A Managers' Overview of Project Management
1-day or 1½-day workshop

This workshop is designed for managers of project leaders and policy-makers
or policy-influencers within an organization. The goal of the workshop is to
provide a comprehensive overview of the benefits of implementing a project
management initiative within the company and an overview of the project
management process. Participants are encouraged to use the workshop as a
forum for discussion and as an aid in action planning for implementation of such
an initiative. Results of the discussions and action-planning are captured and
distributed to the participants.

Recognize the proliferation of projects in the organization
Discussion topic:
  • What qualifies as a “project” in this organization?

Emphasize the link between strategy and projects
Discussion topic:
  • How well do we link our projects to organizational and strategic goals?

Overview of the project planning and management process
This section is a presentation of the overall project management process
including: Pre-work and project definition, planning, implementation and daily
activities, handoff and closure and, post-project evaluation.
Discussion topic:
  • Does this look like what we routinely do on our projects?

Understand top management’s influence
Discussion topics:
  • How do we measure up to our role in successful project management?
  • What practices are in place that support project management?
  • What practices are in place that will likely inhibit the success of projects
    and project leaders?
  • How can we strengthen the supports and weaken the inhibitors?

Develop a “core team” system
Discussion topics:
  • Do we regularly use core teams as described?
  • Do we have appropriate practices in place to support core teams?
  • How do we deal with the issue of project ownership and the extent and
    limits of project leader authority?

Organize for project management
Discussion topics:
  • Does our current organizational structure support project management?
  • If not, what needs to change?
  • Can we change it?
  • If so, what are the priorities of the changes we have identified?

Develop a Project Management Information System (PMIS)
Discussion topics:
  • Do we have a PMIS (or, possibly, several of them) in place?
  • If not, how should we go about developing (or adopting) one?
  • Does our PMIS need to allow tracking of resources across multiple
    projects?
  • Are there other specific requirements we can identify?
  • What priority should this have?

Project Manager selection and development
Discussion topics:
  • Are our project leaders in their positions on purpose or by accident?
  • Do we have criteria that we use to select our project leaders?
  • Do we treat this job as important or only as another “task” to be done?
  • What provisions have we made for on-going education and training of our
    project leaders?
  • What do we need to improve in this area?

Project Management and the “Learning Organization”
Discussion topics:
  • Do we have a balance between “adaptive” and “generative” learning?
  • If not, what can we do to encourage both types of learning in the
    organization?
  • Do we archive project information in a central location that can be
    accessed by our project leaders?
  • If not, how should we set this up?

Develop a Project Management Initiative (This is an action-planning exercise
that usually takes 2 to 4 hours.)
Discussion topics:
  • Are we ready to undertake this task?
  • If not, what do we need to do to get ready?
  • What are the steps we need to take?
  • What is the priority of these steps?
  • Who should lead (own) the effort and who should participate in it?
  • When should each step be completed?
  • What are our contingency plans for this activity?

Apply Project Management techniques wherever they will be beneficial
Discussion topic:
  • How can we begin to spread project management throughout the
    organization?
ProjectTraining.com
Providing Project Management
and Process Improvement Training
for over 20 years
"As many
organizations probably
do, we sent a lot of
employees through the
project management  
program. What we
found was that they
started expecting new
behavior from us as
managers. We brought
them back in to help
our managers
understand their role
in effective project
management and it’s
been a real eye-
opener. We’re working
on supporting our
project managers
more appropriately
and everything is
working better."
     Laurie Aunan
     Water Quality
     Division
     Administrator,
     Oregon
     Department
     of Environmental
     Quality
     Portland, Oregon