Project Management in Practice - 2-day course in English
Success in practical project management is based on two pillars:
- Understanding that a project plan may only be "good enough", but it will never be "perfect" (or else the case is actually not a project, but a different kind of task...).
- Implementing such rules of monitoring project realisation that enable early notification about emerging threats and that ensure the maximum flexibility of resources engaged in realising specified tasks.
This 2-day workshop aims at giving the participants the tools enabling the implementation of these rules in practice and working out a proper attitude of each project team member. The training is based on the assumption that the participants will spend about 60% to 70% of the workshop on applying the tools they have learnt to their own projects, from everyday life of their organisation.
Course objectives
- Preparing the participants to plan and supervise project realisation on their own
- Establishing a common language and tools deployed for planning and supervising project realisation
- Discussing practical experience in different planning techniques, managing risk in a project, planning and monitoring project costs
- Evaluating the advantages and the disadvantages of the specific tools and learning to use the ones that are the most suitable for a specific project
Who is this course for?
- People who wish to learn or refresh the basic knowledge and skills related to project management
- People who are about to begin their adventure with project management
The method
Real projects submitted by the participants form the basis of the workshop. 2-3 projects are selected and exercises are formed in relation to those projects. All exercises are completed in groups of 3-6 persons. Participants perform them, drawing up a case study of the historical project, which are demonstrated rules for implementing the individual steps. 50% of the time can be devoted to work on your own projects.
Benefits
After completing the workshop the participant is able to:
- Determine when one should use the design approach
- Assess which project management tools should be used in a given context
- Use various tools for planning and supervising the project
- Compose an isolated plan and order the execution of a small project
As a result:
- Improved communication between team members
- People are clearly assigned to the tasks, roles and responsibilities in the project
- Improved teamwork
- Lower amount of stress when planning the project
Programme
Introduction
- What is a project and what makes it different from the other ways of work?
- Why can a project plan be only “good enough”, but never “perfect” and what are the consequences? How to formulate a project mission statement?
- What are the phases of planning a project? Which of them is the most difficult and which one is the most important?
Defining the project
- Why is project defining the most difficult area in project planning?
- What are project goals? What kinds of goals should be considered? Why is the discussion about defining targets one of the most difficult discussions while planning a project?
- What are project products and how do they differ from project goals? Why does it take place?
- How to set priorities in a project? Why is it necessary to set them before commencing the detailed planning of a project, whereas later it will be practically impossible to set them?
- Why mustn’t the WBS be first prepared with a computer?
- Why, when working on the WBS, is the process more important than the result?
- What is a project network and what is it created for?
- How to verify the accuracy of the project network?
- What does the stage project planning consist in? What are the advantages?
- What does the model structure of project management look like? What roles does it include?
Estimating resources
- What are the methods of estimating resources and when should they be applied?
- How to define who is needed for realisation and managing work in a project?
- How to establish the accountability for realisation and managing work? How to write down the accountability?
Preparing a schedule
- What is a schedule and what is it used for?
- What does the standard approach to preparing a schedule consist in and why doesn’t it work in practice?
- How to enhance the critical path method to ensure it helps and does not hinder in everyday project management?
Supervision of project realisation
- What methods of monitoring progress of work in the project can be applied and what negative consequences will it entail? What does practical experience show?
- Why does every experienced project manager intuitively adapt a number of good practice behaviours, which, at first, may appear to be inconsistent with the art of project management?
- What rules and code of conduct does a project manager have to establish and implement to make sure that they do control the progress of work?
- What early “warning system” should be implemented in the scope of these rules to ensure practical risk management in projects?