Professional Development

Learn the skills and qualities it takes to deliver results, even if "project manager" isn't in your title. Doing more with less is often the way of the world today, so mastering the finesse and methodology of delivering results (project management) is essential in daily living. Everyone can benefit from learning PM skills that help us communicate better, work smarter and apply the time-proven tricks of the project management trade to any work situation. This five-week program bundles the 10, half-day sessions into a Project Management Certificate series. You will meet from April 4 to May 2 on Tuesdays, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an hour break, lunch is provided.

Register for the Project Management Certification Package

This session covers an introduction to project management lifecycles, documentation, terminology and strategies for implementing and maturing the practice of project management within an organization.

Session Outline:

• Project life cycles/methodologies – what are they and why are they important?
• Hybrid approaches
• Project, program, portfolio – what are they and how do they impact my approach to planning and execution?
• Project management documentation – what are my options? How do I determine the best way to document project details?

Register for the Project Management Overview Course

Scope is defined as the work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product, service or result with the specified features and functions (PMBOK® Guide). If you would like more detail about what that means, how to define, communication and manage scope, then this session is for you.

Session Outline:

• Defining what is in and out of scope.
• Project requirements – defining project success, project completion and establishing project goals.
• Deliverables, artifacts, outcomes – what are they and how are they identified?
• Once deliverable, artifacts and outcomes are defined, how do you ensure that everyone has a common understanding of what they are?
• Creating the decomposition diagram - work breakdown structure (WBS) and work packages.
• Strategies for establishing baselines and minimizing scope creep.

Register for the Establishing Project Scope Course

Uncertainty exists in all that we do. Even repeating work can have a measure of uncertainty. In project management terms, we call this risk. While risk cannot be eliminated, it can be identified and managed.

Session Outline:

• Risk tolerance
• Strategies for risk identification
• Risk assessment
• Mitigation, contingency and residual risk
• Risk reserve
• Decision trees
• Communication planning for risk management

Register for the Identifying and Managing Risk Course

A project manager is responsible for leading the project and team, but did you ever wonder how to manage everyone else that is impacted by the project? How do you influence non-project team members to support the project? This session is designed to provide you with answers about engaging stakeholders and driving change.

Session Outline:

• Stakeholder identification and prioritization
• Stakeholder requirements/key performance indicators
• Stakeholder engagement strategies
• Organization’s readiness to embrace project outcomes
• Influence and trust – what are they and how do you build them?
• Integrating stakeholder management and organizational change into the project plan

Register for the Stakeholders & Driving Change Course

Project teaming techniques focused on clarifying project roles and responsibilities, team structures and building a strong and effective team.

Session Outline:

• Personal learning profile and how it impacts the team.
• Structure – strategies to organize a project team.
• Strategies for remote teams.
• Team operating guidelines– determining the right amount of guidelines for the project team and organization.
• Role Ccarity – responsibilities by project role: stakeholder, steering committee, gate keeper, project manager, team member.
• RACI and RAM charts.
• Stages of team performance - how important is it to have a strong team in order to have project success? And how do I create one?

Register for the Building Project Teams Course

Communication is all about getting the right information to the right people at the right time. It has been said that the role of the project manager is 80% about communications. As a planner by profession, the project manager needs to have an approach for facilitating effective project communications.

• Communication process – sender, receiver, medium, noise and feedback.
• Communication strategy – establishing the who, what, how, when and why.
• Communication considerations – situation, expectations, resource and style.
• Communication C's – consistent, credible, commitment, coaching and call-to-action.
• Assessing communication and collaboration technology.

Register for the Project Communications Course

The most frequent question asked of a project manager is: "When will you be done?" This course will help you answer that question. Materials covered in the course will help the participant develop realistic project timelines and how to determine critical path.

Session outline:

• Reviewing the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for completeness.
• Introduction to estimating techniques – from the work package to the schedule.
• Establishing a realistic timeline.
• Determining if a project be accelerated and finished faster.
• Identifying how work should be sequenced to get the most important items completed on time.
• Using the network diagram to ask "What if" questions – what if resources are added or removed? What if work is eliminated or added? What if work is done faster or slower?

Register for the Project Scheduling Course

Once the project plan is in place, how do you track progress and adjust to changes during implementation? This class will assist you in setting up a project approach that simplifies the tracking and status reporting effort.

Session outline:

• Project baselines – why they are important and how to establish them.
• Issue management, decision tracking and scope management.
• Triple constraints: time, cost and scope – and why it is important to track against all three.
• Tracking techniques:
  
  • Earned Value Management (EVM) - manage time and cost on projects
  • Burndown charts
• Status reporting – how to create simple, visual ways to communicate project progress and projections at project completion.

Register for the Project Tracking Course

This deep dive into estimating provides you with techniques to improve the way you answer questions that require estimates, like: how long will this take, how many resources do you need and what will it cost?

Session outline:

• What is an estimate? How does our mind work to create estimates?
• Estimating for various approaches: Adaptive ("Agile") through Predictive ("Waterfall")
• Precision vs. accuracy – what is the relationship between them and how do we make good business decisions on required levels of precision?
• Moving from data points to an understanding.
• "Rolling Wave" estimating (aka "progress increment" estimating).
• Common sense tools for estimating.

Register for the Estimating Project Work Course

Agile project management has been gaining a lot of traction and there are some powerful concepts in this approach. But like any new business management method, agile project management has already been misunderstood and overused as a silver bullet to all project management issues.

In this hands-on class we will:

• Understand the evolution of agile and adaptive approaches as a whole.
• Examine various adaptive project approaches and appreciate the advantages and costs of each.
• Understand the components of agile methods, particularly scrum.
• Learn and practice techniques for determining the appropriate project approach for various types of projects.
• Practice structuring real-life projects from class participants.
• Equip participants with some tools for communicating options for project approaches and the ability to analyze best fit.

Register for the Balanced Approach to Agile Project Management Course