Project Management

Project Management for Everyone (A non-technical approach)

• Traditional Classroom: 1-day
• Virtual Instructor-led: Two 3-3.5 hour sessions; Three 2-hour sessions

Increased productivity, reduced stress, greater confidence: These are some of the benefits of gaining control of your projects and your project team. This two-day course provides practical skills that enable you to better manage all aspects of your projects and increase your team’s performance by utilizing effective communication skills. Throughout a project life cycle, project managers and team members need to understand their responsibilities to avoid planning, communicating, and scheduling disputes. Widely practiced project management techniques such as communication protocols, frequent status updates, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and effective time management minimize individual and team conflicts and maximize productivity and project outcomes.

This fundamental course provides a non-technical approach to project management that is ideal for small, informal projects where formalized knowledge and technical approaches are not required. The concepts are simplified and high-level, perfect for those new to project management or who want to improve their communication, organization, and planning skills.

Target Audience

Individuals who will benefit from this course include those:

• Whose job responsibilities include some management of projects
• Whose organizations/departments do not have any formal project management procedures
• Who want formal project management training using simple, user-friendly terminology and techniques
• Who are NOT interested in becoming PMP^® certified
• Who do not need or want to know the meaning of PMBOK^®, PMI^®, and PMP^®

Learning Objectives

• Increase project success by using step-by-step project management processes.
• Adopt a proactive attitude toward managing projects and project teams.
• Avoid potential problems through planning and communication.
• Build, motivate, and lead a high-performing project team.
• Gain greater confidence communicating with your team, management, and clients.
• Utilize project management tools and techniques with your own project.

Key Takeaways

• Writing clearly defined project statements.
• Clarifying project objectives with measurable outcomes.
• Breaking a project into manageable tasks.
• Avoiding potential problems through planning and communication.
• Managing multiple projects while maintaining daily workload.
• Evaluating the project’s success and lessons learned.
• Clarifying roles and responsibilities to improve team performance and accountability.
• Designing communications plans for your project team to follow during the course of the project.
• Running productive meetings for planning, brainstorming, status updating, and problem solving.
• Creating effective written communications for your projects.
• Delegating assignments that minimize individual and team conflicts and maximize productivity.

Pre-Course Work

During the course delivery the participants have an opportunity to work on a real-world project — either independently or in small groups. Prior to the workshop, participants will have the option of downloading templates that will be introduced during class. This will allow them to apply real-world intelligence directly to the templates during class.

Course Outline

Module 1: Foundation

• Objectives
• What Do You Want to Learn?
• Process vs. Project
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Time Management

Module 2: Clarifying Phase

• Interviewing
• Clarifying Process
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Scope Statement
• Description
• Justification
• Requirements and Deliverables
• Objectives
• Triple Constraint
• Assumptions

Module 3: Planning Phase

• Project Mapping
• Planning Process
• Sample Project Planning
• Verbs for Activities and Tasks
• Project Outline
• Project Gantt Chart
• Gantt Chart Definitions
• Agile
• Risk Analysis
• Issue/Risk Log
• Risk Matrix

Module 4: Execution Phase

• Change Request
• Communication Plan
• Meeting Planner
• Meeting Roles and Responsibilities
• Meeting Guidelines
• Conference Calls
• Delegation
• Weekly Planning
• Options — Choices

Module 5: Closing Phase

• Project Closure
• Lessons Learned
• Project Closure Checklist
• Project Documentation File

Course Wrap-Up

• Course Summary
• Action Planning

MDV254A Course Code