Project Planning Workshop:
Your Key to Project Success

We offer this seminar as both a two-day on-ground seminar at your facility, or as a four-week Online seminar. The Online seminar requires that you have Microsoft Office 97 or later.

Program Description

This comprehensive two-day workshop gives you proven practical methods to develop and deploy a Project Plan that aligns everyone to deliver a successful project result on-time, every time, within your budget. You will learn how effectively using the Project Plan process assures project success.Projects continue to get into trouble and fail at an alarming rate. Project Managers are frequently overworked and stressed by the demands of all of the people with an interest in their project…the project stakeholders. Experience demonstrates that projects which start with an effective process to align all of the project stakeholders to endorse an effective project plan avoid much of the stress and achieve project success most of the time. Experts experienced running projects of all types in sizes in industry and government will lead this workshop to show you how to achieve project success all the time.

Who should attend?

• Project Managers

• Work Package Managers

• Supervisors, Managers, and Department Heads

You Will Benefit

• Develop Project Plans that you and your team can succeed at

• Turn the Project Plan process into a rewarding experience for all involved with your project

• Align your customers to endorse your project success

• Execute projects that benefit your business

• Increase your company’s profitability

• Reduce the chaos and crises that often bury projects

• Focus your Project Plans

• Run successful project meetings

• Reduce and effectively manage changes to your project

• Provide all project stakeholders with the information they need

• Satisfy your customers

• Deliver your project on time and under budget

What You’ll Learn

1.       Create a project Charter that puts the focus on the Business Benefit of your project.

2.       Identify the project stakeholders and their interests.

3.       Visualize the project final result.

4.       Assess the four primary elements of your project business case.

5.       Develop charter level cost and schedule estimates.

6.       Manage project risks.

7.       Develop high-level project Assumptions to enable your plan.

8.       Identify Critical Success Factors.

9.       Gain agreement on the Key Performance Indicators.

10.   The Project Plan as a team orientation tool.

11.   Set the boundaries of the project scope; what’s in and what’s out.

12.   Establish the processes your team will need to develop a comprehensive Project Plan.

13.   Understand what others say about effective Project Plans: Project Management Institute, Construction Industry Institute, Software Engineering Institute, DOE 413

14.   Scale your Project Plan to the needs of your specific project.

15.   Engage your team to develop the Project Plan.

16.   Build support from all of your project stakeholders.

17.   Select the best technical approach.

18.   Develop a Work Breakdown Structure that works.

19.   Create a Milestone Sequence to guide work package development.

20.   Establish effective Work Packages.

21.   Build the integrated project schedule and budget.

22.   Calculate the right amount of schedule and budget contingency.

23.   Know when and how to use rolling wave planning.

24.   Plan for effective design reviews.

25.   Assure the quality of all of your project deliverables.

26.   Plan for safety.

27.   Implement security.

28.   Assure project administration.

29.   Run effective project meetings.

30.   Set up communications that meet everyone’s needs.

31.   Manage project issues and actions.

32.   Put in place painless project reporting.

33.   Manage project changes.

34.   Begin with the end mind: how to plan for transition to operations and closure.

Workshop Agenda

Defining the Project Charter and Content of the Project Plan

• Understand how to identify project stakeholders and their needs.

• Focus on People, Product, Process…and then Project.

• Practice identification and development of the business case for a project.

• Identify the content of a Project Plan as a function of project variables; e.g. size, complexity, risk.

• Selecting the Project approach; Preliminary Engineering Studies, Feasibility studies, Conceptual Designs.

Developing the Scope, Cost, and Schedule for the Project Plan, using Milestone Sequence charts, Work Packages, and the Work Breakdown Structure

• Project Assumptions
• Work Breakdown Structure(s)
• Scope of work, including scope of facilities and scope of services.
• Responsibility Assignment.
• Work Packages.
• Milestone Sequence Chart.
• Network diagrams.
• Cost and schedule buffers (Management reserve).

Defining Project Processes

• Candidate processes for inclusion in a Project Plan.

• Alternative ways to define and invoke processes.

• Product requirements vs. processes.

• Design Review.

• Project Quality.

• Risk Management Process.

• Communication Process.

Project Measurement, Control and Reporting

• Running effective Project Status meetings.

• Action Item and issue management.

• Project reporting.

• Buffer reporting.

• Managing the reserves.

• Ongoing risk management.

Mastering the Three Ps

People

How to get everyone to work together to support your project. (Who, Why)

• Learn how to gain the commitment and endorsement of all of the people who might affect your project success; customers, project team, contractors, regulators, public

• 5 Methods of problem solving…and how to master the one that works best

• Relating stakeholder requirements to project deliverables (product)

Process

What you need to make the project run smoothly. (How, When, Where)

• The top ten reasons projects fail…and how to avoid them

• Seven keys to project health

• Simplify project control

• Six friends that help you keep your project on track

Product

(What)

• The biggest mistake most projects make, and how to avoid it

• Six hats that put the team on the right path

• Why design review is so important, and how to use it best

• How to deal effectively with project changes

This workshop is offered in cooperation with our partner: