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Workshop: Delivering in Difficult Circumstances: Advanced Topics in Project Management
Workshop Objective: Learn how to deal with the big problems of project management, the problems that can make you crazy if you don't know what to do. This workshop is based on my project management book: Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management.
Workshop Overview: In this experiential workshop, we'll practice techniques to deal with the big problems of software project management: forming and leading teams; the interaction between schedule and scope creep; stakeholders with conflicting requirements; knowing when the project is done; decision-making; keeping sponsors engaged; building enough slack into the schedule, and measurements to know when your project is on track. We'll also make time to address your issues
Target Audience: Project Managers and any other managers experienced and interested in project managers.
Prerequisites: Attendees should have experienced at least 2 years of project management on a completed project, or at least 4 completed projects in one year.
Workshop Duration: 2 or 3 days, depending on the customization, plus pre-work from attendees. The 3-day version is outlined here. I can customize 1- or 2-day versions with you.
Workshop Outline
- Forming and Leading Teams: just because they're assigned to your project doesn't make them a team.
- Interaction between schedule and scope creep: How do you manage the schedule and the things we "just gotta have"? How to manage the schedule games.
- Stakeholders with conflicting requirements: Not everyone has the same idea of what success means for your project. How to facilitate a common vision of success, requirements, and goals with your stakeholders
- What does “done” mean? The one question every project must answer.
- Decision-making: Some of us are intuitive decision-makers, and others are more analytical. We'll discuss how to use risk management, project requirements, success criteria to make decisions, and what to do when you think other people's decisions are based in emotion, not logic.
- Keeping sponsors engaged: Especially in IT projects, sponsors have a way of wandering off, only to return at the end of the project. We'll discuss and practice techniques for keeping your sponsors and stakeholders engaged.
- Building slack into the schedule: Not everyone agrees on how to build slack into the schedule, although almost everyone agrees that building slack into the schedule is a good risk management technique.
- What to measure to assess project progress: Measure to give you insight before the project goes south.
- Your issues: Can be issues such as facilitation skills, PM burnout, how to plan for different lifecycles, receiving and understanding project status, reporting project status, and anything else you've brought to the workshop.
- Summary and feedback
Contact me for the extended description or to book this workshop.