One way to learn how to manage projects is through case studies. Using a variety of cases of projects that succeeded and some that failed, you can benefit from the lessons learned by the original stakeholders in the project.
Each week you will read a case and respond to questions that your instructor provides. Either through email on online contact, you can review with your instructor any questions or observations you have.
You will also be asked to recommend how you might apply some of the lessons from each case to your own projects.
- Instructor: Alan Letton
- Instructor: Jim Lewis
Why You Should Attend
A committed and motivated project team can work miracles, but how do you create such a team? By applying the methods taught in this dynamic seminar, you can turn a project group into a winning project team!
Through this seminar you will learn to manage and lead, to influence and motivate, and to work with team members to get the best possible performance from each individual. If you have ever said,“I have no trouble solving the technical problems in my projects—it’s the people problems I have trouble with,” then this seminar may be just what you’re looking for.
The job of the project manager is to integrate people with different knowledge and skills into a functional team, so that each can make a specific contribution. In short, a project team needs a leader, not a manager.
A common problem for project managers is that they don’t “own” the people in their project team. For that reason, you must have very good people skills in order to have a successful project. You must hone your interpersonal skills so that you can exercise influence, rather than power, to get things done. You’ll return to work better equipped to bring out the best in those individuals on your team.
Attend and You’ll Learn How to
- Get team members to “buy-in” to the project mission, vision, and objectives
- Create a sense of project ownership
- Clarify roles of team members so everyone knows exactly
what he/she is supposed to be doing
- Determine how to handle decisions in your team (by consensus, majority
vote, or autonomously)
- Understand different personalities and how they best contribute to team performance
- Build a climate to enhance innovation and promote acceptable risk-taking
- Manage conflicts to promote creativity without having
the conflicts become
interpersonal
- Determine what motivates team members
- Achieve objectives through teamwork
- Organize the project team and build commitment to project objectives
- Build a team in matrix or subcontract environments
- Deal with unsatisfactory performance
- Manage team development stages
- Lead the team improvement process
- Improve your own performance
Who Should Attend
As a project manager you will benefit from this seminar, especially if you are involved in engineering, data processing, information technology, construction, research and development, manufacturing, maintenance, corporate planning, finance, marketing, and quality. The principles can be applied to any kind of project. The seminar is especially valuable for managers who are concerned with effectively managing projects for which the cost, schedule, and performance must meet rigid requirements.
Attend and You’ll Receive
- A comprehensive, workbook full of easy-to-use procedures, guidelines and worksheets, plus an extensive reading list. This book will help you put what you learn to work immediately— and will serve as a handy reference in the years to come. (Downloadable pdf)
- Feedback from the Kiersey Temperament Sorter to help you understand your preferences for dealing with others, contributing to your growth as a manager
- 18 PDHs
- A Certificate of Attendance
- Instructor: Alan Letton
- Instructor: Jim Lewis
Emotional intelligence is a skill that can be developed to help deal more effectively with interpersonal interactions and improve relationships at both work and home.You will learn the meaning of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), the areas of emotional intelligence, how to detect emotional intelligence in others, and strategies on how to improve your own emotional intelligence.
- Instructor: Sharon Blanchard
Product development projects, by their very nature, involve a greater amount of uncertainty than established, well-defined projects. You often do not have historical data to guide the process and facilitate estimations and projections. You are often working with cutting-edge technology. The lack of data and presence of new technology make the outcomes uncertain. The absence of precedence and presence of uncertainty therefore necessitate the utilization of different approaches in product development projects. This seminar will help you choose approaches that will improve your success probabilities for product development.
- Instructor: Alan Letton
- Instructor: Jim Lewis
Learn how to decide when it is best to hold on to your project and when to walk away.
It can be difficult enough to manage well-defined projects, but when you are dealing with research and development (R&D), science, and IT projects, which are not well-defined, you have another ballgame. In this program, you will receive guidance on managing projects using stage-gate management, aligning projects with the strategic initiatives of your business, and determining whether to cancel projects outright or redefine them to leapfrog current technology.
There is a fact of project portfolios that is not widely recognized or accepted by portfolio managers. If you are canceling too many projects, it means there is something wrong with your project selection process. Quite simply, you are launching a project that should not have been selected. On the other hand, if you never cancel a project, you are completing projects that will wind up making no money for you. The reason: nobody is so good that they complete every project successfully!
- Editing Instructor: Alan Letton
Why You Should Attend
This program is designed to solidify your position as a professional project manager!
You’ve taken the basic course covering the tools of project management, and you feel comfortable with work breakdown structures, earned value analysis, and scheduling. Now learn to think, act, and be seen as a true project manager, rather than just an accidental one. This is the advanced course in project management.
Successful project management requires technical, process, and psychological skills. At this program you learn how to bring these skill areas together to form the arsenal of tools needed to successfully achieve project objectives; included are methods for making better decisions about projects, handling scheduling uncertainty, improving project management processes, and dealing with power and politics.
Special attention is given in this seminar to teaching you to think like project managers–to be active instead of passive, to take responsibility for the project, and to take positive steps to keep it on track. The reason for this emphasis is that many people learn the tools of project management, yet have no idea what is truly the role of a professional project manager.
This program is presented in a learn-by-doing manner that will give you the confidence that you can master the management of any project you tackle.
Attend and You’ll Learn
Thinking Modes in Projects
- The Herrmann thinking styles profile
- How thinking differences affect project teams–and how to take advantage of them
The Job of Managing
- What managers actually do: the myth and reality
- Mintzberg’s managerial roles
- Assessing your use of the roles
- Improving your performance of the roles
Power and Politics in Projects
- Understanding power and politics
- The five faces of power
- Influence using WIIFM
- Building and managing relationships with stakeholders and functional managers
Defining Success and Failure in Projects
- Deliverables, results, and expectations
- Research findings and how to apply them
Problem Solving in Projects
- Fundamental concepts of problem solving
- Decisions versus problems
- Obtaining high-quality information in order to make sound decisions and solve problems [techniques from Neuro- Linguistic Programming® (NLP®)]
- Challenging and removing obstacles to solving problems
Improving Decisions in Projects
- The steps to effective decisions
- Tools for decision making
Improving Your Own Performance
- Using NLP methods to achieve excellence
- Removing blocks to high performance
Who Should Attend
Project managers whose jobs involve engineering, data processing, information technology, construction, research and development, manufacturing, maintenance, corporate planning, finance, marketing and quality will benefit from this seminar. The principles you’ll learn can be applied to any kind of project.
Attend and You’ll Receive
- A comprehensive workbook (Downloadable pdf)
- 18 PDHs
- A Certificate of completion
- Instructor: Alan Letton
- Instructor: Jim Lewis
Almost everyone manages projects at some point, but not every project requires the use of heavy-duty tools such as critical path schedules, earned value analysis, or detailed progress tracking.
This three-hour online, self-paced class consists of narrated lessons with slides, as well as a workbook that allows you to develop a plan that is simple to understand and execute. The plan you develop with this approach allows you to identify all of the stakeholders to your project, develop a clear outcome statement that will help assure the end result you are after, and also helps you identify things that could go wrong that might cost you time, money, or lead to failure.
This course is intended for people who are managing small projects that involve no more than a few people and does not require a highly detailed project plan. It is NOT suitable for managers of large, complex projects; it is ideal for executives who are managing strategic initiatives or individuals who need a rudimentary plan for a small project (either professional or personal).
- Instructor: Jim Lewis
The program will focus on the unique skills necessary for leading people in an organization. Nontechnical and accessible, it provides an easy-to-follow program for transforming yourself from a by-the book manager into a leader capable of encouraging team members to plan, accomplish, and sustain excellence.
In this step-by-step course for developing leadership proficiency, you will learn:
- Proven leadership principles, with methods for understanding and adopting them.
- Strategies for changing from the command-and-control role to that of facilitator.
- Proven steps for building the personal credibility required for effective leadership.
As a project manager, you are generally given a lot of responsibility with little actual authority. In this course you will receive a comprehensive program for developing the skills of a leader. You’ll discover techniques for matching individuals’ talents to specific tasks, skills for delegating authority without losing control, physical approaches for quickly building rapport with other people, tips for acquiring credibility in an unfamiliar setting, and much more.
- Instructor: Alan Letton
- Instructor: Jim Lewis
Why You Should Attend
Take the guesswork out of project management! If managing projects to get results is important to your organization, you can’t afford a seat-of-the-pants approach. Here are proven tools and techniques used by world-class companies to make their projects sizzle! With these methods, your projects will come in on time, on budget, and at the right level of performance.
This is not a theoretical, academic program, but a true nuts-and-bolts, no-nonsense approach to project management, taught by a seasoned project manager. Your instructor applies the latest methods of learning technology to accelerate your learning and increase your retention so you can apply these important tools. You’ll see how all techniques relate to each other during five interactive exercises that simulate a project.
Attend and You’ll Learn
- How to manage every aspect of a project to achieve schedule, cost, and performance objectives
- How to master the concepts and methods needed to manage resources efficiently to achieve project goals
- How to develop and coordinate the total project plan
- How to construct achievable project schedules using CPM, PERT, and bar charts
- How to develop valid estimates of resource requirements and costs by applying the work breakdown structure (WBS)
- Why the WBS is the most important tool of project management
- Rules for developing the WBS
- How to use the WBS to estimate time and cost
- How to monitor and control project status using Earned Value Analysis and other methods
- How to avoid the ten most common causes of project failure
- How to get project team members to buy in, even when they don’t report directly to you
- What you need for a viable project management system
- The Lewis Method® of project management
- How to manage the project life cycle
- The importance of clarifying the project mission
- The difference between mission and vision
- The difference between strategy and tactics, and why strategy is important
- Risk analysis and management – assessing probability, severity and detection for each risk
- How to develop a risk management plan
- Common mistakes made in planning
- Why you need both arrow diagrams and bar charts e How to use the schedule to manage the project
- How ignoring resource limitations produces a worthless schedule
- How software can help you allocate resources e How to estimate when you have no historical data
- The probability of scheduled completion
- How to improve performance by evaluating projects
- What to do to keep your projects on track
- How to forecast project completions
Who Should Attend
This seminar will benefit project managers whose jobs involve engineering, data processing, information technology, construction, research and development, manufacturing, maintenance, corporate planning, finance, marketing, and quality. The principles you’ll learn can be applied to any kind of project.
What Others Have Said
“I have worked in the construction industry for more than 30 years, the course was helpful in improving my skills and overall competence.”
—Robert Bassford, Project Manager, Prince William County Park Authority, Manassas, VA
“I think any manager (project or otherwise) should take this course as a requirement. It is an incredible way to open your eyes to good, solid planning practices for projects.”
—Heather Kempfer, Therapy Support Coordinator, Biogen Idec, RTP, NC
“I have several project management ideas I look forward to implementing back at work.”
—Robert Powell, Group Product Manager, Grape City Inc., Morrisville, NC
- Instructor: Alan Letton
- Instructor: Jim Lewis
Seldom do projects fail because people don’t know how to create a proper schedule or work breakdown structure. They fail most often because infighting, conflict, hidden agendas, communication problems, and egos plague project teams. You can reduce or eliminate all of these problems completely if your employees are given the proper tools for dealing effectively with each other. This dynamic program will show you how. Teams, like individuals, do not always demonstrate a “whole brain” preference for thinking. This means that teams can also apply ineffective thinking to problems they must solve. You can learn to enable teams to think in a whole-brain way and improve their performance— with obvious bottom-line results. By combining individual thinking profiles with the team profile, you can take maximum advantage of the strengths.
- Instructor: Sharon Blanchard
- Instructor: Jim Lewis