I have just taken over an in-house project and it is apparent that I need to train the team in project management. Ideally I would like to be able to give a one day overview for the new starters and a three day course for the more experienced PM's. As money is tight in our company I need to develop these courses myself and I could do with any advice / links / or even free material to help.
Course content will need to be as per PMI style courses, for a one day and three day.
You could try looking at what a training company would cover on a 1 day and 3 day course and tailer that to your needs with the material you can obtain Saving Changes...
Mike Cooper PMPPrincipal Project Manager (retired, sort of)| New England Project ServicesWestford, Ma, United States
If you develop something yourself, try and make it a combination of theory, applied theory, lessons learned in your organization, with practical work tied into real world examples from your company. Perhaps having the attendees learn about what it means to develop a project plan, then try and create one from a scenario you give them tied into your company, would be helpful. There are many ways to make a course useful - one approach to avoid is producing lots of material that you then just talk to. Get the attendees to work together. I delivered many training classes in project management over the past few years, and one technique that worked well was to ask the audience a question, have them work in small groups (say 2 or 3 per group), and then get each group to contribute one answer, continuing around the groups enough times to get all the answers.
Examples of questions I posed included:
- who are typical stakeholders of projects (I had first asked them what was a stakeholder, then agreed a standard definition with them)
- what would you expect to see in a project plan
- what does it mean for your boss to say they are committed to supporting your project
- what things affect the efficiency of your project team
and so on.
Good luck. Although it can be a lot of preparation time to develop these courses, it will be very satisfying to deliver and see the results. Saving Changes...
Thanks very much for this help.... I really like the idea of getting the attendees to work in small teams.
Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Hi Mat, if you need to put something together in a hurry with absolutely no budget, have a look at the Columbia University Project Management Resource Center per the link, http://www.columbia.edu/~jm2217/ You will find a lot of good stuff, including presentations and links to other nice places. Good luck. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International Saving Changes...
hope you accept small consultancy companies from romania.more info about us www.best-consulting.ro
my questions is : one of our most important clients is a company owned by a very rich romanian guy who made a fortune during the last 10 years in the forming no rules economy.recently we made a project management training for his managers .the knowledges were new for everybody and seemed hard to be accepted. the final argument of the owner was : paul , i have more money than you do so may way is better than the one you presented . how do you response to such an argument ?mark , can you help ?
thanks . Saving Changes...
John SchlichterFounder| OPM Experts LLC http://opmexperts.comAtlanta, Ga, United States
I advise against using COTS (commercial off the shelf) training in project management. I also advise against classroom / lecture style training based on teaching theory. Such approaches almost never produce sustainable behavioral improvements. A better approach is to start with a good process and templates (like those available from BOT International, which I recommend), and create experiential exercises wherein a group of no more than 15 or so people have each exercise presented to them (in plenary) to convey the technique and principles, followed by break-out groups (of 5 people or so each) in which each group performs an exercise to produce a completed deliverable (e.g. stakeholder analysis results in Communication Plan). Use an actual (real) high priority project within your company as the case study that break-out groups produce these deliverables for. This makes the training both relevant and value-added and increases the likelihood that learning is transferred into the actual work methods of the organization. See http://www.opmexperts.com/training.htm#1
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Hi Paul, I agree with Mr. Schlichter's reply to your post. I would only add that different organizations have different levels of willingness and ability to consider and make change. Prior to proposing a solution, I would ask myself three questions: 1) am I seeing the world through the eyes of my client, 2) do I truly understand and have agreement with my client on what problems are causing pain and need to be fixed, and 3) is my proposal unquestionably better than doing nothing. Perhaps, you might have gone from step 1 to step 3, having skipped step 2. In any case, in the eyes of your client, your proposal is not convincingly better than what their are already doing. Seek to obtain a mutual agreement on what the problems are as well as the value of fixing them, then craft solution approaches with client participation. Hope this helps. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International Saving Changes...
John SchlichterFounder| OPM Experts LLC http://opmexperts.comAtlanta, Ga, United States
I would recommend Career Academy (http://bit.ly/2fnjzjJ) for PMP training and exam prep courses. They have a good price for their annual membership and they are PMI Registered Education Provider (REP). Career Academy is an institution that offers online on-demand video-based learning solutions for IT Networking, Cyber Security, Project Management and Office Professionals. You can prepare for the certification exams by taking courses from Career Academy. Saving Changes...
