ROI - In house Project Management Training
From the Project Management 2.0 Blog
by Dave Garrett
New technologies, concepts, and Web 2.0 tools are popping up everywhere. How can you use them to help your project team collaborate, communicate - or just give your project an extra boost? [Contact Dave]
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Situation: Your Company Needs to Invest More in Project Management Training
My last posting "Does Formal Training Matter", generated a lot of discussion and a really great solution from one of our members, Michael Stanleigh. It was good enough that I felt I had to share it with you. Another member had just asked how he measured training effectiveness...
"I have the participants bring their projects into the workshop. Commonly these are projects that are already underway, sometimes they're in trouble. As they learn how to scope it, form the team, develop the WBS, assess risk, etc. in the workshop, they apply the learning directly to their projects. I follow-up with them afterwards, managing any questions or concerns. In every case they have said that as a result of the training they got their projects completed within their constraints. Problems projects have been brought right on track. "
Some organizations have preferred to use generic project case studies. I still do the follow-ups to see how they have applied this knowledge to their actual projects. In every case they have said that they have measurably improved project performance. That is, they are managing them within their constraints of time, cost and resources.
In some instances I have gone in and completed an audit on their project and then helped to implement the recommendations. In one recent case, the project was significant in that if they didn't complete it on time the company thought they may not survive. It was beyond crisis mode. However, the audit got to the root causes of the problems and our coaching got it right back on track. It has been an enormous success for them. |
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By Michael Stanleigh |
Would this approach work for you? Why or why not?
Posted on: August 20, 2013 12:59 PM |
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Comments (2)
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Murthy T.
Vice President Delivery| Tecnics Integrated Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
Dave,
You have done an effective thing by posting Michael's response on a blog.
The inputs by Michael are quite useful and are easy to implement.
Further Michael was helping them through audits and follow ups to make improvements sustainable in those organizations where the benefits like bringing projects back on track and/or executed the projects successfully in the given constraints of time, cost, scope, ...
Thank you very much Michael for your valuable inputs.
On my part I did simple things like breaking down the deliverable to activities to .. low level tasks, allocating and regular monitoring in a formal way.
I would put the informal discussions on status and other important things in a mail to have common understanding and/or revise them when there is a gap in understanding, and abide by the agreed action points with target dates.
Weekly Status reporting to the key stakeholders including customer PM and Sponsor, was a regular activity with all the required seriousness and commitment.
Weekly Project Review Meetings (PRM) with the project team to bring everyone on to the same page and align them where necessary. In weekly PRMs, also did the defect analysis of defects noticed in Review and Testing and come out with Corrective and Preventive Actions.
Maintaining Issue Log and ensure that issues are resolved on time and if not escalate them for proper resolution or revision of the plan (schedule and/or budget) where necessary.
One thing worked very well was the confidence provided to the customer through our actions that we were fully committed to the project success as a vendor organization even when some sections of customer organizations were not providing the support to the required level. This gave enormous confidence and benefits to the customers’ management to complete the projects on time or reasonable delay and within budget or little overrun and in case any NO compromise on scope or quality. This in turn benefited us with continued business besides extra money.
Bernard Gore
Portfolio, Programme & Project Professional| NZ Police
Wellington, New Zealand
Good article, but I would suggest that this approach is only really suitable for PMs at a certain level - "real'' projects can be too complex or too narrow and specific for a lot of training - you get too stuck in the particular challenges of those and therefore miss out a lot of other areas.
I would want PMs to be quite experienced first, using training based on generic projects designed to cover all the bases, to ensure that the wide and solid foundation is there.
Only after this would I do sessions where they bring their real projects - in more of a group-mentoring environment, and yes this can be incredibly useful in helping them with the actual projects and in further professional development, both for them and the others present.
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