Mastering Project Management

Course Overview

This training course helps you to build your project management skills and gain a detailed understanding of how projects are planned, executed and controlled.  IT goes beyond the basics of project management to take the project manager to the next level.  The class begins with discussion of how to initiate a project and then goes into the main focus of the training course, creating the detailed plan containing scope, schedule, budget and more.  You will learn how to develop a detailed project scope and to implement the most important concept in project management, the critical path.  Three different views of project budgets will be presented as well as culminating the time-based budget used to track project progress.  In addition, how to manage the people on the project is also a major topic.  Finally, tools for managing and controlling the project are provided.  These include the tracking Gantt chart, the S-curve and Earned value Analysis.

A series of exercises works through the planning process, building a realistic project plan for a real project, implementing that plan and guiding it through to a successful conclusion.  These exercises will be done working in groups to enable participants to practice the tools as they learn them and apply them at work prior to leaving the class.

Course Objectives

After the training course, you will learn to:

• Learn specifics about projects and project management
• Plan project work activities
• Make detailed project schedules
• Create time-based project budgets
• Track and control project work to ensure project success

Target Audience

This course is suitable to a wide range of working professionals but will greatly benefit anyone responsible for managing projects or managing programs, as well as project sponsors and portfolio managers.

• Project managers
• Program managers
• Portfolio managers
• Project sponsors

Training Methodology

This class consists of lecture, discussion, and group exercises.  Each topic is presented and thoroughly explained followed by discussion of how it might apply at work.  Exercises follow the discussion to apply the material to actual work projects.