Introduction

• Managing the project processes and issues
• Creating a realistic and achievable project plan
• Working within project constraints

Launching Your Project

Applying a project framework for success

• Identifying the project life cycle stages
• Managing the key inputs and outputs
• Balancing typical challenges of project management
• Selecting and applying best practices

Core project leadership skills

• Identifying stages of team development
• Building and managing team effectiveness
• Taking responsibility for the team culture

Building a project charter

• Defining clear project objectives
• Determining and clarifying the goals
• Defining key project deliverables
• Running the objective-setting meeting
• Gaining buy-in from stakeholders

The 6-Step Planning Method

Defining the project workload

• Determining project scope with work breakdown structures (WBS)
• Driving the plan down to manageable task level
• Calculating a first cut of project costs

Building high-confidence estimates

• Effective ways to produce better estimates
• Differentiating between work, duration and resources
• Leveraging three-point estimating to refine accuracy
• Managing the estimating process

Scheduling the project

• Converting WBS to precedence networks
• Determining the critical path tasks
• Creating dependency diagrams
• Calculating the project duration

Creating the project timeline

• Building clear and readable Gantt charts
• Using slack effectively in the schedule
• Setting key milestones to track and control the project

Developing a risk management process

• Identifying the project risks and assumptions
• Evaluating risk impacts
• Strategies for managing risks
• Managing key risks with the Risk Register
• Reducing risks through contingency plans

Effectively matching resources to work

• Identifying the resources your project needs
• Assigning resources to tasks
• Analyzing resource use and costs in the schedule
• Optimizing the use of resources
• Preparing and agreeing on task contracts

Running the Project

Establishing an effective control process

• Establishing change control procedures
• Presenting the project plan for approval
• Setting the baseline schedule

Implementing the plan

• Monitoring real task progress
• Analyzing progress against the baseline
• Picking up warnings of trouble ahead
• Engaging team members to maximize productivity

Tracking and reporting progress

• Tracking planned vs. actual task performance
• Crashing the critical path tasks
• Analyzing the impact of variation to the baseline plan
• Avoiding the 90%-complete trap
• Correcting and optimizing the schedule to achieve project objectives

Leading throughout the project life cycle

• Communicating project status to stakeholders
• Coping with common project scenarios
• Building ownership, motivation and commitment across the team

Successful Project Closure

• Managing systematic project closedown
• The payoff of postimplementation review
• Documenting project and personal lessons learned for process improvement