing your Skills (4 day) / 287