Project Management Essentials: Part 1 - The Fundamentals

Gain the knowledge, skills and confidence to manage real world projects with success. This course covers the complete project life cycle — from project initiation and definition, through project implementation, and finally to the often-neglected project completion phase.

Integration of a realistic project simulation throughout the course challenges participants with the same kinds of twists and turns that real projects often experience.

With expert facilitation by some of today’s top thought leaders in project management, this course is ideal for those that want to obtain a solid foundation in project management fundamentals.

This is the first of three courses within our “essential series”, however, project team members and project managers involved in small to mid-size projects may find that this is the only project management course they will ever need.

For organizations, this course supports Project Management - adopting flexible approaches to project-based work.

How You Will Benefit

Through project simulation, group exercises, and discussion, participants completing this workshop will be able to…

• Identify key contributors to project failure and apply specific project management techniques to reduce those causes

• Identify options for structuring a project team, and select the most appropriate for a situation

• Plan specific actions to overcome key challenges of working within a Matrix Organization

• Use specific project management tools, designed to obtain high level buy-in among key project stakeholders before investing large amounts of time in detailed planning

• Identify key areas of project risk, assess their impact and identify options for responding

• Develop a work breakdown structure to break a project down into discrete, manageable activities complete with measurable deliverables

• Model the flow and timing of a project during the planning stages, and test different “what-if” scenarios to both optimize and ensure that a project is “doable” before starting

• Identify “critical path activities” to reduce unnecessary project delays and undertake high priority tasks first

• Recognize appropriate uses of contingency to minimize the negative effects of unknowns on the schedule and allow resources time within the schedule to complete non-project activities without impacting project deliverables

• Given several ways of using contingency, assess the pros and cons of each

• Assess project resource requirements, recognize resource assumptions and evaluate resource conflicts and potential solutions

• Apply specific techniques to reduce scope creep during project planning, monitoring and control

• Use specific tools and techniques to improve communication with project stakeholders

• Apply specific tools and techniques to create a productive project team environment

• Compare current project status to an original plan to identify potential problems and make proactive decisions based on accurate data

• Recognize elements of a properly closed out project, and avoid the syndrome of the “project that never dies”

Who Should Attend

Individuals who are both new to project management and experienced project managers who have not had formal project management training, project team members, subject matter experts who contribute to projects and “accidental” project managers - those for whom project management is a secondary part of their role.

When delivered in-house, Project Management Essentials is very effective in “jump-starting” a team embarking on a medium to large-scale project, and can be held over three consecutive days, or 1 day/week over three consecutive weeks.