Online Project Management Workshops with me are NOT training courses. I cover four modules over four weeks with a maximum of four attendees.
You really work on your project! I work on it with you, giving you my advice, my critique and a lot of help. You will have a robust plan for your project within a month and free support from me for a year.
In the four modules – Discover, Detail, Deliver and Do It Better – I bring you through my “Four D” method. This method is not about a catchy slogan, nor is it trying to neatly contain our crazy world in a restrictive process. It is a method I developed over 30 years that can be applied, in your work or even in your private life, to make your projects better. I don’t just lecture you and give you stuff to do. We develop your project plan together, in a systematic, simple way, and if confidentiality allows it, you can also get help from the other workshop attendees.
The areas of focus are:
1. Discover
Who cares about your project? How do they ask you to take it on? How do you commit? I help you to tease out the answers to these and other questions so that you can figure out an achievable goal for your project, and get agreement on it.
I provide simple Charter and Goal Statement templates for you to use – or you are more than welcome to use your own ones. In fact many larger companies have formal documents and processes that you will be required to use.
I know that my questions apply to all projects because I have been asking and answering them for over 30 years in many industry sectors, including Government, Third Level Education and Not-For-Profit, all over the world.
2. Detail
As you work out the key deliverables, assumptions and dependencies, what are the best tools to use? The answer may surprise you. I use a few very simple templates and tools for estimating, scheduling, budgetting, resource planning and risk analysis.
How do you generate a schedule from the list of deliverables and tasks? Are you building a schedule or documenting a dream? Are you planning or hoping? Are you building a plan or recording the orders you have been given? How do you keep it real and believable?
What leads you to believe that the project will proceed as planned? Have you included enough testing? Have you included time for fixing things? Have you foreseen the unforeseen? How much risk analysis is enough?
Spend some time working on the details with me, spend some more time working on them with your team, and you will set your project up for success.
3. Deliver
People make things happen, whether there is a plan or not. In our projects we sometimes lead, often follow, betimes get in the way and hopefully also get out of the way. Your job as a project manager is to help people make specific things happen within an agreed time and budget. What is the best way to achieve that? Join my workshop to find out.
What is the best methodology? Waterfall? Agile? Lean? No matter what your expertise is, or what method you prefer, the simple fact is that your project will not go exactly as planned. I help you ask “What if” so that you can be prepared for this reality.
How do you keep track of your project when it kicks off? How do you know your team is working? When is the best time to hold a formal review? How do you do that? How do you prepare and present your project status to senior management? These days, we have to defend and present and discuss our projects many many times to many audiences. Very few of us are left alone to get on with it, and this impacts our ability to deliver the project – so I devote part of the workshop to reporting and presenting.
4. Do it better
Implementation is all that really matters. If I could only use one “D”, I would choose the last one. “Do it better” is a core tenet of many philosophies and methodologies and I discuss how to apply it throughout your project, not just at the end. And I explain why I do not accept that a project is over until the lessons have been learned.
As a “bonus” a few years ago I added a Time Management module to the end of the workshop. I now realise it is an integral part of successful project management. I call this module “Give yourself the Gift of Time”.
Let me help you to do it better by joining me in one of my workshops.