Overview
Course duration: 2 days.
This highly practical introductory course provides you with all the essential skills, tools and techniques that you'll need to support you in your project management role. The course concentrates on the practical techniques that you can apply directly to your own workplace.
This course is focused on exploring the fundamental principles of successful project management and incorporates a number of easy to apply, effective tools and techniques that, when applied in the workplace, will allow the attendees to become more confident and competent in managing a project. A number of easy to use checklists are also included.
The terminology and principles used throughout this course are designed to reflect the current syllabus for the APMP qualification.
Is it right for me?
Suitable for individuals who are:
- New to the role of project manager and/or lack any formal training in the discipline of project management.
- Looking to adopt a project approach to managing work or are setting up a Project Support Office.
- On the first steps of achieving APMP accreditation.
What will I learn?
By the end of this course you will be able to:
- Recognise when it is appropriate to adopt a ‘project’ approach to managing your workload.
- Apply a simple life cycle to a project to break it into easy to manage stages.
- Clearly define your projects to provide real clarity in terms of project scope, roles and responsibilites and other key factors.
- Confidently plan, organise and document a project by using a wide variety of tools that add value to the project management process.
- Identify and manage risks proactively to minimise the impact of any deviations from the original plan.
- Become more effective in monitoring and controlling the project work, change requests and resourcing pressures by using best practice processes and techniques.
- Understand what lessons can be learnt from managing work using a project approach.
- Tailor your approach to projects of varying size and complexity.
What will it cover?
What is a Project?
- Defining what we mean by project working and how it differs from the day job
- Determining a structured approach to managing projects - the project life cycle
- Understanding why projects fail - what to watch out for
Defining a Project
- Understanding the role of the project manager and other key stakeholders
- Appreciate the importance of team working within the project
- How to clearly define a project
- Setting and agreeing objectives, scope and constraints
- Understanding what questions to ask
- Recognising the need for project governance
- Simple risk management tools and techniques available to avoid surprises
Planning a Project
- Exploring tools and techniques used in planning a project including Work Breakdown Structures, Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams and Critical Path Analysis
- Determine the key project documentation and data display methods used on a project
- Scheduling techniques to maximise limited resources
- How to make time and cost estimates more credible and realistic
- How to plan for identified risks
- Defining and delivering against agreed quality expectations
- Recognise the need for a change management process and version control in a project
Implementing a Project
- How to monitor, track and control activities
- What impact will changes have on the project?
- Determine corrective actions to ensure the project remains on track
- How to communicate the status of a project more effectively
Closing and Reviewing a Project
- Understanding the need for a controlled close to a project
- Measuring what actually happened against the plan
- Learning lessons - both positive and negative
- Closing down and moving on
Further courses to consider
Advancing Your Project Management Skills
Project Management for the APMP Examination
Trainer Profile
Graham Kerr
View a short video of Graham talking about this course.
Delegates coming to my courses are often new project managers looking for the specific skills to deliver successful projects time after time, or are looking for the solutions to the typical reasons for why projects fail – lack of stakeholder engagement, poor planning, little or no risk analysis being carried out or ineffective communication.
Using my considerable experience of managing projects, I aim to satisfy these needs and provide the answers to these questions through theory and practical advice in the safety of the training room, whilst giving you an insight into how this can then be translated back into the ‘real world’.
The Faculty
Along with George Baxter, Adrian Pagdin, Paul Richardson, Moyra Wright, Ernie Clement,
Mike Savage and Bill Bailey, Graham Kerr is part of the dedicated faculty team who will deliver this course.
View our trainers profiles.
Recent delegates have said:
"The course content was delivered clearly in an informative relaxed manner; the facilitator moved on to the next topic only when he felt all delegates were ready to move on."
Testimonial
Laura McCubbin, Product Development Specialist
Natures Way Foods
I recently attended this course and really enjoyed it. I especially found the group exercises to be really useful and the relaxed atmosphere really helped with my learning experience. The tutor was excellent too!