Planning, Organising & Controlling Projects

Course Overview

This training course demonstrates how to plan all of the work required to carry out a project, how to organise that work to accomplish it, and how to control that work and lead it to a successful conclusion.  The guiding document for the project manager is the Project Plan.  Its three primary components are the Scope Plan; Project Schedule; and Project Budget.  Two of the three major tools of Project Management, the Work Breakdown Structure for the scope and the Critical Path Method for the schedule, are provided to help develop the project plan.  Other subsidiary components of the project plan, plans for quality, resources, communication, and procurement will also be discussed.  Finally, the training course demonstrates how to apply risk analysis to the project plan.

To organise the work, resource assignments need to be made, reporting processes need to be put into place and quality inspections are conducted.  Additional tools for project control are introduced, but the primary one is the 3^rd major tool of project management, Earned Value Analysis.  Throughout the class, 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:

• Create a project plan for project success
• Focus on the three key areas of the plan: scope, schedule and budget
• Organise the project resources to carry out the plan
• Manage the project work
• 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:

Project sponsors, project managers who lead projects and functional managers who provide resources to projects.  Also anyone hoping to move into a project management career.

• Project managers
• Program managers
• Project participants
• Functional managers supplying resources to projects
• 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.