Projects Training

Executive Overview: Why Projects Fail and What Executives Can Do About It

Duration: 1/2 Day

Target Audience: Executives, sponsors or senior management stake holders of corporate programs or projects.

Abstract: Executive leadership is the single greatest factor in project success or failure. It is at this policy level that the greatest leverage is available and most often overlooked. This half-day seminar describes five strategic alternatives – or at least prerequisites – to more expensive, tactical nostrums such as software packages, intricate methodologies, and training infinitum.

Topics include:

  • The business purpose of the project: understanding, articulating, and communicating the point of the project. This is an intellectually and politically demanding imperative.
  • Project owners and project sponsors: the thorny but necessary chore of sorting out which executive has purchased a business result and which executive is on the hook to deliver it; their respective roles and accountabilities.
  • Authorization of the project manager: a decision that hinges on whether the project manager role is really that of a coordinator, or indeed that of a manager.
  • Project configuration: structural issues such as who is accountable to whom for what? When is an ad hoc management relationship preferable to a customer-supplier model? What must be included in internal service level agreements to make them work?

Building Project-Capable Organizations

Duration: 4 Days

Target Audience: Executives, senior managers and project managers in a position to affect the organizational structure for implementing projects.

Abstract: Highly flexible, project oriented organizations, sometimes called adhocracies, were once the realm of professional service organizations, such as consultancies and design firms. Today they are the realm – or at least aspiration – of even the Fortune 50.

Competition has dictated the need to organize quickly and effectively around projects such as new product development and introduction, constantly adapting internal functions, or simply delivery to the customer of complex and tailored products that are faster, cheaper and better than the next guy’s.

Intentionally or otherwise, successful project-oriented organizations follow basic organizational rules for getting work done. These rules enable matrixed work in both functional and project areas. These rules clarify who is accountable to whom for what. And these rules ensure a reporting structure that is appropriately flat.

Students successfully completing this four-day course will not only be able immediately to apply these rules, but will also will have mastered them sufficiently to be able to explain them cogently to others.

This course is recommended for graduate credit through the American Council on Education.


Accountability for Project Success

Duration: 2 Days

Target Audience: Program and project managers (and their managers), contributing project team members and managers who provide resources to project teams

Abstract: Accountability is the conduit for achievement within the project organization. To the extent that accountabilities are clear and effective, projects and programs generally succeed. Conversely, almost every failed initiative has problems with accountability.

Program and project managers must not only be able to give crystal clear direction but must know how to apply appropriate accountability systems to ensure work will actually get done. This intensive two-day course helps them do that, elevating “accountability” from a cliché to a practical course of action for program and project managers.Topics include:

  • Proactive leadership: The first step in creating an effective accountability system
  • Diagnosing accountability: The three factors that must be present
  • Accountability to management versus responsibility to customers
  • Aligning authority with accountability
  • Two keys to successful cross-functional management
  • Requisite elements of effective customer/supplier agreements
  • Behavioral coaching and reinforcement: Techniques for strengthening the accountability process
  • Accountabilities and Authorities of Program Management Offices – an introduction

Tools and templates are provided throughout the course, to ensure that concepts learned become concepts applied – immediately after class.


Project Planning and Control

Duration: 2 Days

Target Audience: Program and project managers (and their managers), contributing project team members and managers who provide resources to project teams

Abstract: Planning, scheduling and controlling – these are the essentials of project management. This course offers a foundation in the well-established principles, tools and techniques required for effective planning and control. Participants in this course will find the knowledge gained in this course immediately applicable to any size project.

This two-day course requires no expertise in project management software. However, students who do use project management software will find themselves much better armed once they understand the concepts behind the software – the concepts taught in this course.

Topics include:

  • Developing an appropriate project measure of performance
  • Identifying the major deliverables required to achieve a project’s Whole Goal
  • Determining and documenting a project’s scope
  • Basic techniques for planning and scheduling project work
  • Calculating the critical path for a project
  • Methods for compressing the time required to complete a project
  • Critical elements of risk identification, mitigation and control
  • Methods for managing project changes
  • Methods for developing and implementing project lessons learned

Tools and templates are provided throughout the course, to ensure that concepts learned become concepts applied – immediately after class.


Rapid Team Development

Duration: 2 Days

Target Audience: Program and project managers (and their managers), contributing project team members and managers who provide resources to project teams

Abstract: A team is a collection of individuals who need one another to succeed. Unfortunately, the individuals on project teams do not always know how to work together. Worse, they may arrive at the project with conflicting agendas. Project timelines do not usually permit haphazard, gradual or “natural” formation of these individuals into a high performing team. Indeed, the “teaming” of these individuals must be engineered, and swiftly, by the project manager.

Many projects also have what we call extended team members – vendors, consultants and suppliers. This requires additional management expertise in order to establish appropriate agreements, build relationships, and monitor work to ensure successful completion. Rapid Team Development offers tools to help project managers quickly build and maintain high performing teams.

Topics include:

  • The stages of team development
  • The seven most important things a project manager can do to quickly build and maintain an effective team
  • Methods for managing effective team meetings and communication
  • Structured methods for team problem solving and decision making
  • Critical elements of successful vendor/supplier management
  • Techniques for establishing and maintaining effective relationships

Tools and templates are provided throughout the course, to ensure that concepts learned become concepts applied – immediately after class.


Keys to Project Success

Duration: 5 Days

Target Audience: Program and project managers (and their managers), contributing project team members and managers who provide resources to project teams

Abstract: This five-day seminar lays a superb foundation in the principles of project management. Through hands-on exercises and stimulating presentations, it engages both beginning and seasoned project managers in the learning process.

While teaching standard project management topics (risk, CPM, WBS, etc.) this course also teaches other key factors in project management – some of the hidden leadership and management elements that spell success or failure.

Major course topics:

  • Proactive leadership Ensuring accountability for results Aligning authorities with accountabilities
  • Cross-functional management: Getting work done across the organization
  • Sponsors, stake holders, & steering boards
  • Defining & delivering a business result
  • Defining & managing scope
  • Planning (management of project time: Work breakdown, dependencies, estimating, critical path, PERT, etc.)
  • Cost management: Planning resource needs
  • Integration: Planning, execution, and change control
  • Risk management
  • Quality management
  • Communications management
  • Procurement management: Vendor/supplier management
  • Rapid team formation & maintenance (human resource management)

Any or all of these topics are available. Keys to Project Success is available as an off-the-shelf program, or may be configured to address the needs of the sponsoring organization.

With clear writing and colorful illustrations, the classroom manual intersperses numerous exercises with detailed explanations of each major classroom topic. Students find it an entertaining workbook, as well as a valuable reference tool for years after the class. Other classroom materials include handouts, templates, laminated wall charts, and other supplemental material.

This course is taught in-house for its sponsoring organization.