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Project Management for Practitioners Essential Skills Program

  • CMDBID 63362
  • Course Code 
  • Duration 5 Days
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Project Management Course

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Overview

This course is a combination of our two popular courses Fast Start in Project Management and Making Projects Work, which are also available separately.

This highly interactive 5-day workshop is designed to give participants a solid foundation in the concepts, tools and techniques of formal project management. While introductory in nature, this course is extremely comprehensive, covering the five key process groups and 38 core competencies associated with effective and efficient project management practice. Participants not only acquire technique-based proficiencies, but also explore and practice essential people skills and teamwork. The concepts and methods learned are immediately usable in the workplace, leading to a greater retention of newly acquired skills, measurable project improvements, and the achievement of desired project results.

Participants will be led through a combination of presentations and hands-on exercises. Our courses provide an experiential environment where participants can take risks and make adjustments based on their results before approaching large projects.

Consisting of a 5-day comprehensive workshop, it emphasises the successful planning and initiation phases of the project management discipline. In addition to providing technique-based competencies, the Practitioner Program teaches students “softer” skills as well, such as negotiation techniques, getting management buy-in and effectively working with others.

Days 1 to 3 – Fast Start in Project Management Participants learn state-of-the-art techniques for developing comprehensive project plans, getting management buy-in, and estimating and scheduling project tasks with accuracy and sophistication. In addition, they rehearse dynamic modelling to handle surprise variables.

Days 4 and 5 – Making Projects Work Participants examine how to serve as a successful bridge between a project team, customers, and sponsors. Participants learn techniques for making difficult requests and influencing people outside their scope of power.

Audience

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

Skills Gained

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

Prerequisites

None

Outline

  • 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

Talk to an expert

Thinking about Onsite?

If you need training for 3 or more people, you should ask us about onsite training. Putting aside the obvious location benefit, content can be customised to better meet your business objectives and more can be covered than in a public classroom. Its a cost effective option. One on one training can be delivered too, at reasonable rates.

Submit an enquiry from any page on this site and let us know you are interested in the requirements box, or simply mention it when we contact you.

All $ prices are in USD unless it’s a NZ or AU date

SPVC = Self Paced Virtual Class

LVC = Live Virtual Class

Please Note: All courses are availaible as Live Virtual Classes

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