Project Management for Managers

This course takes the mystery out of how to organise and plan projects, meet deadlines, and keep the budget under control. Delegates will benefit by saving time and money through improved plans, schedules, and communications. This fast-paced, hands-on course is specially designed to meet the “instant” project manager’s needs. It provides basic project management (PM) principles and terms, reinforced with a selfcheck quiz and an easy-to-use set of tools to help new managers plan and implement their projects. This course provides the opportunity for delegates to create tangible PM work products which are immediately usable to support their projects.

Objective

By the end of the training program, participants will be able to:

• Define basic project management terms.
• Distinguish projects from ongoing operations and programs.
• Explain the benefits of organising project activities into phases.
• Describe the Generic Project Life Cycle.
• Develop, plan, schedule, and chart project information.
• Work with calendars and implement scheduling methods such as the Critical Path Method to keep projects on track.
• Create task dependencies and work with flexible and inflexible task constraints.
• Work with multiple, consolidated projects and multiple critical paths.
• Use Gantt charts to visualize project progress.
• Create PEST charts to understand the relationships between tasks.
• Compare actual progress against planned baseline projections.
• Estimate durations for activities and resources required.
• Estimate durations for activities and resources required.
• Develop a project schedule.
• Estimate costs.
• Build a budget and spending plan.
• Describe elements of a good project communications plan.
• Organise to acquire staff.
• Identify risks and plan to respond.

Course Outline

Day 1 - Introduction to Project Management

• What are "projects"?
• Why project management?
• The project life cycle
• Influences on a project
• Key stakeholders
• Project management process groups
• Project manager responsibilities

Day 2 - Project Initiation

• Understanding the role of senior management
• Needs Assessment
• Project selection - benefit/cost ratio
• Present value and net present value
• Building SMART objectives

Day 3 - Project Planning

• Scope planning
• The work breakdown structure
• Estimating
• Schedule Planning
• Network Diagrams - CPM
• Speeding up the Schedule
• Project Management Planning Software
• Cost Planning
• Responsibility Matrix
• Resource Loading and Levelling
• Risk Planning
• Procurement Planning
• Communication and quality planning

Day 4 - Project Implementation

• Baselines
• Developing the project team
• Organisations and team structures
• Managing change
• Managing Risk
• Performance reporting
• Reserves
• Assessing and monitoring project performance
• Earned value
• Sunk costs

Day 5 - Project Closeout

• Scope verification and customer acceptance
• Administrative and contractual closure
• Transferring lessons learned to future project