About

Including latest international trends and best practices in project management and for using MS Project.

This seminar has been designed to provide participants with an intensive two-day introduction to project management tools, techniques and methodologies. You will be taken through a project life cycle from project initiation to the close-out stage, with practical exercises reinforcing learning throughout.

Key learning outcomes

• How to develop and lead successful project teams – the importance of getting it right from the beginning
• Understanding the key steps in designing, planning, scheduling and implementing your project
• Arming yourself with effective tools for assessing and managing project risk
• Developing key project cost management skills to accurately estimate how much a project will cost
• Understanding the contracting process for project management to gain better control over achieving your objectives
• Gaining techniques for closing out your project

Training methodology

The emphasis is on a practical, easy-to-follow process rather than a rigorous theoretical approach. This intensive two-day training programme will combine tutorial sessions with practical examples and course workbooks will be detailed so that participants can duplicate what is demonstrated at the seminar, back at their workplace.

Who should attend?

If you are involved in any kind of project, then this course is for you. If you operate in a project based industry, are a Project Manager, Team Leader, Marketing Manager, Technical Manager, Member of a Project Office or want to become a Project Manager, this is a must-attend.

Outline

Day one

8.30 Registration

An introduction to project management principles
• Understanding successful and unsuccessful projects and what drives them
• Project success factors

Corporate strategies and why they are important to projects
• How to use projects to implement corporate strategies
• Aligning projects with corporate strategies

Understanding the power of the project sponsor
• Who should be your project sponsor?
• The role of the project sponsor
• How project leaders should support the project sponsor

The project leader role
• Leadership and management - which comes first and why do you need both?
• What makes for a successful project leader?
• Key skills for a successful project leader
• Managing expectations
• Ensuring that the team has established clear performance expectations
• Taking ownership of your role in the team and assisting with decision making
• Ensuring “buy-in” to the project by team members
• What the project leader must NOT do

Developing your communication skills for projects
Effective communication is essential for productivity and efficiency in project management. This session will outline techniques to manage stakeholder expectations, avoid wasting time and improve the quality and effectiveness of your project communications.
• Obtaining support from management and your project team by using communications plans
• Techniques for getting the right information to the right people at the right time
• Effective stress management tools and techniques
• Analysis of common sources of conflict in project management
• Learning to spot conflict in the early stages of your project
• Techniques for dealing with difficult project stakeholders and team members
• Getting the most out of project team meetings and project steering committee meetings
• Using reporting techniques that will get results

Defining success: Getting it right from the beginning
Discover how to clarify expectations and gain the commitment you require right from the beginning.
• Clearly defining the purpose and objectives of your project
• Tying your project to a strategy
• Defining what will make the project successful
• The power of prototypes
• Identifying the stakeholders of a project
• The project cost curve: Showing the payback period for a project

Day two

Planning for success: Working out HOW to be successful
• Ensure that project plans are developed and that project activities are organised in the correct sequence
• Ensuring project scope, plan and measurement systems match the expected project outcomes and client expectations
• Developing a schedule for your project
• Making sure all activities required to deliver all requirements are included
• Building a critical path and when and how to use it
• Analysis of estimating considerations:
- Time
- Costs
- Resources available and resources required
• Determining stop/go criteria for each phase
• Finalising your project plan and the importance of sign-ons

Delivering success: Tracking your way to success
• Tracking methods
• RAIDing your projects
• The power of time sheets
• Knowing when to cancel your project if necessary
• Reporting to other stakeholders
• Reporting to the team
• Reporting to the project sponsor
• Proving success

Realising business value: Implementing your project
• Just because you’ve already done the work, you don’t have to go live
• Why implementations should often become a separate project
• Why projects always need an implementation and post-implementation phase

Methodologies: Why they are critical for successful projects?
• What does a methodology do for your project?
• One methodology or many?
• Defining types of methodologies:
- Classic waterfall
- Overlapping phases
- Rapid methods
- Iterative methodology
• Choosing the best one for your project

Mastering project scheduling techniques
Effective scheduling techniques will enable you to demonstrate when the work will get done.
• Analysis of scheduling techniques
• Basic scheduling and network calculations
- Gantt and milestone charts
- Arrow diagrams and precedence diagrams
• Scheduling by phase
• Using the critical path to success
• Scheduling time critical projects
• Scheduling resource constrained projects
• Planning for using subcontractors
• Understanding just what you should use project software for
• Choosing the right scheduling tools for your project

Arming yourself with effective tools for assessing and managing project risk
Project Managers are often expected to look to the future and anticipate their organisation’s potential risks and problems. Discover how to predict risk consistently and ensure that every project has the same level and depth of risk analysis.
• What are the key areas of risk in project management?
• Ensuring risks are mapped to the WBS and are thoroughly identified
• Mitigating risk by establishing open and productive relationships within your project teams
• Successfully using risk plan templates
• Components of risk management:
- Identification
- Quantification
- Response development
- Response control
• Techniques for ensuring that risk strategies are stored in the project plan for use by the team members

Facilitator

Rod Gill, Director, ACE Project Systems

Rod Gill is an experienced Project Manager and user of Microsoft Project. He:
• Has trained and consulted on project management for over 10 years
• Is a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Project
• Develops and sells Microsoft Project companion products
• Runs a company Project Learning Ltd. that is a Microsoft Project Partner
• Presents a workshop on best practices for Microsoft Project
• Wrote the two chapters on VBA for the book Special Edition Using Microsoft Project 2000

Whilst moving from Civil Engineering to software development to business consulting, a common thread for all Rod’s work has been project management. His most valuable learning came from a series of mentors, many from the school of common sense project management.

Given his skills in software development and project management, Rod has developed a niche for helping clients develop project management methodologies and a project management information system to support it.

Rod is an experienced trainer in project management and Microsoft Project. He specialises in delivering advanced workshops on best practices to show users how best to use Project to help solve project management problems such as scheduling time critical and resource constrained projects.

Qualifications
Rod gained his engineering degree from Lancaster University in the UK. As a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Project he has been recognised as one of the world’s leading experts on the use and effective application of Microsoft Project.

Experience
From civil engineering to software engineering to software project leader to business consultant and trainer, Rod has experience in many industries and areas of expertise. This led to the creation of ACE Project Systems in 1994 and then Project Learning in 1998 (purely to market ACE Project System’s products overseas). Since then Rod has developed and continues to update his training in project management and his workshops on the advanced use of Microsoft Project.

His companies have developed successful companion products for Microsoft Project and Project Learning is a Project Partner with Microsoft.

Rod Gill is also facilitating:

• Managing Multiple Projects
• Project Scheduling Essentials

In-house Training