Practical Project Management for Management Consultants

Course details

What is the aim of this course?

Managing Consulting Projects is extremely difficult. You work in a hostile environment, long hours on difficult things. On top of that the bill for your services for the customer is pretty high so he will want to squeeze out of you as much as possible. At the same time his people may dislike you as you are an outsider that in their point of view pretends to know better.  Therefore, many Project Managers fail on deadlines or cannot deliver value for the customer. Luckily there is a way to do a consulting project on time, get your customer and his people happy with the result as well as get well paid for your work. This course will help you drastically improve your knowledge and skills in managing consulting project. It is designed for project managers, especially those working in consulting. After finishing the course you will know:

1. How to prepare for the project to make your customer and your team happy as well to finish the project much earlier than your competitors
2. How to create value for your customer
3. How to deliver the project within the budget and way ahead of deadlines
4. How to execute the project without having to work 7 days a week 15 hours a day
5. How to overdeliver and get buy-in from your customer
6. How to build strong foundation for future projects
7. What tools to use
8. How to be efficient as a team

The course is based on my 12 years of experience as a Project Manager in top consulting companies and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, improvements and turn-arounds in biggest companies in Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B sectors that I worked for.  On the basis of what you will find in this course I have trained over 100 consultants, business analysts and managers who now are CEO, Operational  Directors, COO, Investment Directors, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, Customer Insight Managers, Data Science Managers etc. We use this methodology also in my own boutique consulting practice. I was not only delivering consulting service but also buying them from consulting companies such as PwC, McKinsey, BCG, OC&C. Therefore, what you will see in this course takes also into account the perspective of the customer who is buying the service.

The course is very practical so the theory is limited to almost zero. I will use examples from real management consulting projects. I concentrate on practical tips that you should implement on your next projects. There will be also examples of tools, templates and end-products that we use in our practice. To many lectures you will find attached  (in additional resources) the tools and examples I am showing  in the lecture, so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made tools that can, with certain modification, be applied by you in your work.

Why I decided to create this course?

As I said, I not only managed and delivered consulting projects, but I was also on the receiving end. What always surprises me is that despite all the knowledge there is on managing projects, consultants time and again fail miserably and deliver something the customer doesn't want or need, usually after the deadlines.  At the same time I could not help noticing that I on the other hand were done with my work way ahead of time. Therefore, I decided to describe my approach so it can be used by others that face the same challenges. Thanks to this course you will become a priceless member of your company and you will outperform other project managers. It will help you land a job not only with consulting firms but also private equities and businesses that need somebody to supervise projects (i.e. Project Management Officer).

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to be a top project manager you should implement my approach towards consulting projects. That is why, I highly recommend this course not only to project managers or consultants that have to manage projects but also managers and directors working in business.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step by step guide loaded with tones of tips, tricks, hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you conduct the project. There is little theory - mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will know:

1. How to train your team and turn it into an effective machine
2. How to prepare the project in order to deliver value to the customer within the budget and deadlines
3. How to execute the project to make your customer and your team happy
4. How to finish the project and at the same time build the foundations for new cooperation

You can also ask me any question either through the discussion mode or by messaging me directly.

How the course is organized?

The course is divided currently in 6 sections and I will be adding new section to address other important issues. Currently you will find the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with little intro into the course as well as some general info on projects.
• Teaching Phase. In the second section I will explain the importance of teaching and how to implement it in your team or company. If you want to do fast, efficiently good projects you have to have the right kind of people. You can say that preparation for the consulting project starts with proper teaching. In this section I will discuss how through teaching get good business analysts.
• Preparation Phase. Most consulting project are done in a bad manner. A lot of things that should be done ahead of time are done during the project and this slows you down drastically and causes later on a lot of problems. If you prepare properly you can shorten the execution time, create more value and earn more. In this section I will show you how to prepare and what kind of tools to use.
• Execution Phase - Technical Tips. In section 4 I will show you some technical tips you should follow to make sure that you deliver value to the customers within the deadlines
• Execution Phase - Tips regarding the relationships with the customer. It this section we continue with the tips on how to execute the project. This time around it will be more devoted to soft tips: how to treat people on the project to get great results.
• Wrapping up the project. The way you finish the project is of outmost importance. In this section I will show you how to finish the project to maximize the happiness of the customer with the results of the projects as well as to create opportunities for new projects.

I will be adding new sections and lectures in the coming months

You will be able also to download many additional resources

1. Excels with analyses shown in the course
2. Presentation of slides show in the course
3. Additional tools show in the course
4. Links to additional presentations and movies
5. Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will be able to…

• Manage Consulting Project with your eyes closed
• Finish the project ahead of time and below the agreed budget
• Create value for the customer that will help you sell new projects
• Create finished products that can be reused on other projects
• Prepare yourself efficiently for the project
• Create a dream team
• Become real efficient manager, working on totally different level