Successful Project Management

About Course:

INTRODUCTION
• What is project management?
• Why is project management important?
• Introduction to PM Tools and Techniques
• Introduction to Teams

PROJECT PLANNING – THE BASICS
• Define start-points, end-points and the project life cycle
• Set (realistic) project goals
• Develop timeline
• Identify critical path
• Develop budget (people, resources, $$, equipment, etc.)
• The project management challenge – managing the unknown

THE 5-STEP PLANNING METHOD
• Define clear project objectives
• Goals
• Deliverables
• Milestones, Measures
• Run the objective-setting meeting

• Structure and scheduling the project
• Define the plan down to task level
• Create the Gantt chart
• Identify milestones

• Analyze the plan for risks
• Identify risks
• Evaluate the impact of risks
• Strategies for managing risks (embedded risk alerts)
• Reduce risks through contingency plans
• Build confidence into the plan

• Review the plan and assumptions
• Test resource planning
• Test deadlines
• Test assumptions
• Test contingency plans

• Team Building
• Leadership
• Roles and responsibilities
• Team / project reporting
• Effective team meetings

ESTIMATING GUIDELINES
• Good practices - Why estimating is important
• Improving accuracy of estimates (short term accuracy – continuous fine tuning)
• Meeting deadlines

• Techniques that work
• Identifying the known and the unknown
• Three-point estimating (conservative, probable, optimistic)
• Understand what we control and what we don’t
• Applying statistics where appropriate

RUNNING THE PROJECT
• Establish project control
• Set the baseline schedule
• Monitor actual task progress (daily, weekly)
• Analyze actual vs. the baseline
• Correct the project plan to achieve the objectives
• Implementing the plan
• Get the information needed in advance
• Set plan “triggers”
• Avoid project creep
• Knowing when and how to rework the plan

• Tracking and reporting progress
• Reading information from the Gantt chart
• Tracking costs, head count and resources
• Planned vs. actual project performance
• Tools- Paper tools vs. the computer!
• 90% done trap

PROJECT FAILURE
• How to identify and avoid project pitfalls
• Over budget
• Late & Project creep

• Projects completed on time and on budget.