Best Practices in Project Management

This course is the first in our project management series and deals with fundamental principles and techniques involved in managing 21st century projects. It includes key definitions and terminology promoted by the Project Management Institute and used worldwide by project management professionals. It gives you a working knowledge of most commonly used project management tools and techniques. Furthermore, it helps you better prepare for the advanced courses in our series as well as the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam.

The course consists of lecturettes, easy-to-understand examples, group application exercises and case studies. It is a four-day, highly hands-on and interactive program. Every participant will receive a notebook containing copies of the view graphs, application examples, exercises, case studies, glossary of terms and templates.

Who Should Attend?

• Portfolio managers
• Project managers with limited experience
• Newly appointed project managers
• Functional managers that support project managers
• Project team members
• Professionals with a desire in project management career

What You Will Learn

• Common project management terminology promoted by the Project Management Institute and used worldwide by project management professionals
• Why your organization must make project management a core competency
• Why hierarchical or functional organizations are not effective for today’s projects and why they should adopt projectized or matrix structures
• The vital skills you need to manage a project in an environment where you have virtually no authority but complete responsibility
• Proven techniques on how to motivate and energize your team
• Magic formula to make project performance feedback a positive process without creating ill feelings
• A step-by-step "process flow" methodology you will not find any text book that outlines every single major process that must be an integral part of your project
• A simplified approach to develop project charter that every project must have
• Tools for capturing every task that should be included as part of project scope of work
• How to simplify your project planning using WBS and a Gantt chart
• How to use application reusable templates (ARTs) (Samples include: project charter, risk management plan, change management, cost estimation, etc.)
• "Push-down, pop-up" reality of the three key project constraints no project manager can afford to ignore
• 1:10:100 rule to deal with project "scope creeps"
• A simple change management system to help you prevent your project from bloating out of control
• Value of rapid prototyping and how to do it
• What is a project plan and what it should contain
• Three different project team structures and what would be most effective for your project
• A four-step risk management process that focuses on proactive measures to prevent surprises and minimizes crisis management
• Decision tree analysis that will guide you make right decisions
• Why any task takes four times longer than you expect
• Top-down and bottom-up cost estimation methods for different levels of accuracy desired
• A simple four-step process to develop project schedule
• How to develop, understand, analyze and differentiate various scheduling charts: Gantt, PERT, PDM, CPM, etc.
• Innovative strategies to compress project schedules and achieve lower cycle times
• Key metrics that will help you monitor and stay on track with project schedules and budgets
• "Earned value" analysis to quantify cost and schedule variances for appropriate corrective action
• How to preserve for future benefit the intellectual capital generated from a project after the project is finished and the project team is long gone
• Why every project should have a close-out strategy and what you should do before the final exit

Seminar Outline

Overview
What is a project vs. program vs. portfolio
What is modern project management?
Project management knowledge areas

Project Environment
Project life cycle
Project phases
Project "process flow" methodology
Organizational structures: Advantages/disadvantages
Key competencies of project managers

Putting together a Project Plan
Project contract and project charter
Document of understanding
Project requirements
Project definition report

Work Breakdown Structure
Definitions
Uses of WBS
WBS dictionary
Guidelines to build a WBS

Organizing and Managing Human Resources
Project team structures
Project organizational chart
Resource histograms
Responsibility assignment matrix

Assessing and Managing Risk
Definitions
Risk identification
Qualitative and quantitative methods
Decision trees
Risk response development strategies
Risk control

Estimation
Definitions
Labor effort estimation
Cost estimation methods
Task duration estimation techniques
Dealing with contingencies

Developing and Managing Schedule
Task dependency relationships
Scheduling techniques/charts
Critical path method
Strategies for compressing schedule

Project Execution and Control
Change management strategies
Causes of project failure
Managing customer expectations
Metrics
Earned value methodology

Project Close-out
Total customer satisfaction
Closeout activities