Your Source for Project Management Training

Course Descriptions

Standard courses	Project Management Techniques | Advanced Project Management | Management Skills for Project Managers
Specialized courses	Project Portfolio Management | Project Contract Management | The Project Management Office
In-Depth courses	Quality Management | Scope Management | Risk Management | Building High Performance Teams

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Project Management Techniques

Course Summary

This course presents the best practices techniques used to manage projects. It covers all the stages of a project from initiation through planning, execution, and closeout. Participants in the course work in teams to develop a project plan for an actual live project.

The topics in this course may be changed to fit the requirements of the organization, but the following topics are recommended:

Course Topics

Click here for a detailed list of the topics in this course.

• Definitions and terminology
• Initiating the project
• Planning the project
• Executing the project
• Closing out the project
• Management skills

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• Definitions and terminology
  • Standard definitions
  • Why projects fail or succeed
  • The project environment
  • The four stages of a project and the triple constraints
• Initiating the project
  • The right (and wrong) ways to initiate a project
  • Understanding the project
  • Project justification and benefits
  • The boundary between a project and operations
• Planning the project
  • The project objective and scope
  • The Work Breakdown Structure
  • Defining dependencies and the network diagram
  • Estimating Leveling resources
  • Aligning the project schedule
  • Establishing the project budget
  • Defining and managing risk
  • The project plan
• Executing the project
  • Tracking the project status
  • Handling overruns
  • Managing scope changes
  • Controlling issues and action items
  • Status reporting
  • Team building
• Closing out the project
  • Gaining client concurrence
  • Recognition and celebration
  • Capturing lessons learned
  • Administrative closeout
• Management skills
  • Managing conflict
  • Stakeholder communications
  • Introduction to negotiations

 

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Advanced Project Management

Course Summary

This course builds on the lessons of the Project Management Techniques course. It is a combination of new material and a more in-depth look at some key topics. Participants in this course should have had an introductory course or project management experience.

The topics in this course may be changed to fit the requirements of the organization, but the following topics are recommended:

Course Topics

Click here for a detailed list of the topics in this course.

• The course context
• Managing the project environment
• Topics in project monitoring and control
• Delivering value

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• The course context
  • Factors in project success
  • The great project manager
  • Private celebration
• Managing the project environment
  • Managing project politics
  • Bearing bad news
  • Workload management – multiple projects
  • Recovering failed projects
  • The Project Management Office
• Topics in project monitoring and control
  • Managing the customer team
  • How to avoid (and when to use) micro-management
  • Managing scope
  • Managing risks
  • Earned Value calculations
• Delivering value
  • The Business Case
  • Realizing project benefits

 

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Management Skills for Project Managers

Course Summary

Project management is management. Project managers, like department managers, are responsible to direct people to achieve a set of objectives. So project managers not only need the specific skills in project management techniques, they also need the skills that managers everywhere have to have. This course deals with some of those skills.

The topics in this course may be changed to fit the requirements of the organization, but the following topics are recommended:

Course Topics

Click here for a detailed list of the topics in this course.

• The project management context
• Setting effective goals
• Time management
• Running effective meetings
• Dealing with conflict
• Communications skills
• Gathering information
• Negotiations skills

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• The project management context
  • The special demands of project management
  • Meshing of project and line management
• Setting effective goals
  • Defining SMART goals
  • Applying SMART goals to all activities
• Time management
  • Effective setting of priorities
  • How to handle interruptions
  • Time management and personal satisfaction
• Running effective meetings
  • Selecting attendees
  • Managing the agenda
  • Handling disruptions and irrelevancies
  • Ensuring productivity
• Dealing with conflict
  • The five approaches
  • Constructive vs. destructive conflict
  • The role of personal preferences
• Communications skills
  • Effective writing skills
  • Effective presentation skills
  • The fear of public speaking
  • Effective listening skills
• Gathering information
  • Facilitating meetings
  • Recognizing deflections
  • Information vs. gossip
• Negotiations skills
  • The seven elements
  • Establishing the BATNA
  • Defining power in negotiations

 

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Project Portfolio Management

Course Summary

This course deals with managing a portfolio of projects.

While it is important for organizations to manage their projects using proven best practices in project management, it is becoming apparent that managing individual projects is not enough. Organizations need to:

• Deploy resources where they are most valuable
• Track and control the status of an entire portfolio of projects
• Understand the demands of supporting existing applications
• Establish project priorities based on criteria such as value, strategic direction, risk, cost, and other factors

All of this is the role of portfolio management, which can be further divided into project portfolio management (PPM) and application portfolio management (APM). PPM is concerned with initiating and executing projects, while APM is concerned with maintaining and enhancing existing applications.

Course Topics

• Understanding the demands of project and application portfolio management
• Developing an inventory of existing applications, projects, and new project demands
• Techniques for establishing priorities among projects and applications
• Allocating resources based on priority
• Tracking a portfolio of projects
• Adjusting the portfolio based on changing business conditions

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• Why portfolio management?
  • Projects as competitors vs. projects as contributors
  • Deploying scarce resources and staff
  • Understanding of project priorities
  • Filtering out of less valuable projects
  • Ensuring that project contribute to the organization and its strategic direction
• Project portfolio management vs. application portfolio management
  • Keeping the lights on vs. installing new ones
  • The interface between existing applications and projects (when does an enhancement become a project?)
  • When does an existing application become cumbersome and warrant being replaced?
• Developing a meaningful inventory
  • What are our existing projects?
  • What projects are in the pipeline?
  • What applications need supporting and how much do they need?
  • What resources—staff, equipment, floor space, money—do we need?
  • What resources—staff, equipment, floor space, money—do we have?
• Establishing priorities among projects
  • The role of the organization’s strategic plan
  • Determining value
  • Size, duration, complexity, risk, and other considerations
  • The political element: How do we convince the CFO that his project is of low priority?
• Establishing priorities among applications
  • Not all applications are created equal
  • Filtering bug fixes and enhancement requests
  • Using severity levels to assign priorities
• Allocating people
  • What kind of organization do you have? (strong matrix, weak matrix, non-matrix)
  • How are people allocated? (Who’s in charge?)
  • How should people be allocated? (Who should be in charge?)
  • Stability of assignments vs. flexibility to change them
  • Retention strategies: How do we keep our best people?
• Tracking a portfolio of projects
  • Consistent status gathering and reporting
  • Green, yellow, and red light summaries
  • Project dashboards – directing the portfolio
  • Types of interventions: quick-fix, longer-term, housecleaning, cancellation
  • The philosophy of continuous improvement
• Measuring a portfolio of applications
  • What are the measures of applications support (and do we have them)?
  • Benchmarking (how are we doing against other companies?)
  • Feedback from applications support to applications development (let’s get better so that we need less support)
  • The philosophy of continuous improvement
• Feedback from changing business conditions
  • Performance against the strategic plan
  • Changing economic conditions – belt-tightening
  • Changing economic conditions – expansion
  • Re-evaluating the portfolio

 

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Project Contract Management

Course Summary

This course is intended for organizations that are considering entering into contracts for IT services and equipment, either as customers or suppliers. It will deal with the entire process of IT contracts from the initial decision to enter into a contract for goods or services, through identifying the contractual and service options available, negotiating favorable terms and conditions, and managing the contract after it has been executed.

The course will also discuss the role of professionals including lawyers and acquisition specialists, and their role in limiting legal liability for both buyers and sellers.

Course Topics

• Deciding to acquire goods or services externally
• Outsourcing
• Types of contracts
• Contracts and the law
• Understanding and negotiating favorable terms and conditions
• Managing contract terms
• Contracts and the project manager

Course Outline

Following are the topics to be covered in this course:

• Deciding to acquire goods or services externally
  • Convenience vs. necessity
  • Competitive vs. non-competitive acquisition
  • Solicitations: the RFI, RFP, or RFQ
  • Evaluating proposals
  • Fairness and legal protections
• Outsourcing
  • Operations outsourcing
  • Development outsourcing
  • Services outsourcing
• Types of contracts
  • Fixed price, time and materials, ceiling, services
  • Contract risks
  • Services or equipment acquisition
  • Penalty clauses and limitations
  • What’s included and what’s excluded
• Contracts and the law
  • Procurement specialists
  • How, when, and why to use lawyers (and what for)
  • Your lawyers vs. theirs
  • Extra-contractual commitments
  • Enforcing contract terms
• Negotiating terms and conditions
  • The seven elements of negotiating
  • Preparation: Defining the BATNA
  • Understanding the potential terms and conditions
  • Guarding against the law of unintended consequences
• Managing contract terms
  • Tracking compliance
  • Tracking key dates and deliverables
  • Service level agreements
  • Resolving variances from terms and conditions
• Contracts and the project manager
  • The role of the project manager
  • Contract management vs. project management
  • Contracts as projects

 

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The Project Management Office

Course Summary

As organizations adopt project management practices, they are starting to recognize that taking full advantage of project management procedures requires more than simply giving their employees a book or sending them to a class. Companies must be able to impose the discipline of project management as well as to set standards so that their project managers follow a consistent set of procedures instead of running projects according to their inclinations. Project management, to be effective and to deliver the value that it promises, must be organizational, not individual.

This course describes the functions of a Project Management Office, or PMO, and outlines the steps to define an appropriate level of project management control and to implement a PMO.

Course Topics

• The role of a PMO
• Justifying project management
• Preparing for a PMO
• The functions of a PMO
• Implementing a PMO

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• The role of a PMO
  • Why do we need a PMO?
  • How do we avoid another layer of bureaucracy?
  • Gradual vs. immediate implementation
  • Covert vs. overt implementation
• Justifying project management
  • Calculating the costs of project slippages
  • Establishing a project management pilot project
• Preparing for a PMO
  • Barriers to setting up a PMO
  • The PMO in the corporate hierarchy
  • Establishing your level of project management capability
  • The costs of setting up a PMO and what you will need
• The functions of a PMO
  • Developing project managers
  • Supporting project managers
  • Managing project managers
  • A project management career path
  • Project management training
  • Ensuring flexibility in project management processes
  • The project management deliverables
• Implementation steps

 

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In Depth: Quality Management

Course Summary

Managing the quality of a project’s product is one of the key responsibilities of a project manager. But “quality” is a term that has a different meaning in business quality management than it does in general use. This course will review what quality means, how it can be applied to different types of projects, and how to manage projects so that quality is built in. The course will also touch on some of the more common quality standards, including ISO and Six Sigma and will review several quality measurement techniques.

Course Topics

• Defining and understanding quality
• Modern quality concepts
• Measuring quality
• Quality standards
• Managing for quality

Course Outline

Following are the topics to be covered in this course:

• Defining and understanding quality
  • The five erroneous assumptions
  • Definitions of quality
  • The goal of quality
  • Project quality vs. organizational quality
• Modern quality concepts
  • Quality metrics
  • Quality concepts
  • Costs of conformance and non-conformance to quality
• Measuring quality
  • Control (Shewhart) Charts
  • Pareto Analysis
  • Cause and Effect Diagram (Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram)
• Quality standards
  • The PDCA (Plan, Do. Check, Act) cycle
  • Total Quality Management (TQM)
  • ISO 9000
• Managing for quality
  • Setting project quality goals
  • Defining quality procedures
  • Ensuring quality

 

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In Depth: Scope Management

Course Summary

Arguably, the management of scope is the most important part of managing a project, not because scope changes are necessarily undesirable, but because they can proliferate, destroying schedules and budgets and endangering the project itself. The major problem with scope changes is that they are not properly managed. This course provides techniques for ensuring that the project scope is clearly defined and that it is controlled throughout the project.

Course Topics

• What do we mean by “scope”?
• The scope and the Business Case
• Defining the scope
• Sensitizing and recruiting the team
• Managing scope changes
• The project manager role in accepting scope changes

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• What do we mean by “scope”?
  • Product boundaries vs. project activities
  • The scope of the project vs. the scope of the product
• The scope and the Business Case
  • Reviewing the Business Case for scope items
  • Discrepancies between scope and budgeted cost
• Defining the scope
  • Developing a checklist
  • Forcing a definition of scope
  • Enforcing a scope management process
  • Scope vs. specifications
• Sensitizing and recruiting the team
  • The team role in managing scope changes
  • Risk areas for scope change
• Managing scope changes
  • The four types of scope change
  • The source of scope changes
  • Scope change vs. scope creep
  • Estimating scope change effects
  • Scope change approval
• The project manager role
  • Factors in recommending for or against a scope change
  • Scope change record-keeping

 

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In Depth: Risk Management

Course Summary

All projects have risks, and all risks are ultimately handled. Some disappear, some develop into problems that demand attention, and a few escalate into crises that destroy projects. The goal of risk management is to ensure that risks never fall into the third category.

This course describes the processes to identify, track, and manage risks

Course Topics

• Introduction to risk management
• Risk responses
• Risk planning
• Tracking risks
• Managing opportunities

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• Introduction to risk management
  • Professional vs. public view of risk
  • Levels of risk management
  • Project vs. product risks
• Risk responses
  • Avoidance
  • Mitigation
  • Transference
  • Acceptance
• Risk planning
  • Identify the risks
  • Categorize the risks
  • Select a risk response
  • Risk mitigation
  • Risk planning
• Tracking risks
  • Sensitizing the team
  • Diagnosing risk symptoms
  • Updating the risk analysis
• Managing opportunities
  • Project vs. product opportunities
  • Opportunities as reverse risks
  • Opportunity responses

 

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In Depth: Building High-Performance Teams

Course Summary

This course deals with all aspects of building high performance teams—teams that:

• Consistently perform above expectations
• Produce high quality work
• Support one another, professionally and personally
• Encourage professional conflict and shun personal conflict
• Contribute value to their organizations
• Manage stress and pressure

There is a large difference between a team and a bunch of people working on approximately the same thing—the reality for most projects. Some theorists have suggested that a team can outperform a bunch by a factor of four, but even if that is optimistic and the factor is only two, then a team can accomplish the same objective with half the number of people. Most organizations would agree that that is a desirable goal.

One concise definition of a team is “A team is a group of people who are committed to a common goal.” This course will examine commitment and the common goal.

Course Topics

• Teams vs. bunches of people
• The entrance interview
• Establishing a common goal
• Motivating team members
• Conflict resolution
• Negotiations
• Communications
• Project team continuity
• Personal styles
• Managing stress

Course Outline

Following is the outline of this course:

• Teams vs. bunches of people
  • What is a high performance team?
  • How does a project or program team differ from a departmental team?
  • How do you know when you have a high performance team?
  • What are the barriers to building one?
  • How can we overcome those barriers?
• The project entrance interview
  • What is a project entrance interview and why have one?
  • What should a project entrance interview accomplish?
• Establishing a common goal
  • Barriers to agreement on the goal
  • Identifying issues and concerns
  • Aligning team member goals to project and program goals
  • Individual goals, project goals, and organizational goals
• Motivating team members
  • An overview of motivation
  • Theory X vs. Theory Y
  • Motivation in a project or program context
  • Practices that encourage motivation
  • Celebrating success and building on failure
• Resolving conflicts
  • Encouraging and resolving professional personal conflicts
  • Conflict within projects or programs
  • Managing personal conflicts
  • Conflicts among different levels of hierarchy
  • Techniques for dealing with conflict
  • Techniques for dealing with negative emotions
• Negotiations
  • Recognizing when negotiation is needed
  • Preparing for a negotiation
  • Handling emotions
  • The seven factors in negotiations
• Communications
  • Finding and using “hot buttons”
  • Giving and receiving criticism
  • When to encourage and when to shut down communications
  • Running effective meetings
  • Techniques of effective communication
    • Writing skills
    • Presentation skills
    • Listening skills
• Project team continuity
  • Handling turnover
  • Bringing in new people
• Personal styles
  • Team players, loners, and prima donnas
  • Discipline: giving it and getting it
• Managing stress
  • Positive vs. negative stress
  • The downside of stress
  • Techniques for reducing stress

 

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