Project Management for Practitioners Essential Skills Program

Those who want to understand project management skills and concepts and who must influence projects customers and other team members.

Discover how to:

• Build a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• Use a network diagram to display a Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) chart
• Use the Critical Path Method (CPM) in the network diagram to ensure the correct project duration
• Estimate and schedule project tasks
• Apply resources to a project plan
• Explore different personality types and learn how they affect project management
• Apply time-tested tools and techniques to actual projects
• Create and communicate a shared sense of purpose between the project team and stakeholders about your project
• Involve and engage key customers and use the views of others to create commitment and advance your project
• Prepare to make difficult requests and influence people with whom you do not have official power; for example, obtaining additional resources for your project
• Use a negotiation model that guarantees common understanding of the issue and creates accountability for and ownership of the final solution. Listen to and resolve stakeholders concerns.
• Use group facilitation skills to create a common reference point that includes the description of the business problem, where the project is going, how to actualise it, and stakeholder involvement at any given point in the project
• Identify key stakeholders for the project to understand their assumptions and expectations and to get them involved at the right time
• Negotiate agreements that get your project started correctly and keep it moving along

Project Management Knowledge Areas:

• Integration Management
• Scope Management
• Schedule Management
• Cost Management
• Quality Management
• Resource Management
• Communications Management
• Risk Management
• Procurement Management
• Stakeholder Management

None

• An Overview of Project Management
• The People Side of Project Management
• Planning the Project
• Work Breakdown Structure (Work Plans)
• Estimating
• Scheduling
• Risk Management
• Project Control
• Project Completion
• Building Commitment and Accountability
• Influence Through Selling Ideas
• Group Facilitation
• Process Start-Up Matrix
• Scope Facilitation Technique
• Stakeholder Mapping and Analysis
• Force Field Analysis
• The Art of Managing Resistance

• The characteristics of a project
• Project management processes
• Project success and failure
• Critical success factors and components
• The effective project manager – skills and characteristics
• Roles and responsibilities
• The time, cost, and scope target

• Understanding people
• Learn the use style models
• Flexing your style
• Understanding differences
• Communicating

• The components of the plan
• Introduction to the case study
• The project charter
• The work plan
• The control plans
• The functions of a good project plan

• Defining the work to be done
• Creating the WBS – demonstration of technique
• The Work Package
• The Activity List
• Methods of subdivision
• Uses of the WBS

• Estimating accuracy
• Estimating concepts and methods
• Task-based estimation
• Effort, productivity factors, influence factors

• Schedule concepts and methods
• Network diagrams
• Precedence logic
• Estimate duration
• Create a network diagram – demonstration of technique PERT/CPM
• Allocation of resources
• Gantt charts/histograms

• Evaluation of risk
• Identification, assessment, quantification, and contingency planning
• Risk consequences and contingencies
• A technique for planning for risk
• Cost/benefit/risk considerations

• Measurement, evaluation, and quality control
• Prerequisites to effective control
• Key indicators
• Change management and control
• Progress reporting

• Management of project completion
• Post implementation

How to Build Commitment and Accountability Through Effective Negotiation

• Common deficiencies and problems with negotiating agreements
• Key elements in building commitment
• Negotiation principles
• 8-step negotiation model/process/practice simulations

• Initiating negotiations, promoting ideas, making difficult requests
• Participant application to real project situations

• Conceptualising and planning a successful facilitation
• Modified 8-step negotiation model for groups
• Facilitation tips to jump start and advance discussion/ground rules for facilitators

• Components: scope facilitation, stakeholder map, and force field analysis
• Building a sense of project purpose / application to team building
• Responding to the project management process by using participants' actual projects

• Group facilitation process gets people excited about change
• Builds commitment between team and stakeholders

• Identify those who can help advance the project
• Identify their assumptions and expectations about the project

• Group facilitation process quickly uncovers the constraints, assumptions and risks
• Create strategy to respond to barriers associated with your project

• Understand your role in resistance
• Respond to resistance by defining causes and create appropriate actions