Project Management

Businesses use project management to manage projects and achieve outcomes typically with limited resources and under limited time constraints. This intensive, hands-on course provides an overview of the principles that underlie project management and covers the fundamental skills needed to enhance the outcome of any project. Gain a working knowledge of the nine major areas of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK as defined by the Project Management Institute) including human resources management, communications management, scope management, quality management, scheduling/time management, cost and resource management, risk management, contract/procurement management, and project integration.

Project leaders must often operate effectively in a high responsibility, but low authority environment. Whether you are leading or will be asked to lead a project team, this course will help you acquire the management and leadership skills necessary to lead successful projects with confidence. Learn how to build high-performance project teams through effective leadership and influence, utilize management skills to encourage productivity and cooperation, apply communication and negotiation strategies to resolve conflicts, and implement creative problem-solving techniques to ensure project success. This class will be very interactive and will require the active involvement of the participants in realistic project related activities.

Procurement management has become a vital project management skill, as organizations increasingly outsource all but their core competencies. Understand the significance of procurement management in the modern project management environment and the role and duties of the procurement manager on a project team. Learn how to establish project scope/statement of work initiatives, develop a procurement management plan to monitor both cost type or fixed price contracts, select the proper contract type, define strategic teaming agreements, evaluate and select suppliers, and track supplier performance. The content of this course is fully compliant with the Project Management Institute's Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) chapter on Project Procurement Management.

To be successful, project managers must take a critical approach to managing risk. This course provides an in-depth look at the process of identifying and applying risk management principles and techniques to projects. Emphasis is placed upon techniques that are widely applicable in project management environments to facilitate better decision-making. These include both subjective and quantitative analytical methods and their interactions with other project management areas of knowledge according to the PMBOK ® Guide. Discover strategies used by successful project managers to recognize, assess, and mitigate project risk including risk identification, risk response development, monitoring and control, risk source/driver identification, and risk prioritization and categorization. Gain a practical understanding of the significance of project risk management upon business success through team projects, risk analysis exercises, case studies, and summary presentations.

Earned value is a technique for defining and establishing project scope, schedule and cost, and aligning them with executive management expectations. Learn how to use the earned value method to establish a realistic project baseline, and the strategies used to effectively monitor, measure and control cost and schedule. Find out how to calculate a range of estimates-at-completion (EAC) and apply effective methods for keeping your project budget and schedule on target. Learn how to set project standards and metrics to measure project success and how they can be used to accurately forecast project results. Hands-on exercises demonstrate how a simple, yet scalable form of earned value can be used on all projects, of any size.

This course will focus on proven methods for the monitoring and control of project costs and related schedule. Students will work through the steps needed to methodically plan project work producing an integrated cost profile and schedule baseline. Students will compare that baseline with the weekly schedule and cost data that has been collected by the project. Earned value techniques will be applied using this collected data to produce cost and schedule performance metrics. These metrics will in turn be used by the student to project future costs at the completion of the project and to predict the likely ability of the project to complete work on schedule. Students will also be shown how basic schedule planning and control techniques, including network diagrams and tracking Gantt charts are used to monitor schedule performance. Students will build a standard schedule; cost performance measurement reports, and briefing charts.

Projects are identified, and selected largely on the basis of their financial attractiveness. You apply the concept of the time value of money to predicted costs and revenues. You will commonly accepted financial ratios (capital budgeting decision tools) to assess project viability. After project go-ahead, management must ensure that these cost forecasts are attainable. You will be guided by the use of examples and class exercises through the typical estimating, budgeting and control processes used to manage costs. The PMI® PMBOK Guide 2004® will be used as a class reference to cost management processes and definitions. A financial calculator or a computer with Microsoft Excel is recommended for this course.

Managing a complex project often requires a systems approach. This course provides an overview of the systems engineering disciplines including architecture, life cycle costing, mission analysis, product verification and validation, defining functionality, and dealing with technical trade-offs.

This course will provide an overall understanding of the fundamentals of project scheduling with use of Microsoft Project for Windows. It will emphasize the importance to the project manager of first defining the total project with use of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), then formally issuing and controlling the project with use of a Project Master Schedule (PMS). Class participants will learn the major area of knowledge for planning projects with Microsoft Project 2007 software. This course will provide participants the skills needed to enhance the outcomes of their projects.

This course will provide the advanced skills and knowledge required to successfully build and manage complex projects using Microsoft Project 2003. Scheduling techniques and methods used to support Critical Path Method and the performance of Risk Analysis will be emphasized. This class also covers advanced methods for managing multiple projects in an integrated team environment. Learn to identify and resolve common scheduling problems and methods of debugging the schedule. Complex resource loading techniques and advanced methods of budget development will be discussed in detail. Learn advanced methods of tracking progress and be introduced to the Earned Value method of performance measurement. You will have the opportunity to develop custom reports, use Microsoft Project with other Microsoft Office applications.

This course is designed to combine all the topics that have been presented in the core project management classes. The content of this course is fully compliant with A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge 2004 (PMBOK® Guide). Participants will review the nine knowledge areas in the PMBOK® Guide and Professional Responsibility with a focus on understanding how to integrate the detailed project management processes. It is designed to help students assess their needs for advanced study. In addition, this course will prepare students to pass the PMP® Examination. The course includes exercises, practice questions and practice examinations to help students gauge their preparedness for the exam. There are also practical tips on applying for and taking the exam.

Business Process Improvement (BPI) is the structured methodology that leads to incremental process improvements within the context of Continuous Process Improvement (CPI). BPI can be performed within all levels of the organization and, along with technical skills, will also always be associated with the application of the soft skills necessary to effectively implement and institutionalize change. Through a series of training activities, you will learn how to select, design, sell, implement, and institutionalize the changes necessary for effective Business Process Improvement.

The rapid development of hardware and software products, services, and operational processes has become a major factor in the competitiveness of virtually every enterprise. This mandate results from accelerating change in market demand, available technologies, and the business environment itself. The methods described in this course enable dramatic reductions in project cycle time while maintaining effective control over budget, resources, risk, and delivered value. Firms that have embraced these concepts have reported up to 75 percent reduction in project life-cycle, while displaying dramatic improvements in non-recurring cost and customer satisfaction. This intensive, hands-on course explores all aspects of rapid development, including elimination of organizational time barriers, methods for bounding project scope, the continuous-flow development process, practical techniques for product/process co-design, and several advanced strategies for exploiting knowledge reuse and economies of scope on quick- turn projects. Each topic is reinforced by interactive exercises that demonstrate how development teams can strip wasted time from time-sensitive projects.

Managing multiple projects typically presents different and additional challenges to the project manager compared with the management of a single large project. This advanced course builds on project managers' previously acquired knowledge and skills in the areas of scope, time, cost, risk, human resources, and leadership and teambuilding through a combination of lecture and team-based learning exercises. Basic knowledge and competence in all of the aforementioned areas is highly recommended.These skills include planning for and delivering appropriate and timely communications and advanced negotiating abilities to effectively manage multiple stakeholders, task and project prioritization and grouping, and efficient resource allocation utilizing the theory of constraints. Scheduling techniques to balance resource utilization and project risks with desired responsiveness lead to optimal project outcomes, while minimizing conflicts.Team exercises focus on the assessment of project environments through stakeholder analysis and an adaptable multi-project simulation to reinforce the benefits of cooperation for mutual gain among competitors. Participants will learn to select the most effective strategies and responses, whether multiple small independent projects, portfolios, or large programs are encountered.

Managing an IT project in an enterprise poses unique challenges. This course focuses on those elements of project management that are of greatest interest to IT workers. Topics include requirements definition and use-case analysis, performance metrics, risk determination and mitigation, task identification, scheduling, verification and testing, and version control. One of the goals of the course is to help IT staff members work more productively with business analysts, who frequently initiate IT projects.

In many projects, risks arise because of deficient communications between the project manager and stakeholders such as the project sponsor, functional or resource managers, the client, customer, end users, and the project team. Typical include: a misunderstanding of the project's link to strategic goals, misinterpreting project priority, obstacles to defining project scope, misaligned expectations for resource commitment, assumed risk tolerance level, and appropriate responsiveness to possible changes. The goal of this course is to significantly reduce risks arising from poor communications by applying risk management techniques to stakeholder management. Communications management and risk management have traditionally been handled as separate processes, each producing separate outputs in the project plan. In this workshop, however, these processes are integrated to develop more effective communications that can improve a project manager's ability to manage key stakeholder risks.