Advanced project management course
Overview
Experienced project managers already know that successful projects are not delivered solely through the efficient technical execution of a schedule. This approach can lead to ‘well managed projects’ that deliver little or no benefit to the business. Our advanced project management course explores an alternative approach to the effective management of more challenging projects.
The advanced project management course recognises that the key is to manage the politics of the project as well as the technical content. Participants should have over five years’ experience of managing projects.
The approach taken is to challenge – making participants reflect on how they discharge their responsibilities as an experienced, professional project manager. The purpose of the advanced project management course is to make their personal project performance more predictable and to focus their management actions on making their projects successful.
Objectives
The advanced project management course starts by focusing the project managers’ attention on what success looks like. The purpose of planning is to achieve these outcomes and nothing else. At this level, project management is often as much about power and politics as about plans and process.
Consequently stakeholder management is a critical skill and is thoroughly explored. Once the nature of success is understood, the role of project disciplines in achieving that success is examined. It is the advanced application of the key project management disciplines that is at issue, and so the emphasis is on the appropriate use of management control techniques in complex projects.
Finally, it is the integrating of all the factors and disciplines together into a coherent project strategy and a set of consistent actions that distinguishes good project managers from great ones. A major cross- functional project is provided – and the problem is to successfully construct and deliver the project. By its end, not only are the project managers confident about the advanced project management techniques, they are confident about how to apply them in typically complex project environments.
Content
This course explores an alternative approach to the effective management of more challenging projects. It recognises that the key is to manage the politics of the project as well as the technical content.
- Project success factors
- Organising projects
- Scoping the projects
- Stakeholder management
- Advanced project disciplines
- Business strategy
- Investment appraisal
- Resource management
Through exercises and discussions around real life experiences and video scenarios, the participants develop an understanding of how to flex their own approach to suit the demands of challenging projects.
