Overview:
The Challenge
Organizations use projects to answer business needs and fulfill strategy. Because projects are crucial to an organization's growth and financial well-being, project failure can be a serious and damaging event. Nonetheless, project failure is an all too common occurrence with failure rates approaching 30% in some industries (Standish Group). This is simply unacceptable. We need a robust project management approach that will ensure successful delivery and provide the long-term project value that we need.
The Solution
Foundation in Project Management delivers practical, hands-on training in essential project management concepts and techniques that every project manager must know. The course provides participants with a wide range of project management principles and techniques, extending PMBOK® concepts with field-proven best practices that are effective in any project setting. Participants are shown how to use the project charter to build a strong project foundation; use stakeholder analysis to identify project supporters; build a comprehensive schedule and budget on well-defined scope and requirements; maintain the integrity of project baselines with change control and proactive risk management; manage the project team; deliver meaningful status reports; manage stakeholder expectations; forecast project outcomes; engineer the successful deployment of technical deliverables, and more. The importance of planning for post-project value (Project Value Management) is emphasized throughout this course.
The format is multimodal, with a mixture of lecture, numerous exercises and simulations, and group discussions. Learning is reinforced by having participants truly get their hands on the tools. All participants return to their workplace better equipped to conclude their projects with a successful delivery. Course topics include:
- Sources of project success and failure
- Product and project lifecycles
- Purpose of every project: Realization of Business Value
- Building a collaborative partnership with stakeholders
- Providing estimates that work for you
- Using a charter to get buy-in on goals, scope and approach
- Setting and managing expectations
- Defining scope: WBS and requirements
- Projects within projects: changes in business process and the need for organizational adoption
- Developing a rigorous schedule, resource plan and budget
- Setting and managing project baselines
- Avoiding project procurement pitfalls
- Establishing effective communication
- Building quality into deliverables; Seven Step Approach to product quality
- Planning for long-term project value
- Preventing Scope Creep: Three change control strategies that keep scope, time and cost in balance
- Managing the team
- Managing stakeholders and vendors
- Minimizing issues and maximizing opportunities through proactive risk management
- Keeping management informed: Using Earned Value Management for status reports and forecasts
- Delivering the goods: Planning and executing an effective Transition
- Testing the deployment for effective deliverables utilization
- Administrative and contract closure
- Lessons Learned
Audience:
This course is of special value to project managers and team leads who want a solid, guiding PM methodology; experienced project managers who want to add to their toolkit of tools and techniques; functional managers with project responsibility who want a deeper understanding of project management principles; and Project Management Office staff.
Prerequisites:
This course assumes some prior experience with project management, either as project manager or team lead.
Course duration:
5 days
Course Outline:
I. Project Structure
- Sources of project success and failure
- Impact of the project environment
- Essential PM Concepts
- Impact of human factors: Every project is a Human Endeavor
- Project and product lifecycles
- Project roles
- Creating value after the project: Project Value Management
- PM Methodologies
II. Project Initiation
- Where projects come from: Enterprise Analysis
- Value of viewing the project as an investment
- The project selection process
- The Business Case and Project Charter
- Use and benefits of the Project Charter
- Defining project and business objectives
- Importance of establishing preliminary scope boundaries
- Project constraints: keeping scope, time and cost in balance
- Project Manager authority
- Identifying, analyzing and managing stakeholders
- Importance of stakeholder participation in technology projects
- Creating useful estimates of time and cost
- Building a strong project foundation
III. Project Planning
- Defining Scope: WBS and the Scope Statement
- The requirements engagement: Developing correct and complete requirements
- Scheduling and the Critical Path; usefulness of gate reviews
- Resource planning: choosing the right team; ensuring stakeholder participation
- The budget lifecycle: Developing and tracking an effective, time-phased budget
- Procurement and contracts; avoiding procurement pitfalls
- Using deliverables quality to drive Business Value; Quality planning; the test plan; quality audits
- Strategies for effective project communication; the Communication Plan; effective meetings; document control
- Proactive management of Threats and Opportunities; risk identification and analysis; response planning; the risk register; contingency reserves
- Discovering and managing opportunities
- Recognizing when Organizational Adoption is needed; defeating resistance to change
- Setting project baselines
- Planning for long-term project value
IV. Execution and Control
- Building deliverables; monitoring project work
- Managing the team; team building; team success factors
- Managing stakeholder expectations; conflict management
- Testing project deliverables; types of testing; managing test data
- Delivering useful status reports; status reporting tools; project metrics
- Forecasting with Earned Value Management
- Preventing scope creep: Tools and methods of change control; Controlling cost and schedule
- Managing project baselines
- Transition planning: preparing for deployment to the customer
- Executing the Transition Plan
V. Successful Conclusion
- Executing the Business Value plan
- Ensuring effective utilization of deliverables
- Measuring project success
- Contract and administrative closure
- Lessons Learned and continual improvement
- Celebration
Learning Approach
- A highly experienced instructor will use interactive lecture format, numerous hands-on exercises, team activities, group discussions, and other techniques to drive home the essential points of this material.
- You have the option of using your own, ongoing project as the focus of class exercises. As a result, not only do you gain experience with the tools, but you also learn more about your project.
- We will build on your prior experience in this topic, while providing you with a structure and vocabulary to use in future projects.
- If you have modest project management knowledge, you will find that the clarity of the material and direct presentation style of the instructor will make the subject matter easy to understand.
- You will receive a Participant Guide which will help you follow the material, take notes and retain what you learned so that you can apply it on your job.
Why should I take this course?
- This course confirms the importance of keeping focus on the realization of Business Value throughout the project.
- You have the option of using your own, ongoing project as the focus of class exercises. As a result, not only do you gain experience with the tools, but you also learn more about your project.
- If you are new to project management, the exercises in this course will give you hands on experience with all of the primary techniques required to manage a project.
- Experienced project managers will obtain a vocabulary and framework that lends structure and perspective to the wealth of experience they already have.
- All participants take home a set of tools and techniques to help them deal with all aspects of project planning and execution.
- Take this course and learn how to avoid the problems that project managers most often encounter.
Related Courses
For a more in-depth study of critical Project Management concepts see:
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