An Introduction to Effective Project Management

Course details

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 lifecycle 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 lifecycle
• 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 teamwork 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