Technical Skills
Stakeholder Engagement: Bridging the Great Divide
Engaging stakeholders is critical for project success, but not always easy. Executive sponsors view project management as administrative burden, while project managers fight for executives' attention - bridging the gap enables all parties to support project success - effectively and efficiently. This 1-day program works with executive sponsors in the morning guiding senior leaders on how to actively support projects. The 2nd portion of the program works with project managers so they are more comfortable communicating ‘up" to key stakeholders. The program produces an alignment across stakeholder expectations and enhances engagement among stakeholder participants - all necessary for project success.
Introduction to Project Management: A Method to the Madness
Project management does not need to be complex or complicated to support an organization's business needs. In fact, keeping it simple actually allows companies to develop project management competency that becomes part of the organizational culture over time. In this workshop, participants learn "vanilla" project management through the introduction of a simple, industry-standard project management methodology, including its life cycle, processes, and templates. Attendees participate in a detailed case study with hands-on exercises.
Lessons Learned: We Won't Be Fooled Again
Measuring project success goes beyond hitting project end dates. It requires an honest post-mortem on the project portfolio as a whole. If done correctly, Lessons Learned prevents organizations from repeating the same mistakes over and over again. In this session, you will learn how to conduct a Lessons Learned workshop and apply the lessons learned so you will never be fooled again.
Meeting Management and Meeting Facilitation: Making Meetings Work
Today's competitive environment forces organizations to be nimble and efficient. More often than not, organizations believe they are being productive through over-use of business meetings. Learn simple meeting management techniques, including virtual meeting management, that will increase meeting efficiency and reduce the number of meetings needed to get the work done.
Project Portfolio Management: You Can't Manage the Plan Until You Have the Plan
In an environment of increasing demands and stagnant resources, businesses must be precise in evaluating their priorities and setting the "right" agenda. Learn how to engage the decision-makers and implement an efficient portfolio development process that maintains the right balance between clear criteria for prioritization and selection on the one hand, and the need for simplicity and results on the other.
Start Your Engines: How to Initiate and Plan Your Projects
This workshop introduces simple techniques to effectively initiate and plan your projects. The major focus is an in-depth look at how to plan, organize, and conduct a Project Initiation Workshop; the major focus is an in-depth look at each possible sample agenda item for the Workshop. Each item's goals, process and expectations and tips are reviewed. The second major focus is a demonstration of a method for project planning by capturing activities/tasks and their relative information so a project schedule can be built as a result. Activity definition, sequencing, duration estimation, and ownership are examined. Different types of planning are discussed and the implications of personnel resources are reviewed.
Seeing the Vision and Making it Real
Want to enhance competency and performance in strategic thinking, strategic planning, and project management? This program is specifically designed to promote understanding and practice in the "circle of life", starting with strategic planning and concluding with plan execution; both are essential to realizing business plan success.