Understanding Project Management: A Practical Guide to Making it Happen

This is our core program. An intensive two-day workshop to establish and clarify the fundamental nature of project work, it features an innovative graphical approach to logic-driven planning that can reduce implementation plan creation time by 50% while dramatically increasing the effectiveness of plan implementation.

It includes practice with the techniques associated with successful project management, and does so in a setting that both illustrates and demands cooperative team behavior. It is simulation and case study oriented and the exercises are sufficiently realistic and challenging that they can only be successfully completed by a smoothly functioning group using the appropriate project management techniques.

Seminar topics include:

	An introduction of a new and practical perspective on what projects are, and how that relates to the project team's assignment;
	A framework and process by which to organize the project team’s assignment from start to finish;
	An error-free method of transferring the responsibility, intent, and appropriate authority to the project manager;
	The relationship of the performance criteria to the design process and to the nature of the deliverable, and how not to get lost in this essential, creative, discipline;
	A practical technique for implementation planning, driven by compelling cause-and-effect logic - In a series of increasingly complex exercises, the project teams learn:
	• The distinction between logic driven and schedule driven planning; • How and why to avoid "Gantt chart thinking"; • Creating and analyzing dependency networks; • Resource conflict identification and resolution using Gantt charts and histograms; • How to use the different, and sometimes conflicting, inputs typically provided by   each team member; • How to utilize the implementation plan as an effective communication tool; • How to respond rapidly and correctly to unforeseen events.
	Project costing and tracking including the relationship to resource allocation, compliance accounting, and the control requirements of the larger organization;
	Crash costing techniques - how a sound plan allows quick and easy cost/schedule trade-offs;
	Clarification of the relationship among the four interdependent variables: Scope, Cost, Quality and Schedule;
	Organizing the project team, including detailed roles and responsibilities, as well as options for organizing the team within the larger organization;
	Techniques for ensuring a successful implementation, with emphasis on using the plan as the framework for the implementation;
	The project review process, including why it is important and the questions that need to be asked at each stage to ensure a beneficial review;
	The Survival Guide for Project Managers - a concise digest of the project management framework and key techniques, prepared to help you recognize and avoid the all-too-common pitfalls along the way to a successful project.

In addition to the Learning Guide and exercises, each participant receives a Project Planning Kit to support future planning sessions, and a copy of the book Making it Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management.

This program is offered both in-house and as a regularly scheduled public workshop.

Please contact us to obtain further information about Understanding Project Management.

We are a Project Management Institute (PMI) Registered Education Provider.