Training Topics

Project Management

Good project management systems, approaches, and skills are a key strategy for achieving business objectives. Developing a comprehensive approach in your organization will multiply the return on training many times.

First, enlist key project managers and organizational leaders to be part of an initial ‘wireframe’ team to assess existing project management methods, terminology, and processes. Next look for opportunities and ways to improve and simplify your approaches and templates. Include accepted milestone points, documents and templates, and approval points.

Second, use this process as the foundation around which key elements of project management are taught. As associates return to work after attending training, they apply what they learned in an environment where there is both support and consistency in expectations and approach.

The time savings can be considerable, especially when people begin executing the project plan without arguing over organizational ambiguity. Internal fine-tuning of the project management system is ongoing as individuals and teams apply the training. This approach is important even in organizations with many different types or sizes of projects. If the project management model and terminology are consistent throughout the organization and implementation is ‘locally’ adapted to the nature of the project, people across the organization speak the same language, making communication easier.

Once you have created such a process in your organization, there are other elements to consider. Project management training is not often linked to the types of projects and project management systems in the organization. Organizations with projects containing significant uncertainty (i.e. software, pharmaceutical or other discovery, development and research projects) need to use adaptive project management approaches appropriate to an uncertain environment. Creating a project management model that supports these types of projects is essential.

As one project manager said several weeks after we worked with his division to create a project management process and then provided project management training: "I have managed projects in other organizations, but we now have a clear project model for a consistent approach and we are living by it. It makes a world of difference!"

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