PROJECT MANAGEMENT / LEADERSHIP TRAINING COURSE LIST

Flexibility

Everyone has different needs and a different way in which they learn. Some students may need to learn a new skill or refine an existing one. Some prefer to learn on their own via recorded sessions, while some prefer a traditional classroom session. Others benefit from a hybrid approach via virtual classroom blended with traditional classroom sessions.

Regardless of preference, experiences are enhanced with tools and templates as takeaways.

At Forward Momentum, we know that individuals can make or break a project. That’s why we’ve developed training solutions that account for every learning style and that can be customized as needed. We have proven methodologies to help propel your personnel forward, giving your project and strategic initiatives the momentum they need.

Training session options include:

  • Selecting from Forward Momentum’s existing curriculum
  • Leveraging your organization’s courseware
  • Developing custom courseware specific to your needs
  • Offering informal webinars and/or lunch-and-learns
  • Offering live classroom and virtual classroom environments
  • Facilitating workshops that allow employees to focus on targeted topics without requiring long absences from work
  • Offering menu-style workshops, customized from one or more classes
  • Providing classes that earn PMI’s Professional Development Units (PDUs)

Experienced Staff + Practical Experience

The Forward Momentum staff offers a minimum of 15 years industry experience, as well as five years of training experience. Additionally, we offer PMP®s (project management professionals) who have attained certification in their areas of expertise. This ensures high standards which, in turn, ensures high quality—a value we take seriously. All our facilitators have attained necessary credentials.

Proven Results

How do we continually help learners obtain high PMP® first-time pass rates and excel in leadership positions? We’ve discovered it’s the right blend of instructor enthusiasm and perseverance, real-world experience, peer interaction, student engagement, and resources such as tools and templates, complemented by some humor.

This powerful blend has garnered success for thousands of professionals in project management and leadership roles, including obtaining PMP® certification the first time. In fact, 97.5% of those who took the PMP® and CAPM® exam rated the Forward Momentum class “exceptional” when asked how helpful the class was in preparing for the exam. The overwhelming majority of our clients are repeat customers looking to expand their level of project management and leadership knowledge.

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Our Courses

Except for certification courses, we solely offer on-site classes to organizations with several or more people to train, meaning that we do not offer single seats for sale. For PMP® certification, we offer both individual or group sales. Visit our Project Management Courses page for more information.

Click on one of the categories below for specific classes within that category, scroll down the page to see a complete list of courses and descriptions or  view our complete course list in PDF format.

If interested in custom learning programs, be sure to visit our Instructional Design page.

Project Management classes
Project Management Certification classes
Leadership classes
Professional Skills
Seminars

For course descriptions, click the course names:

Project Management

Your boss assigned you to manage the next major upgrade to the system. Maybe your boss put you in charge of managing the vendor who is creating the system for you. You need a good foundation in Project Management! Introduction to Project Management effectively combines expert lecture, participant discussion and hands-on application, covering the most basic project management principles. The seminar focuses on the standard project management terms and processes associated with initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing a project.

Course Description: The Introduction to Project Management is a one-day, instructor-facilitated, seminar session designed to provide an introductory overview of the project management discipline, with special emphasis on scope and schedule.

Topics List:
• Project Management Terminology
• Project Organizational Structures
• Project Selection and Prioritization
• Initiating a Project
• Project and Scope Definition
• Project Planning and Scheduling
• Resource Identification and Assignment
• Project Budgeting
• Project Reporting
• Risk Management
• Scope and Change Control
• Project Closure

Outline

  1. Introduction to Project Management
    a. Definition of a Project
    b. Projects vs. Programs
    c. Project Management Life Cycle
    d. Project Management Terminology
    e. Triple Constraints
  2. Initiating a Project
    a. Project Initiation
    b. Evaluation, Selection, and Prioritization
    c. Stakeholder Analysis
    d. Project Charter
    e. Project Management Organization Types
  3. Planning a Project
    a. Scope Planning and Decomposition
    b. Time Management and Scheduling
    c. Resource Planning
    d. Cost Estimating and Budgeting
  4. Executing and Controlling a Project
    a. Project Communications and Reporting
    b. Project Risk Management
    c. Project Change Control
    d. Project Quality Management
  5. Closing a Project
    a. Administrative Closure and Contract Closeout
    b. Lessons Learned
    c. Final Reporting

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team members, subject matter experts, executives, senior managers, resources managers, and functional managers.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

You have been put in charge of a project. Where do you start? Or maybe you’ve been assigned to a project and don’t understand what the project manager expects you to do. Or why. Maybe you’ve worked on projects for years and know there has to be a better way. This class is for you. You will learn the practical approach to defining and organizing what you and your team will do and how you will produce the desired results while making sure the right parties are informed and expect the same thing. Templates will be provided.

Course Description: This is a one-day, instructor-facilitated session where approximately half the time is spent on exercises. Many project management classes focus on the same theories and tools, many of which are not used on the majority of projects. This class is different. Topics selected are those that will yield the best results on real-world projects. What makes this class unique is that in addition to practicing planning a project, you will also spend time evaluating change requests and taking corrective action on a case study project. It’s one thing to talk about how to do things; it is quite another to react to changes and apply management techniques based on plans you developed, and to see how the different planning approaches result in different actions later.

Through exercises and the provided templates, discover valuable tools that you can use immediately. You will learn to manage each stage of the project life cycle, work within organizational and cost constraints, set expectations, define scope, document appropriately, address items and changes that occur on the case study project, communicate effectively and get the most from your project management team. The course includes exercises, soft copy blank templates, case study examples, and completed templates you can immediate use on your projects.

Topics List:

  • Managing Constraints
  • Life Cycles
  • Defining Scope
  • Setting Expectations
  • Managing Risk
  • Reporting
  • Communications
  • Virtual stakeholders
  • Addressing Issues
  • Managing Changes

Outline

  1. Project Management Foundations
    a. Terminology
    b. Life Cycles
    c. Constraints
  2. Scope
    a. Defining and Documenting Scope
    b. Exercise: Defining the Project
    c. Exercise: Building the Work Breakdown Structure
    d. Exercise: Building Is/Is Not Tables
  3. Risk
    a. Impact of Risk Management
    b. Process of Managing Risk
    c. Exercise: Completing a Risk Register
  4. Change Control
    a. Impact of Change Control
    b. Ownership of Change Control
    c. Exercise: Evaluating Change Requests
  5. Reporting and Communication
    a. Importance of Communication
    b. Report and Meeting Options
    c. Exercise: Creating a Communication Plan
    d. Exercise: Create a report


Who Should Attend: Project managers, team members, subject matter experts, executives, senior managers, resources managers, and functional managers.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

A project’s success is often measured by the team’s ability to deliver a defined set of outcomes on time, on budget and on specification. Critical decisions will be made based on the outcomes of your plan. More importantly, however, is the team’s ability to successfully manage the expectations of the groups and individuals who have a vested interest in the outcome of the project. In simpler terms, this means that the project team must effectively align the project delivery with expectations of key stakeholders.

Course Description: This one-day session provides project team members and participants with better ways to successfully define, deliver and control the schedule and cost factors of a project with more precision. Through a series of exercises, participants receive hands-on practice using the skills taught in the course.

Topics List:
• Product scope versus project scope
• Work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Scope decomposition
• Schedule development
• Activity definition
• Network diagramming
• Cost estimating
• Cost budgeting

Outline

  1. Scope Definition
    a. Project scope management
    b. Using the WBS
  2. Schedule Development
    a. Defining activities
    b. Sequencing activities
    c. Estimating activity duration
  3. Network Diagramming
    a. Calculating critical path
    b. Calculating float
    c. Schedule compression
  4. Cost Estimating
    a. Define types of costs
    b. Estimate cost ranges
    c. Methods for estimating costs
    d. Budgeting

Who Should Attend: Project managers, functional leaders, project leads, executives, resources managers, program managers, supervisors.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.
[/accordion]
[accordion close=”1″ title=”1110 – Scope Definition and Management: 1 Day”]If you want to be successful at managing projects, you must set clear expectations regarding the scope of the work. Scope Definition and Management will provide you with clear direction on how to clarify what is within scope and what is not. You will also learn how to manage the scope throughout the project and maintain credibility with stakeholders. Even when changes arise, and we know they will, this course will give you the tools and steps to communicate the risks involved and manage the project to the end.

Course Description: Participants in this one-day course will gain a clear understanding of what is meant by “project scope” and will learn to apply useful and relevant scope planning and management tools and techniques through interactive exercises and case study examples.

Topics List:
• Triple constraint
• PMBOK® processes
• Inputs to scope planning
• Work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Scope decomposition
• Change control
• Scope and risk

Outline

  1. Key Terminology and Definitions
  2. Scope Management Processes
    a. Review the critical steps of planning, defining and controlling scope
    b. Review the process of creating a WBS
  3. Scope Planning
    a. List common inputs in planning
    b. Review key considerations and activities
    c. List common outputs
  4. Scope Definition and Decomposition
    a. Defining the scope
    b. Creating the WBS
    c. Outputs of scope decomposition
  5. Scope Control
    a. Review elements of scope change control
    b. Using tools of change control
    c. Identifying scope and risk

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, project leads, program managers, project team members, subject matter experts, event planners.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Knowing how well your project is proceeding is just as important as knowing where it is going. Otherwise, your project could end up over time, over budget and not meeting any of the needs it was initiated to fulfill! How do you know how your project is performing? During the course of your projects, you provide reports on progress and provide estimates of completion schedules and budgets, but how accurate are you? Tracking and Control will help you provide accurate updates by giving you the tools and techniques to analyze performance variance, examine prior progress and plan your communications regarding future performance.

Course Description: This one-day course will teach participants the elements of analyzing variance and using data from prior performance to estimate outcomes. Case studies and hands-on exercises provide practical examples to apply the methods and tools presented.

Topics List:
• Control models
• Variance analysis and reporting
• Response time and over-correction
• Process mechanisms
• QA-QC relationship
• Earned value management (EVM)
• Gap analysis
• Forecasting
• Reporting
• KPAs and KPIs

Outline

  1. Overview of Tracking and Control
    a. Understand a control model
    b. Discuss variance analysis
    c. Discuss response time and overcorrection
  2. Looking into the Past
    a. Plan team progress reviews
    b. Use variance reporting in reviews
    c. Use earned value management (EVM) for assessing status of projects
  3. Looking to the Future
    a. Discuss gap analysis
    b. Use EVM for projecting outlooks
    c. Understand management reporting best practices
    d. Benefits of using EVM

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, project leads, senior managers, program managers, project team members, supervisors.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

The root cause of many project problems is inadequate planning. Generally, the problems arise because the scope (the “what?”) and the activities (the “how?”) required to successfully deliver the project were not sufficiently defined. This course teaches you to avoid these problems by giving you hands-on experience with the skills you need to define exactly what you want in a project and how you are going to get it.

Course Description: This one-day seminar introduces better practices for scope definition and schedule development. It is structured to facilitate hands-on learning through individual and team exercises. Participants will leave the seminar with a better understanding of key techniques such as activity breakdown, Work Breakdown Structures, network diagramming and critical path method.

Topics List:
• Tips, tricks and tools of the trade
• Identifying and articulating project activities
• Identifying dependencies between activities
• Optimizing project schedule
• Work Breakdown Structure and critical path techniques
• Utilizing “lessons learned”

Outline

  1. Introduction
    a. Key terminology
  2. Scope Definition
    a. Scope management and definition
    b. Writing a scope statement
    c. Scope Decomposition: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
  3. Schedule Development
    a. Activity definition and breakdown
    b. Dependency relationships
    c. Duration estimation
    d. Network diagramming
    e. Critical path method

Who Should Attend: Project managers, sponsors, team members, resource managers, subject matter experts, executives, senior managers and functional managers.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Projects, by nature, are a unique endeavor. Often, projects result in changes and those changes affect people. When they do, there is the potential for disruptive resistance. Too often, the outcomes of projects are disruptive when they do not need to be. If this resistance is not managed and redirected, it will very likely undermine project success and may even result in failure. When a project affects people, processes or the culture of an organization, the changes must be introduced with care and concern for those involved. Understand what motivates people to accept the change (or not) and become a powerful proponent for it. Long-term, sustainable change requires careful planning and effective management of the transition process. Change must be part of an evolutionary process, not a revolutionary one.

Course Description: This course provides a solid framework of proven techniques for planning and directing organizational change within a complex organization. Become a change leader for your organization. A systematic approach is introduced, along with guidelines and templates to manage the introduction and implementation of change at every level of your organization.

Topics List:
• Assessing the extent of organizational changes
• Prioritizing the severity and nature of proposed changes
• Evaluating the potential for project success despite resistance
• Developing an action plan for introducing changes including a communications strategy
• Defining metrics for use in the measurement of success
• Using and applying a change management template

Outline

  1. Recognizing Change
    a. Issues and obstacles related to change
    b. Categories of changes
    c. Approach to organizational change
  2. Reactions to Change
    a. Temperament theory and how people react to change
    b. Eight types of intelligence
    c. How people learn differently
    d. Types and implications of resistance to change
  3. Change Management Planning
    a. Planning for organizational change
    b. Planning documentation
    c. Assessing the need for change
    d. Stakeholder analysis
    e. Organizational readiness for change
    f. Developing a change management action plan
  4. Implementation
    a. The role of leadership
    b. Leadership styles
    c. Leadership responsibilities
    d. Tips for coaching and support
    e. Obstacles and barriers to change

Who Should Attend: Project managers, functional managers, senior managers, project sponsors, team members, anyone managing or affected by change.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Global competition, corporate right-sizing, and a growing project-based economic model require organizations to “do more with less.” Project management practitioners have learned that these shifts in the economy affect the project management discipline as much as – if not more than – any other functional area. More than ever before, project team members are required to not only take on more responsibilities in existing projects, but also engage in more projects in the same amount of time.

Course Description: The Managing Multiple Projects seminar is an instructor-led session designed to introduce attendees to better practices, processes, and techniques that will help the project management practitioner do a better job of leading, monitoring, and controlling concurrent multiple projects and programs. Individual and group exercises allow for lessons learned to be immediately applied at work.

Topics List:
• Project Definition
• Project Dependencies
• Portfolio Management
• Project Prioritization and Time Management
• Cross-Project Risk Management
• Project Reporting and Communications
• Cross-Project Controls
• Schedule and Cost Analysis

Outline

  1. Project to Portfolio View
    a. Projects, Programs and Portfolios
    b. Challenges
  2. Identification and Categorization
    a. Goals
    b. Constraints
  3. Prioritizing and Balancing
    a. Multiple Constraints
    b. Prioritization
  4. Monitoring, Controlling, and Reporting
    a. Milestones
    b. Review and Reporting
  5. Summary and Action Planning

Who Should Attend: Executives, senior managers, resources managers, project/program managers, and project team members who are responsible for the successful delivery of multiple projects.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Whether you are new to project management, have managed projects for a while and know there is a better way, a team member ready to take on new responsibilities, or a stakeholder wanting a better understanding of the process, this is the course for you! Practical Project Management in Today’s Complex World effectively combines lecture and discussion with hands-on application of proven project management principles, tools, and techniques through project examples that relate the skills you learn to the real world.

Course Description: This three-day, instructor-led training class is designed to introduce learners to the essential processes, tools, and techniques of the project management discipline through lectures, exercises, and case studies. Throughout the course, learners will define, manage, control, and close a project. This course effectively combines real-world experience with industry best practices to offer a tested approach to manage projects of all sizes, and is aligned with PMI-based principles. This is not the more theoretical or academic approach often presented in training classes. Learners will spend approximately 50% of their time working on exercises, including a sample project where they apply the lessons presented. Learners will receive a course manual, exercises with sample solutions, and soft copies of all templates used in class.

Topics List:

  • Project management terminology
  • Stakeholder management
  • Triple Constraint model
  • Flexibility Matrix
  • Scope definition
  • Work breakdown structure
  • Is / Is Not Tables
  • Schedule development
  • Cost management
  • Risk management
  • Quality control
  • Issues log and management
  • Change control
  • Reporting
  • People Styles
  • Lessons learned

Outline

  1. Project Management Foundations
    a. What is project management
    b. Predictive, iterative, incremental, and agile approaches
    c. Project phases
    d. Stakeholders
    e. Projects and programs
    f. Triple constraint model
    g. Flexibility matrix
    h. Project documents
  2. Project Scope Management
    a. In Scope and out of scope
    b. Success criteria
    c. Work breakdown structure (WBS)
    d. Is / Is Not Table
  3. Project Schedule Management
    a. Schedule management plan
    b. Define project activities
    c. Using a network diagram
    d. Estimating resources and durations
    e. Time reserves
    f. Building a realistic schedule
  4. Project Cost Management
    a. Building the budget
    b. Budget baseline
    c. Budget reserves
  5. Project Risk Management
    a. Identify and document risks
    b. Risk prioritization
    c. Risk response strategies
    d. Risk terms
    e. Build a generic risk plan
  6. Project Quality Management
    a. Quality themes and terms
    b. Quality costs
    c. Quality tools
  7. Project Change Control
    a. Change control process
    b. Change log
    c. Issues log
    d. Managing change events
    e. Analyzing project schedule for impacts
    f. Budget changes
  8. Reporting and Communication
    a. Communication plan
    b. Reporting formats
    c. Project status report
  9. Leadership
    a. People styles
    b. Strengths and weaknesses
    c. Leveraging people styles to communicate
  10. Closing a Project
    a. Close project or phase
    b. Administrative and contract closure activities
    c. Lessons learned
    d. Project closure survey
  11. Appendix A: Exercises and Sample Templates
    a. Scope definition
    b. WBS deliverables
    c. WBS activities
    d. Is / Is Not tables
    e. Risk register
    f. Cause and effect
    g. Change events
    h. Network diagram
    i. Communication plan
    j. People styles
    k. Closure survey
    l. Sample templates
  12. Appendix B: Sample solutions

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team members, subject matter experts, senior managers, resources managers, and functional managers.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Has your role changed to become more focused on project management? Perhaps you have been managing projects in your work group and are ready to take your knowledge to the next level. Maybe obtaining your PMP® certification will allow your organization to win more contracts or help you personally get a better job. This intensive, interactive course will prepare you for the Project Management Institute’s (PMI)® Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification exam. Participants will review potential exam material, take practice tests and complete exercises and reviews. This course can also be used as a project management refresher course and to earn Professional Development Units (PDUs).

Course Description: This course is fully updated for the January 2021 exam, and is designed for people who want to pass the PMP® certification exam the first time. Everything needed to pass is included in this class.  Each of the three domains (business environment, people, and processes) and coverage of predictive, hybrid, and agile project management is included. This course offers tried-and-true study tips and mnemonic devices, which have earned Forward Momentum’s students the exceptional PMP® exam pass rate of 92%. The class includes a student manual, reference cards, online simulation for practice tests, practice exercises, online study tools, and online application guidance. The course is designed to minimize self-study time and maximize results.

Topics List:

  • Tips for studying and passing the exam
  • Project foundation and environment
  • Project life cycles
  • Agile and hybrid projects
  • Project resource management
  • Project stakeholder management
  • Project communications management
  • Professional and social responsibility
  • Project integration management
  • Project scope management
  • Project schedule management
  • Project cost management
  • Project quality management
  • Project risk management
  • Project procurement management

Outline

  1. PMP® Certification Exam Requirements and Study Tips
    a. PMP® application requirements and tips
    b. Types of exam questions
    c. Study tips
    d. Exam-taking tips
    e. Maintaining certification and earning Professional Development Units (PDUs)
  2. Project Foundations and Environment
    a. Project management terms
    b. Project manager role, influence, leadership style
    c. Evolution of constraints
    d. Organizational Process Assets (OPAs) and Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEFs)
    e. Project governance and success
    f. Organizational structures and influence
    g. Project management office
    h. Project selection methods
  3. Project Management Knowledge Areas and Processes
    a. Life cycles
    b. Tailoring project management approach
    c. Business documents
    d. Understanding inputs, tools and techniques and outputs (ITTOs)
    e. Process groups and knowledge areas
  4. Project Resource Management
    a. Project resource management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Roles and responsibilities in resource management
    g. T-shaped and I-shaped people
    h. Organizational charts
    i. Resource breakdown structure
    j. Leadership and motivational theories
    k. Resources management plan and staffing management plan
    l. Stages of team development
    m. Conflict management methods
  5. Project Stakeholder Management
    a. Project stakeholder management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Stakeholder analysis and mapping
    g. Stakeholder engagement assessment matrix
    h. Manage stakeholder engagement
    i. Monitor stakeholder engagement
  6. Project Communications Management
    a. Project communications management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Communications models and communications analysis
    g. Communications methods
    h. Lines of communication
    i. Project management Information systems
    j. Performance reporting
    k. Monitor communications
  7. PMI® Code of Ethics
    a. Code applicability
    b. Aspirational versus mandatory standards
    c. Core values of practitioners
  8. Project Integration Management
    a. Project integration management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Project charter
    g. Project management plan
    h. Project Statement of Work (SOW)
    i. Change management
    j. Using constraints to evaluate change requests and determine corrective action
    k. Completing a formal close
  9. Project Scope Management
    a. Project scope management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Defining product scope versus project scope
    g. Collect requirements
    h. Project scope statement
    i. Work breakdown structure (WBS) and benefits
    j. Scope baseline
  10. Project Schedule Management
    a. Project schedule management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Schedule management plan
    g. Reading project schedule network diagrams, critical path, float
    h. Defining activities, decomposition, rolling wave planning
    i. Estimating methods
    j. Critical path method
    k. Critical chain method
    l. Monte Carlo simulation
    m. Project schedule baseline
  11. Project Cost Management
    a. Project cost management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Types of cost
    g. Estimating and budgeting
    h. Interpreting earned value (EV) formulae
    i. Cost terminology
  12. Project Quality Management
    a. Project quality management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Defining quality and fitness for use
    g. Quality theories
    h. The seven basic quality tools
    i. Prevention versus inspection
    j. Quality terminology
  13. Project Risk Management
    a. Project risk management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Identifying risks tools and techniques
    g. Qualitative vs. quantitative risk analysis
    h. Risk response strategies
    i. Risk audits
    j. Risk terms
  14. Project Procurement Management
    a. Project procurement management processes
    b. Key concepts
    c. Trends and emerging practices
    d. Tailoring considerations
    e. Considerations for agile/adaptive environments
    f. Required contract elements
    g. Contract types and risk
    h. Make-or-buy analysis considerations
    i. Procurement statement of work (SOW) and other procurement documents
    j. Source selection criteria
    k. Negotiation tactics
    l. Contract administration activities
    m. Procurement terminology
  15. Recurring exam themes

Who Should Attend: Project managers, project engineers, functional managers, business managers, sponsors, PMO directors, PMO staff members, team leads, team members, subject matter experts, executives, senior managers and resource managers.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

It happens to everyone: funding is cut, scope creeps and quality drops off. The question remains, how will you recover? This course provides a solid grounding in the fundamentals of project management and discusses how these fundamentals can be used to get a project back on track within its original objectives. Students will learn about the recovery development process, key recovery indicators, how to prepare a recovery decision package, how to plan and how to conduct project recovery. They will learn how to choose the right project manager for the recovery and how to establish a project recovery team that will facilitate the project recovery effort.

Course Description: This course is designed for people who have some project management experience and want to know more about the signs of project failure, how the organization can save it, the type of team that is necessary to pull the project together and the tools and techniques experienced project rescuers use to get the troubled project back on track. Through discussion and exercises participants get to practice the tools and techniques of project triage.

Topics List:
• Project recovery function model
• Roles of the recovery project manager and recovery team
• Assessing and identifying problem areas in the project
• Developing a project recovery plan
• Implementing the project recovery plan
• Lessons learned
• Updating routine and project recovery remedies

Outline

  1. Rescuing Troubled Projects
    a. Developing a project recovery function model
    b. Identifying recovery indicators
    c. Assessing project and identify problem areas
    d. Defining a troubled project
  2. Project Tolerances
    a. Understanding project tolerances
    b. Declaring success from a project perspective
    c. Declaring success from an organizational perspective
    d. Actively listen
    e. Manage your nonverbal communications
  3. Define and Plan the Recovery Project
    a. Prepare recovery decision package
    b. Assess project team and stakeholders
    c. Determine who will lead recovery
    d. Establish recovery team
  4. Assess the Troubled Project
    a. Verify trouble areas
    b. Perform project assessment
    c. Manage project issues
  5. Develop a Recovery Plan
    a. Develop project recovery plan
  6. Activate the Recovery Plan
    a. Manage communications issues
  7. Measure and Monitor the Recovery Plan
    a. Compile and record data
    b. Track project cost, schedule and scope progress
    c. Manage project issues
  8. Close Out Project Recovery
    a. Lessons learned
    b. Archive project records

Who Should Attend: Project managers, project engineers, business managers, functional managers, project team members, project team leads, contractors, PMO staff members.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Have you ever bungled a project because something happened that you simply couldn’t prevent? Or have you missed an opportunity because you didn’t see it coming? This course in risk management will teach you the tricks and skills of project management, including how to guard against the negative side-effects of risk and how to turn certain risk events to your advantage.

Course Description: Project Risk Management is a two-day, instructor-led training course designed to introduce and apply better risk management practices in the context of projects. The course structure effectively combines introductory lecture and discussion with hands-on application of best practices in project risk management. Students will learn and apply valuable tools, techniques and processes associated with eliminating and/or minimizing the presence and impact of adverse risk events, or “threats.” Additionally, participants will learn about processes for capitalizing on positive risk events, or “opportunities,” that project teams may encounter.

Topics List:
• Risks in a project context
• Risk identification
• Qualifying risk events
• Risk prioritization
• Risk monitoring and controlling
• Budgeting for risk events
• Developing a risk management plan
• Risk categorization
• Quantifying risk events
• Formulating risk response strategies
• Contingency planning
• Risk reporting and closure

Outline

  1. Introduction to Project Risk Management
    a. Definition and Characteristics of Risk
    b. Sources for Risk
    c. Stakeholder Analysis and Risk
    d. Risk Management Planning
  2. Risk Identification
    a. Identification Methods
    b. Root Cause Analysis
    c. SWOT Analysis
    d. Risk Categorization
    e. Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS)
    f. Trigger Events
  3. Risk Analysis
    a. Risk Qualification
    b. Probability Determination
    c. Impact Considerations
    d. Risk Statement
    e. Scoring and Ranking
    f. Quantitative Analysis
  4. Response Planning
    a. Positive Risk Response Strategies
    b. Negative Risk Response Strategies
    c. Secondary Risks
    d. Residual Risks
    e. Contingency Planning
    f. Risk Budgeting
  5. Risk Monitoring and Controlling
    a. Reporting
    b. Change Control Integration
    c. Monitoring Tools and Methods

Who Should Attend: Project and program managers, team leads and members, subject matter experts, executives, senior managers, resources managers, functional managers, sponsors, portfolio leaders and executives who lead project organizations.

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Advanced Project Management

Your supervisor is looking to give you a great development opportunity: you are to be the project leader for a multi-functional team to work on a high profile project. The team you are about to lead, like many project teams, is made up of individuals from multiple divisions, departments and even jurisdictions. This matrix leadership environment, where the project leader has little or no direct authority, is one of the most difficult management models. What do you need to know about managing and leading in this environment? What is unique about matrix management? Matrix Management will address these issues and give you strategies for overcoming the complexities introduced when managing in a matrix environment.

Course Description: Participants in this one-day class will learn to manage expectations and enable participants to deal effectively with change in a matrix management environment. Through a series of case study examples and team exercises participants will apply the tools and techniques to solve problems and plan for success.

Topics List:

  • Negotiation skills
    • Communications between project and resource managers
    • Performance assessments for team members
    • Conflict management
    • Delegation
    • Team-building in a project matrix environment

Outline

  1. Project and Organizational Conflict
    a. Identifying common sources for project and organizational conflict
    b. Defining and differentiating types and challenges of project management organizations
    c. Delineating roles of the project and functional/resource manager
    d. Identifying and aligning stakeholder expectations
    e. Defining and aligning organizational priorities and constraints
  2. Communications Alignment
    a. Identifying challenges
    b. Aligning communications
    c. Verifying levels of understanding
    d. Dealing with emotions
  3. Negotiations and Delegation
    a. Reviewing negotiation strategies
    b. Dealing with barriers to negotiation
    c. Using learning styles and delegation
    d. Delegating successfully
    e. Prioritizing work
  4. Problem-Solving and Team Building
    a. Identifying problem-solving challenges
    b. Reaching closure
    c. Identifying root causes
    d. Using a solution window
    e. Building effective teams
    f. Recognizing team formation steps
    g. Managing performance
    h. Recognizing social styles

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, trainers, project leads, executives, senior managers, program managers, project team members, event planners, supervisors.

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Have you heard about the benefits of project management, but don’t see the results in your organization? There is data that show that project management has a positive impact on organizations. So why isn’t it working the way you intended in your organization? Your organizational culture could be getting in the way.

In this session, we will share the data on the impact project management can have and how to adapt your PM approach to the organizational culture. By adapting the process and knowing what’s most important in the PM process, you allow your team to successfully deliver their assigned projects, in spite of the hurdles, or barriers.

Course Description: This session discusses five major organizational barriers and how to work around them to experience the value that project management can bring to an organization, especially if you are not at a level in the organization to change the culture. The approach works for employees of all levels, from project team members to managers to senior management and sponsors. The session includes a variety of activities, including lecture, group discussions and exercises.

Topics List:

  • Value of project management processes
  • Culture and the top 5 project management hurdles
  • Overcoming the top 5 hurdles within the culture
  • Recurring themes for overcoming the hurdles

Outline

  1. Value of Project Management Processes
  2. Culture and the Top Five Project Management Hurdles
    1. Fire fighting and drama
    2. Turf protection
    3. Miracle workers
    4. Unrealistic expectations
    5. Micro-management
  3. Overcoming the Hurdles Within the Culture
    1. Fire fighting and drama
    2. Turf protection
    3. Miracle workers
    4. Unrealistic expectations
    5. Micro-management
  4. Recurring Themes For Overcoming the Hurdles

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, project team members, trainers, project leads, executives, senior managers, resources managers, program managers, administrative assistants, subject matter experts, supervisors.

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Making sure software development occurs in a timely and efficient manner can be difficult to manage. SDLC Fundamentals for Project Managers will help you navigate the process with instruction on Life Cycles and Project Cycles, also known as Development Cycles. This fundamentals course will provide you with a down to earth look at System/Software Development Lifecycles; the relationship of the SDLC to the vision and mission of the organization; the fundamental differences between program, product, and project lifecycles; the difference between SDLC strategies and methodologies; tailoring principles; as well as a brief overview of how to select the appropriate approach.

Course Description: This one-day course provides a high-level overview of the SDLC phases and processes. The course explains the role of the project manager in the SDLC activities.

Topics List:
• Life Cycle Types
• Program, Product, and Project Cycles
• Anatomy of the Life Cycle
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Methodologies and Strategies

Outline

  1. Life Cycles – Definitions and Types
    a. Differences between programs and projects
    b. Nesting of lifecycles
  2. Benefits of a Defined Life Cycle
    a. Importance of having a standard SDLC for your organization
    b. Five reasons for wanting to use standards
  3. Life Cycle Anatomy 101
    a. Generic parts (the anatomy) of a lifecycle
    b. How the different parts of a lifecycle chart can be a useful tool for managing your project for both yourself and your management
  4. Generic Life Cycle Models
    a. Implementation strategies
    b. Development strategies
  5. Choosing the Best Fit
  6. Tailoring
    a. Importance of tailoring your SDLC
    b. How to tailor in manner to justify your decisions to higher management
    c. Creating a tailored SDLC for use with your team and in planning your project
  7. Key Issues

Who Should Attend: Project managers, subject matter experts, technical and non-technical project team members.

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How do you handle having multiple projects assigned to you? How do you sort out the priorities and make sure projects are executed efficiently and at the right time? The primary objective of the Project Portfolio Management learning experience is to help organizational leaders identify, evaluate, select and prioritize the right projects at the right time, to best align the organizational assets with its strategic objectives.

Course Description: This is a three-day, instructor-led training class designed to introduce participants to the fundamental and advanced concepts of managing a project portfolio. The course structure effectively combines introductory lecture and discussion with hands-on application of portfolio management principles, tools and techniques through applied case study exercises.

Topics List:
• Portfolio management terminology
• Project identification and categorization
• Project selection
• Portfolio monitoring and control
• Portfolio risk management
• Portfolio management strategy
• Project evaluation
• Project prioritization
• Portfolio reporting
• Best practices

Outline

  1. Introduction to Portfolio Management
    a. Organizational Assessment
    b. Portfolio Terminology and Definitions
    c. Benefits of Project Portfolio Management
    d. Key Assumptions
  2. Portfolio Management Process Overview
    a. Organizational Strategy Link
    b. Organizational Governance Link
    c. Operations Management Link
    d. Portfolio Stakeholders
    e. Organizational Influences
    f. Portfolio Process Groups
  3. Portfolio Aligning Process Group
    a. Identification and Categorization
    b. Evaluation and Selection
    c. Prioritization
    d. Balancing and Authorization
  4. Portfolio Monitoring and Controlling
    a. Periodic Review and Reporting
    b. Strategic Change
    c. Portfolio Risk Management
    d. Rebalancing

Who Should Attend: Portfolio managers, project managers, managers of project managers, senior project/program managers, PMO leaders, resource managers, executives and individuals responsible for project selection and prioritization.

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You have plenty of experience managing projects and are ready to take your career to the next level. Having the strategic vision to manage several projects and work products in order to achieve organizational objectives is a skill you can learn in A Hands-On Approach to Program Management. This in-depth, three day course will give you a strong foundation in managing change, building relationships with stakeholders and delivering on ROI for the business.

Course Description: This three-day, instructor-led course effectively addresses the essentials of program management as defined in PMI’s Standard for Program Management, and gives students hands-on application of core principles through case studies and team exercises. This course covers the program management life-cycle process groups, stages and associated themes.

Topics List:
• Program identification, evaluation and selection
• Program governance
• Schedule development
• Program team planning
• Cost estimating and budgeting
• Risk and issue management
• Reporting and forecasting
• Contract administration
• Program life-cycle and themes
• Stakeholder identification and analysis
• Program scope definition
• Milestone planning
• Program sourcing and procurement
• Communications management
• Program change control
• Quality control
• Program closure and lessons learned

Outline

  1. Essentials of Program Management
    a. Definition
    b. Program characteristics
    c. Context of programs in the organization
  2. The Standard for Program Management
    a. Background and professional certification
    b. Program management life-cycle and themes
    c. Program management process groups, knowledge areas and processes
  3. Initiating the Program
    a. Program identification, evaluation and selection
    b. Program authorization and charter
    c. Stakeholder identification and analysis
    d. Program governance
  4. Planning the Program
    a. Program scope definition
    b. Program scope decomposition (WBS)
    c. Schedule development
    d. Milestone planning
    e. Program team planning
    f. Sourcing and procurement for the program
    g. Cost estimating and budgeting
  5. Executing and Controlling the Program
    a. Communications management
    b. Risk and issue management
    c. Integrated change control
    d. Program reporting (stage-gate reviews) and forecasting
    e. Quality control
    f. Contract administration
  6. Closing the Program
    a. Program, component and contract closure
    b. Final reporting and transition

Who Should Attend: Program managers, senior management, key stakeholders and executives.

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The Project Management Office (PMO) is one of the fastest-emerging organizational structures across all industries; a structure that provides leadership and efficiency within a company or organization. Project Management Offices (PMOs) exist in many shapes and sizes and exert differing levels of authority. This course will help you tailor the PMO structure to benefit the delivery of projects rather than adding unnecessary bureaucratic processes.

Course Description: The PMO: Developing and Leading the Project Delivery Organization is a two-day, instructor-led training class designed to help participants develop and incorporate the Project Management Office (PMO).This course allows students to understand the fundamental benefits, concepts and processes of the PMO, and enables them to become familiar with relevant tools and techniques for creating an optimal PMO that aligns with the needs of their organization.

Topics List:
• PMO fundamentals
• Types of PMO organization
• Roles and responsibilities
• Reporting, monitoring and controlling
• PMO benefits and challenges
• Functions of a PMO
• PMO design and implementation
• PMO governance

Outline

  1. Definition and Characteristics of a PMO
    a. What is a PMO?
    b. Benefits of the PMO
    c. Four PMO models
    d. Typical PMO functions
    e. PMO challenges
    f. Next generation PMO
  2. Establishing the PMO
    a. The PMO project
    b. Dos and don’ts of PMO implementation
    c. Governance
    d. Obtaining stakeholder buy-in
    e. PMO charter and project plan
  3. Process Definition and Assimilation
    a. PMO as change agent
    b. Tools for the PMO: templates, risk assessment
    c. Project stewardship
    d. Demonstrating PMO value
  4. Managing the Projects Portfolio
    a. Planning, reporting and oversight (schedule, budget, scope)
    b. PMO risk management
    c. Project performance metrics

Who Should Attend: PMO team members, senior project managers, PMO leaders and executives responsible for project delivery success.

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Leadership

The difference between a high performance team and an average team is enormous. Average teams struggle to get through a meeting. High performance teams work well together to maximize energy, resources, and creativity, resulting in amazing things. More and more often, work is done in project teams, tasked with accomplishing team goals and objectives. You may have been appointed to lead such a team. How do you take a group of individuals and build a team that will work together to achieve a common goal? This course will give you the knowledge, skills and motivation necessary to build high performance teams.

Course Description: Developing High-Performing Teams is a one-day, instructor-facilitated session designed to provide attendees with the tools and hands-on practice needed to build and manage teams. Through the presentation, interactive exercises and videos, learners will understand and apply team-building knowledge that is highly applicable to their workplace.

Topics List:
• Apply key Ingredients of effective teams
• Understand roles and responsibilities
• Recognize and appreciate stages of team development
• Promote trust by exploring different behavioral tendencies
• Overcome barriers to move an ineffective team to a high powered team
• Identify styles for managing conflict

Outline

  1. Ingredients for an Effective Team
    a. Key ingredients for an effective team
    b. Differences between a team and a group
  2. Stages of Team Development
    a. Overview of team development
    b. Four stages of team development
    c. Abilene Paradox
  3. Measures to Fix an Ineffective Team
    a. Signs of team ineffectiveness
    b. Finding the facts surrounding ineffectiveness
    c. Looking for the right solution
    d. Team-building versus team performance
  4. High-Performance Teams
    a. Attributes of an average team and a high-performance team
    b. Three characteristics of high-performance teams

Who Should Attend: Senior managers, functional managers, project/program managers, team leaders, supervisors and anyone responsible for managing or leading groups assigned to a common objective.

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Customer service: Is it an afterthought or a pre-meditated strategy? Effective customer service begins first with understanding who our customers are. Customers, plural. The definition goes far beyond someone purchasing a product. Customers are a broader audience than most people realize, and this lack of understanding drives lackluster performance.

Once the definition of a customer is better understood, multiple exercises are conducted to assess customer impact; learn to define their wants, needs and expectations; explore how to effectively communicate using the Three Cs, especially when the message is not positive; discuss how to work with difficult people and disarm the upset customer; and practice using a model to negotiate a win-win-win.

Don’t fall into the trap of ignoring the customer’s perspective when you can manage it and exceed expectations every time! The goal of this workshop is to help busy professionals appreciate and put into practice high performance customer service.

Course Description: High-Performance Customer Service is a one-day, instructor-led session designed to instruct attendees in the art of understanding their customers and developing a strategy for delivering results. Through hands-on exercises and case examples, participants will plan for customer satisfaction, learn how to deliver a negative message, practice negotiating a win-win-win situation and earn back the trust of our newly defined customer audience.

Topics List:
• Identifying your real customers (“near” and “far”)
• The “secret” formula for high-performance customer service
• How to deal with difficult people
• How to make others have a good experience even if there is bad news
• How to create a win-win-win situation
• How to adapt to the situation for a positive outcome
• How to disarm an upset customer

Outline

  1. Customers and Customer Service
    a. Identifying your customer
    b. Real customer importance and impact
    c. Customer service versus high-performance customer service
    d. Formula for providing high-performance customer service
  2. Customer Service Experience
    a. Reasons that cause someone to be a “difficult” customer
    b. Dealing with difficult customers and people
    c. Creating win, win and win situations

Who Should Attend: Project and program managers, consultants, team leaders, functional leaders, resource managers, technical specialists, project team members, project leads, senior managers, administrative assistants, subject matter experts, supervisors, service providers.

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In today’s business environment, project delivery organizations must deal with inherent resource constraints (e.g., resource availability, limited skill). As a result, organizations must look to external sources to support the project effort. Contracting with outside vendors and providers is the most common mechanism for fulfilling these needs.

This course focuses on the phases of vendor management from the “buyer” perspective. It covers key considerations and pitfalls to avoid at all stages of the process, with an emphasis on building solid ongoing relationships with vendors. This session explores the needs assessment, contract requirements, contract types, management and control mechanisms, and lessons learned in project contracting.

Course Description: The Vendor Performance Management course is a one day, instructor-facilitated session designed to introduce attendees to better practices, processes, and techniques that will help the management practitioner identify, evaluate, monitor, and control external resources. Participants will engage in session exercises and learn all aspects of the process. The course will cover a vendor management plan, performance measures and the impact of the various contract types.

Topics List:
• Develop clear, concise and measurable requirements
• Understand the appropriate legal and professional relationships between government agencies and vendors
• Create a plan for evaluating vendor performance
• Create a plan for effective and appropriate government and vendor communications
• Identify and plan for effective contract management activities
• Develop a plan for contract closing activities

Outline

  1. Introduction
    a. The need for effective vendor management
    b. The characteristics of successful vendor management
  2. Basics of Legal and Professional Vendor Relationships
    a. Basic requirements of professional relationships with vendors
    b. Key considerations and pitfalls in vendor relations
    c. The importance the roles of contracting officer and contracting officer’s
  3. Phases of Vendor Management
    a. Vendor management phases and process
    b. Process for developing and documenting requirements
  4. Advance Planning Phase and Vendor Management
    a. Developing requirements as part of vendor management
    b. Advantages from early vendor involvement in advance planning
  5. Pre-Award Phase and Vendor Management
    a. Key activities during Pre-Award phase
    b. Various types of requirements documents
    c. Characteristics of a well-defined requirement
    d. How contract type affects vendor management
    e. Major components of vendor management plan
    f. Communications planning
  6. Award Phase and Vendor Management
    a. Identifying performance measures for vendor management
    b. Key topics for kick-off meeting
  7. Post-Award Phase and Vendor Management
    a. Key aspects of tracking vendor performance
    b. Major items in final closeout
  8. Strategic Considerations in Vendor Management
    a. Key strategic considerations in vendor management

Who Should Attend: Executives, senior managers, resources managers, project or program managers, team members who are responsible for engaging external resources (consultants, contractors, vendors, etc.) to help deliver work.

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As a manager, it is your job to get work done through others. You may have been placed in the supervisory role because of your technical expertise, but your role is no longer that of the individual contributor. Success as a manager comes from knowing how to align the team to organizational objectives and keep them motivated and focused. It is dependent on one’s ability to: set clear expectations, provide productive feedback, motivate the team, influence team behavior and delegate. Activities such as strategic planning and competitive analysis consume about two percent or three percent of middle management’s time and represent 90 percent of the training received. The vast majority of what managers do relates to interpersonal skills and ensuring that work gets done on time and correctly; in other words, on management rather than strategy. No matter what level of manager you are, you need to learn the tools and tricks of how to “manage others.” This is the course for you (and probably your boss, too).

Course Description: This course provides a solid grounding in the core disciplines of management. The emphasis is not on planning, but rather on the skills necessary to put a plan into action. Application activities provide robust experiences in each of the topic areas including leadership, communication, delegation, motivation, building teams and aligning teams to goals. Class discussions and exercises on these scenarios allow students to dissect and apply relevant skills in a real world setting.

Topics List:
• Communication
• Delegation
• Motivation
• BRIA model for effective feedback
• Conflict resolution
• Managing difficult people
• Multigenerational management
• Effective teams
• Remote teams
• Aligning teams to strategy
• Coaching

Outline

  1. The Role of the Manager
    a. Defining managing and leading
    b. Managing and leading others
    c. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the impact on motivating others
    d. Differentiating between rewards and recognition
    e. Describing the impact of rewards and recognition on performance
  2. Communicating Effectively
    a. Recognizing the ingredients of effective communications
    b. The BRIA feedback model
    c. Constructive and reinforcing feedback
    d. Planning for Effective, Efficient, Successful communications
    e. People Styles and how different styles interact
  3. Neuro-Linguistic Programming
    a. Defining Neuro-Linguistic Programming
    b. The importance of rapport and congruence on communication outcomes
    c. The impact of context and life content
    d. How to use language effectively to communicate your message
    e. Understanding obstacles to successful communication
    f. Understanding the impact of body language and culture on communication
  4. Multi-Generational Workforce
    a. Characteristics of the four main generations working today
    b. Defining each generation in terms of technology, media and work style
    c. Modify your leadership style to work with generational differences
  5. Understanding Teams
    a. The characteristics of an effective team
    b. The four stages of team development
    c. Diagnosing and solve for team ineffectiveness
    d. Differentiating between team-building and team performance
    e. The attributes of an average team and a high performance team
  6. Aligning Teams to Strategy
    a. Defining the strategy for yourself
    b. Aligning the team to strategy
    c. Reducing resistance to change
    d. Adapting your Leadership Style
  7. Coaching
    a. Diagnosing competence and commitment
    b. The difference between providing structure, coaching, supporting and delegating
    c. The process for effectively delegating
  8. Managing Virtual Teams
    a. The virtues and challenges of virtual teams
    b. The keys to success when leading and managing virtual teams
    c. The elements of building trust
    d. Adapting your communication strategies to fit the audience and message

Who Should Attend: Senior managers, middle managers, program managers, project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, project leads, supervisors.

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All of us negotiate, both professionally and personally. You may need to negotiate deliverables with your supervisor or project team. Maybe you work with service providers or sales professionals and need to formally negotiate pricing and service levels. Your negotiations may be the more informal daily give and take of getting complicated tasks done in a timely manner. In any case, having the skills to prepare for these scenarios and work toward successful outcomes for all the participants will be invaluable. Become a Great Negotiator will give you tips and show you techniques that work to help you get started down the road of success.

Course Description: This course will prepare you with several case studies and hands-on exercises in the tactics and strategies of negotiation. It begins with understanding the role of negotiations and leads participants through approaching different people, preparing for negotiations, handling tough negotiators and closing the deal.

Topics List:
• Role of negotiations
• Definitions of success and failure
• Multiple intelligences and negotiations
• Active listening
• Types of negotiations
• Tactics and tools
• Tough negotiators
• Difficult negotiations
• Coping with stress
• Getting past impasse

Outline

  1. Role of Negotiations
    a. Significance of negotiations in the workplace
    b. Recognize when negotiations are taking place
    c. Identify the ingredients of effective negotiations
  2. Interpersonal Communications
    a. Recognize the ingredients of effective communications
    b. Formulate communications that are effective, efficient and successful
  3. Overview of Negotiations
    a. Define negotiations
    b. Outline goals and desired outcomes for each negotiation
    c. Analyze for necessary ingredients
    d. Know when you are prepared
    e. Types and kinds of negotiations
    f. Ethical issues
  4. Planning and Preparation
    a. Plan negotiations
    b. Use a negotiations outline
    c. Consider perspective in your planning
  5. Strategies and Tactics
    a. Develop strategies
    b. Employ tactics
    c. Avoid being manipulated by the strategies and tactics of others
  6. Tough Negotiators
    a. Identify tough negotiators
    b. Categorize their techniques
    c. Develop strategies in response to tough negotiators
  7. Dealing with Anger
    a. Recognize levels of anger
    b. Manage situations involving anger
    c. Avoid being manipulated by hot buttons
  8. Closing the Deal
    a. Recognize opportunities to close
    b. Use a variety of techniques to close
    c. Manage impasse and deadlock

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, project leads, senior managers, resources managers, program managers.

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Conflict enters into our workplace and our projects whether we like it or not. The question is, will you adapt to the pressure and harness the tension for productivity or let it disrupt your work? The answer is simple: Don’t Deal with Difficult People – Learn to Work with Them. You need a deeper understanding of causes of conflict and how to control your reaction to it. You learn how to adapt to differences in your colleagues and make communication more effective for them. Finally, you’ll learn how to recognize difficult personalities and deal with them effectively.

Course Description: This course covers rules for dealing with difficult people, the importance of being assertive, how to give effective feedback, basic “people sense,” various types of difficult personalities and how to manage difficult personalities.

Topics List:
• Defining conflict
• Characteristics and impact of difficult people
• Impact of difficult people
• Reacting to conflict
• Communication as negotiation
• Shared problem solving
• Rules for dealing with conflict
• Being assertive and providing feedback
• People Styles and intelligence types
• Effective listening
• Dealing with difficult personality types

Outline

  1. Difficult Personalities
    a. The impact of difficult personalities
    b. The physiological effects of emotions
    c. Relating communications to conflict management
  2. Careful Communications
    a. The relationship between communications and conflicts
    b. The ingredients of communications
    c. Interpersonal communications model
  3. Negotiating with Colleagues
    a. The relationship between communications and negotiations
    b. Relating negotiations to relationships
    c. Distinguishing between soft and hard negotiators
    d. Relating negotiation style to difficult personalities
  4. Managing Conflict
    a. Definition of conflict and conflict management
    b. Rules for managing conflict
    c. How to be assertive
    d. A model for giving productive feedback
    e. How to demonstrate empathy and understanding
  5. “People Smart”
    a. Emotional intelligence
    b. The theory of People Styles
    c. The Thomas Killman conflict model
  6. Strategies for Difficult Personalities
    a. The categories of difficult personalities
    b. How to deal with each of the categories of difficult people

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, subject matter experts, trainers, event planners, and project leads.

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For managers today, diversity isn’t a just a compliance issue, it’s a business advantage. For the first time in history, it is possible to have five generations of workers in one place. The manager that appreciates the diversity of the team and knows how to motivate team members differently will be more successful at creating high-performance teams. No matter the age of your team members, this course will give you an understanding of their perspectives and teach you to keep them motivated, engaged and driven to excel!

Course Description: This interactive one-day course includes group discussion, individual reflection, workforce evaluation, and case studies covering generational differences in the workforce, how to communicate effectively with the different groups, how to keep them motivated and engaged, and leadership and management skills including team engagement and delegation.

Topics List:
• Define the multigenerational workforce
• Understand the different generations
• Evaluate your workforce
• Identify what motivates the different generations
• Adapt your leadership style to effectively manage multigenerational teams

Outline

  1. Defining the Multigenerational Workforce
    a. The different generations
    b. Perceptions and assumptions
  2. Understanding the Different Generations
    a. Core values and view of work
    b. Generations and technology
  3. Workforce Evaluation
    a. Evaluating your team
    b. Motivation and feedback
    c. Motivating your team
  4. Managing Multiple Generations
    a. Case study
    b. Adapting your management style

Who Should Attend: Senior managers, functional managers, project/program managers, team leaders, supervisors and anyone responsible for managing or leading teams.

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If you’re leading a project or a member of a project team, you know there are plenty of meetings: kick off meetings, design sessions, status meetings, executive sponsor meetings, and the list goes on. How often have you wasted time sitting through meetings where nothing was accomplished? Even worse, how often have you called a meeting only to have the agenda hijacked and watched as it spiraled away from you? If you want to improve your skills in leading productive, efficient meetings, this class is for you! The class will emphasize hands-on exercises where you can practice communicating and facilitating meetings.

Course Description: This class is designed to provide a foundation in managing meetings. The course covers several aspects of meeting management from facilitation and communication to problem solving and conflict management.

Topics List:
• The facilitator’s role
• Successful communication
• Successful negotiation
• Negotiation steps
• Decision making steps
• Managing meetings
• Problem solving techniques
• Unlocking creativity
• Active listening
• Managing conflict

Outline

  1. Introduction to Facilitation
    a. Define facilitation
    b. Explain the roles and responsibilities of facilitators
    c. Introduce the concepts of content versus process
  2. Communications and Negotiations
    a. Explain the relationship between communications and negotiations
    b. Outline a “principled” approach to negotiations
  3. Problem Analysis and Decision Making
    a. Explain the steps of analysis and decision
    b. Describe the sources of error in decision making
    c. Illustrate how to make high-quality decisions
  4. Meeting Leadership
    a. Outline ingredients of successful meetings
    b. Describe the roles that facilitators play in meeting management
    c. Explain how leadership contributes to meeting success
  5. Imposing Creativity
    a. Describe the factors that contribute to creative thought
    b. Explain the role of brainstorming
    c. Apply techniques that introduce creativity into decision making processes
  6. Dealing with Conflict
    a. Outline the characteristics of difficult people
    b. Describe effects of dealing with difficult personalities
    c. Introduce guidelines for interacting with difficult people

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, subject matter experts, trainers, event planners, project leads.

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Professional Skills

Communication skills can be some of the most challenging for a manager at any level to master. It is something we all do regularly but few do well. The challenge is to send and receive messages that are understood and acted on. Career success comes from being able to communicate in writing, in a succinct and persuasive way. This full day course explains and illustrates the most important principles and practices of successful verbal and written communication. This course outlines strategies that will make your verbal messages more effective and your writing cleaner, crisper and more effective.

Course Description: Through several exercises and practice experiences, you will be introduced to key verbal communications skills – active listening, empathy and body language. The course objective is to illustrate how to formulate and deliver messages that are correctly understood and appropriately acted on. In addition, many government agencies and departments require a business case document or presentation for a project. This document can be extremely important in determining whether your project is funded and the visibility and priority given to it. This course explores what it takes to write an effective and targeted business case.

Topics List:
• Communications quality standards
• Communications as negotiations
• Interpersonal communications model
• How to uncover hidden meanings in conversation
• Fundamentals of effective presentations

Outline

  1. Communications Overview
    a. Recognize the ingredients of effective communications
    b. How messages are received
    c. Formulate communications that are effective, efficient and successful
    d. Keys to efficiency, effectiveness and success
  2. Interpersonal Communications
    a. Define interpersonal communications
    b. Recognize the effect of multiple intelligences on communications
    c. Apply the communications model
    d. Actively listen
    e. Manage your nonverbal communications
  3. Business versus Literary Styles
    a. Business writing is different from literary writing
    b. Tips for better writing
    c. Using templates
  4. Business Cases
    a. Form and function of business cases
    b. Dismantle business cases into their key ingredients
    c. Plan and present an effective business case
  5. Appendix – Technical Communications
    a. Definition of technical communications
    b. Communicating the message
    c. Translating technical communications for non-technical audiences
    d. Using metaphors and analogies

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, trainers, project leads.

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In today’s turbocharged world of information overload and misunderstandings, 140-character tweets, text messages, instant messaging, blogs, emoticons, acronyms, abbreviations, initialisms, slang and more, writing professionally and effectively is critical from the start. Learn to build rapport and understand congruence through the art and science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming to get the outcome you desire. If not now, when will you find the time to communicate again, and how do you regain the opportunity for a good, first impression? Solid business writing skills are a must to ensure effective communication. With the written word making a lasting impression, it just makes good business sense to write articulately and with purpose the first time.

Course Description: This four-hour course identifies ways to understand the deeper meaning of a conversation, arms you with techniques to get you your desired outcome, and articulates common writing errors and ways to quickly, yet easily write dramatically better to ensure deeper understanding while reducing customer frustration.”

Topics List:
• Define the core elements of good business communication
• Understand your target market
• The art and science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
• Simplify the message and your writing
• Content and facts, thoughtfulness and tone
• Active versus passive voice
• First mentions
• Punctuation
• Editing and proofing
• Common errors

Outline

  1. Core elements for business communication
    a. Today’s speak is not business writing
    b. Elements of good communication
    c. Steps to business writing
  2. Neuro-Linguistic Programming
    a. The communicator’s responsibility
    b. Desired outcome and the importance of rapport and congruence
    c. Elicit deeper meaning through words
  3. Simplify your message and your writing
    a. Tips for writing clearly
    b. Quick-hit content checklist
  4. Common errors
    a. Fourteen common errors
    b. Quick check – mini quiz
  5. Punctuation
    a. Rules to using punctuation correctly
  6. Hands-on exercise

Who Should Attend: Managers, project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, subject matter experts, trainers, team members and project leads.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Your boss wants a concise but thorough description of your project proposal and the business need it addresses. Time to panic? Not after you’ve been through Writing Targeted Business Cases. This course will teach you the fundamentals of business case writing so you can document the business need and effectively communicate, in easy to understand language, the rationale and deliverables of your project. Blast through the writer’s block and create effective business documents that help you clearly communicate to peers and supervisors.

Course Description: Through discussion and exercises, this course teaches how to write with a focus on success. Understand where the emphasis on communications is placed for the sender vs. the receiver. Discuss the difference between business and literary styles of writing and how to judge documents according to their effectiveness and efficiency. Explore the elements of a business case through discussion and exercises. Bonus materials present the unique difficulties in communicating with a non-technical audience and how to create communications that are effective with non-technical audiences.

Topics List:
• Effective vs. successful communication
• Formatting for ease of reading
• Guidelines for business writing
• What to avoid to be more effective
• Guidelines for editing
• Targeting your audience
• Common business correspondence templates
• Goals of the business case
• Business case components
• Communicating technical topics to non-technical audiences

Outline

  1. Communications Overview
    a. Recognize the ingredients of effective communications
    b. Understand the priority of ingredients for successful communications
    c. Anticipate how messages are received
    d. Formulate communications that are effective, efficient and successful
    e. Describe keys to efficiency, effectiveness and success
  2. Business Versus Literary Styles
    a. Understand the differences between business and literary writing
    b. Apply tips for better writing
    c. Use templates
  3. Business Cases
    a. Understand the purpose and audience of a business case
    b. Determine the components of your business case
    c. Build the content of your business case
    d. Present your business case
  4. Technical Communications
    a. Definition technical communications
    b. Communicating the message
    c. Translating technical communications for non-technical audiences
    d. Using metaphors and analogies

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, subject matter experts.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Have you ever issued a requirement to a number of potential suppliers and received responses and subsequent deliveries that were less than satisfactory? Have you ever agreed on a contract then during delivery found that your understanding of what your supplier was going to provide did not agree with the supplier’s? In these circumstances, has this lead to disagreements and conflict with your supplier leading to expensive changes, confusion, not receiving what you thought you asked for or an unsatisfactory conclusion to the purchase?

Whether part of an RFP or written against a master contract, the SOW is the most important document of the procurement process. If the requirements aren’t accurate, the vendor may not deliver everything you really need, leaving the organization with solutions that don’t fit, services that aren’t what you needed or systems that don’t work properly. This often results in change orders, additional costs, delays, or sometimes, abandoned projects. This course will help you craft a SOW that will help you avoid hassles and deliver on products and services.

Course Description: This course covers how an effective SOW can significantly enhance the success of your purchase, together with guidelines for the creation of an effective SOW. The course uses a Case Study to provide hands-on experience for the participants to take a requirement from initial broad outline to a solid, tight SOW.

Topics List:
• Purchasing success and failure
• Problems caused by SOWs
• Requirements for a successful SOW
• Responsibilities of the buyer

Outline

  1. Successful Statements of Work
    a. Keys to success and causes of failure
    b. Flexibility matrices
    c. Creating a SOW
  2. Scope Definition
    a. Determining deliverables
    b. Assumptions
    c. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
    d. Acceptance testing
    e. Key components of a SOW
  3. Buyer’s Responsibilities
  4. Key Requirements and Structure of a Response
    a. Format
    b. Baselines
    c. Characteristics of a good schedule
  5. Evaluating Responses

Who Should Attend: Project managers, sponsors, team members, resource managers, subject matter experts, executives, senior managers and functional managers.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Regardless of your industry, you are rated on how well you get results. Your ability to communicate clearly with others, to give results oriented feedback and to adapt to the personality style of others will enhance your success. Communication that brings teams together is a talent required for managers and independent contributors. It doesn’t matter if you’re an independent contributor or a manager, everyone in the organization can benefit from honing their communication skills to drive the highest results.

Course Description: This one day course is designed for people who work on collaborative teams or manage teams directly or indirectly. Through a series of presentations, exercises, case studies and activities, learners will discover how to improve their interpersonal communications. There are several opportunities to practice providing feedback and adapting to the style of the recipient.

Topics List:
• Core communication skills
• Active Listening
• Constructive vs. Reinforcing feedback
• Ladders of Inference
• Personality styles
• Barriers to Communication
• BRIA Feedback Model
• Interpersonal Communications Model

Outline

  1. Foundations of Communication
    a. Recognizing the ingredients of effective communications
    b. Utilizing foundational communication skills
  2. Providing Effective Feedback
    a. Applying feedback in a variety of scenarios
    b. The BRIA feedback model
    c. Differentiating between reinforcing and constructive feedback
    d. Using the communication skills learned to provide effective constructive and reinforcing feedback
  3. Communication Failure
    a. Ways that communications fail
    b. Effective, Efficient, Successful communications
  4. Interpersonal Communications
    a. People Styles
    b. How different styles interact
    c. Definition of interpersonal communications
    d. Practicing the communications model
  5. Closing a Project
    a. Administrative Closure and Contract Closeout
    b. Lessons Learned
    c. Final Reporting

Who Should Attend: Project managers, department leaders, business managers, functional managers, project team members, project team leads, contractors, supervisors, team members.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Beyond the Words: Using Communication Techniques for Business Success

From the words you choose, to the conversations you have, to the questions you ask, to your body language, different parts of you speak volumes … although it may not be what you wanted to communicate! Understanding these clues during everyday conversations or negotiations can give you the advantage.

Are you using the one word that increases the possibility of cooperation from 60% to 94%, or the 12 most persuasive words in the English language? Do you or others express your goals positively or negatively, prefer to increase pleasure or decrease pain, notice what things you have in common with others or notice what is different, or think in terms of the past, present, or future? Are you motivated by what is necessary rather than by what is possible? Achieve your desired outcome by building rapport and understanding the role of congruence through techniques such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming. This course identifies ways to help you understand the deeper meaning of everyday conversations and negotiations, and arms you with immediate and impactful techniques to get you to your desired outcome.

Course Description: This course identifies ways to help you understand the deeper meaning of everyday conversations and negotiations, and arms you with immediate and impactful techniques to get you to your desired outcome. You will better understand the way you think, as well as process and express information. By using these techniques, you’ll also be able to identify the way others process and express information. Having this information at hand will allow you to select the best way to build rapport. Your knowledge of the subject matter will be tested throughout the course via various classroom exercises.

Topics List:
• Understand the goal of neuro-linguistic programming
• Use senses in communicating
• Link eye movements to the brain
• Understand context, timescale and life content
• Interpret body language in business
• Understand gender differences in body language
• Use non-verbal sensory cues to determine preferences
• Strategically use interruptions
• Build rapport in individual and group settings
• Select appropriate words to avoid communication errors and build relationships
• Understand business and personal applications for rapport and congruence
• Achieve life satisfaction with PERMA
• Identify constructive and deconstructive responses

Outline

  1. Course Foundations
    a. Three Components of Your Message
    b. Target Market
  2. Neuro-Linguistic Programming
  3. Context
  4. Body Language
  5. Voice
  6. Rapport and Congruence
  7. Internal Focus

Who Should Attend: Project and program managers, customer service managers, supervisors, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, trainers, executives, senior managers, resources managers, team members, administrative assistants, subject matter experts, help desk employees and front line employees.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

More than ever, we are all living in a virtual world. Economic challenges and increasing globalization of business has resulted in our relying more on virtual technologies to get the job done. Whether it’s hosting virtual meetings, conducting virtual presentations or facilitating virtual training sessions, the way we do business has changed tremendously from the old days of face-to-face meetings in conference rooms with slide projectors. New technologies enable us to share documents, give demonstrations and conduct training for audiences who may be located across the country and even around the world. While this technology has allowed us to collaborate without the hassle of traveling, virtual delivery and design definitely has its challenges. There is an art to designing and delivering engaging and charismatic virtual learning and presentations that won’t put your audience to sleep.

Course Description: During this 1 day class, we’ll highlight the challenges of virtual design and delivery and provide techniques, tools and tips to overcome those challenges. The focus will be on improving capabilities to keep audiences engaged during virtual presentations, virtual classes, virtual meetings and conference calls. During the course, participants will be kept engaged through experiential learning; participants will be able to see the techniques being taught in action as they are used to teach key concepts and demonstrate application. Participants will receive a course manual.

Topics List:
• Breaking bad habits
• Conference call engagement
• Virtual technologies and tools
• Impactful virtual presentations
• Effective virtual training
• Presentation styles
• Global audiences
• Video etiquette

Outline

  1. Breaking Bad Habits
    a. Teleconferences
    b. Virtual presentations
    c. Virtual training
  2. Conference Call Engagement
    a. Getting the right start
    b. Keeping focused
    c. Managing participants
    d. Engaging participants
  3. Virtual Technologies and Tools
    a. Adobe
    b. Live Meeting
    c. WebEx
    d. Audio/conference services
  4. Impactful Virtual Presentations
    a. Designing the presentation
    b. Getting the right start
    c. Managing participants
    d. Engaging participants
    e. Recording Etiquette
  5. Effective Virtual Training
    a. Designing the training
    b. Getting the right start
    c. Managing learners
    d. Engaging learners
    e. Recording Etiquette
  6. Presentation styles
    a. Know your style
    b. Know your audience
    c. Adjusting your style
  7. Global Audiences
    a. Cultural awareness
    b. Global logistics
  8. Video Etiquette
    a. When to use video
    b. Risks of using video
    c. Tips for effective video

Who Should Attend: Project managers, department leaders, business managers, functional managers, project team members, project team leads, contractors, supervisors, team members.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Have you ever come away from a conversation and felt like you really didn’t get the information you need? It could have been a conversation with a client, a co-worker, a doctor, a service provider or your partner. Every day we rely more on technology to do our communicating; whether leaving quick voice mails, sending brief emails or texting. It’s getting more challenging to have productive discussions and conversations when the need arises. We’re all short on time, so how do we maximize the face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) time we do have? It’s all about asking the right questions! Too often we are passive participants in conversations and therefore don’t gain the full benefit of discussions.

Course Description: In this 1 day session, we’ll highlight the challenges of today’s communication trends and give you ways to elevate your conversations. The focus will be on how to encourage others to have real conversations, how to ask the right questions to gain the most from the conversation and how to effectively follow-up on conversations. Through a series of presentation, interactive exercises and role plays, participants will build their knowledge of questioning types and practice questioning techniques. Participants will receive a course manual.

Topics List:
• Communication barriers
• Benefits of questioning skills
• When conversations are necessary
• People styles
• Questioning types
• Planning for conversations
• Phone vs. face-face
• Conversation follow-up

Outline

  1. Communication Barriers
    a. Technology
    b. Cultural
    c. Social
    d. Environmental
    e. Personal
  2. Benefits of Questioning Skills
    a. Getting the right information
    b. Building trusted relationships
    c. Preventing miscommunications
  3. When Conversations are Necessary
    a. Ways emails can impede communication
    b. Identify when emails aren’t good enough
    c. Risks of not having a conversation
  4. People Styles
    a. Theory of People Styles
    b. How different styles interact
    c. Identifying People Styles to enhance conversations
  5. Question Types
    a. Closed
    b. Open-ended
    c. Leading or Loaded
    d. Recall and Process
    e. Funneling
  6. Planning for Conversations
    a. Inviting others to a conversation
    b. Setting expectations
    c. Using People Styles to plan your questions
    d. Beginning the conversation effectively
  7. Phone vs. Face-face
    a. Cultural awareness
    b. Global logistics
    c. Reading body language
  8. Conversation Follow-up
    a. Documenting the conversation
    b. Gaining consensus
    c. Requesting follow-up conversations

Who Should Attend: Project managers, department leaders, business managers, functional managers, project team members, project team leads, contractors, supervisors, team members.

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Seminars

It happens to everyone: funding is cut, scope creeps and quality drops off. The question remains, how will you recover? This course provides an overview of the fundamentals of project management and discusses how these fundamentals can be used to get a project back on track within its original objectives. The student will learn about the recovery development process, and how to plan and conduct project recovery.

Course Description: This course is designed for people who have some project management experience and want to know more about the signs of project failure, how the organization can save it, the type of team that is necessary to pull the project together and the tools and techniques experienced project rescuers use to get the troubled project back on track.

Topics List:
• Have an overview understanding of the project recovery function model
• Know the role of the recovery project manager and recovery team
• Be able to assess and identify problem areas in the project
• Develop a project recovery plan and know how to implement it

Outline

  1. Troubled Projects
    a. Symptoms of Troubled Projects
    b. Triple Constraint Priorities
    c. Causes of Failure in Projects
  2. Recognizing a Troubled Project
    a. Signs of a Troubled Project
    b. Assessing the Troubled Project
  3. Where to Begin With a Troubled Project
    a. Evaluating a Troubled Project
    b. Project Triage Focus
    c. Immediate Actions
  4. Developing a Recovery Plan
    a. Initial Plan vs Recovery Plan
    b. Initiating a Recovery Plan
    c. Other Considerations
    d. Building a New Rescue Approach
    e. Communication, Quality and Risk on Troubled Projects
  5. Avoid the Need for Recovery
    a. Proactively Minimizing the Need for Future Recovery

Who Should Attend: Project managers, project engineers, business managers, functional managers, project team members, project team leads, contractors, PMO staff members.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Communication skills can be some of the most challenging at any level to master. It is something we all do regularly but few do well. The challenge is to send and receive messages that are understood and acted on. Career success comes from being able to communicate clearly, in a succinct and concise way. This hour course illustrates the most important principles and practices for successful verbal communication. This course outlines strategies that will make your verbal messages more effective.

Course Description: Most of us probably think we communicate clearly, but do we? Through observation exercises, you will be introduced to key verbal communications skills. The course objective is to illustrate how to formulate and deliver messages that are correctly understood and appropriately acted on.

Outline

  1. Communications Overview
    a. Recognize the ingredients of effective communications
    b. Formulate communications that are effective, efficient and successful
    c. Identify strategies to improve communication efficiency, effectiveness and ultimate success

Who Should Attend: Anyone who wants to communicate effectively.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

You may or may not realize from the words you choose, to the conversations you have, to the questions you ask, to your body language, different parts of you speak volumes … although it may not be what you wanted to communicate!

Do you or others express your goals positively or negatively, prefer to increase pleasure or decrease pain, notice what things you have in common with others or notice what is different, or think in terms of the past, present, or future? Do you typically communicate in general or precise terms? Are you motivated by what is necessary rather than by what is possible?

Understanding yourself as well as others is a critical element to effective communications. Achieve your desired outcome by building rapport and understanding the role of congruence through techniques such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming. This course will help you understand yourself and others, and help you make subtle changes to everyday activities that will drive the business and personal results you desire.

Course Description: This course identifies ways to understand the deeper meaning of a conversation and arms you with immediate and impactful techniques to get you your desired outcome.

Topics List:
• Define the art and science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
• Achieve your desired outcome
• Understand the importance of rapport and congruence
• Use your senses
• Understand context
• Questions to ask for deeper meaning
• Use language to build rapport and understanding

Outline

  1. Neuro-Linguistic Programming
    a. Define the art and science of NLP
  2. The outcome
    a. Understand who bears the responsibility for communication
    b. Understand your target market
  3. Importance of rapport and congruence
    a. Starts with attitudes, values, and beliefs
  4. Use your senses
    a. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory, and olfactory
  5. Understand context
    a. Pleasure or Pain
    b. Matching or Mismatching
    c. Possibility or Necessity
    d. Past, Present, or Future
  6. Using Language to Build Rapport & Understanding
    a. Generalizations
    b. Deletions
    c. Mind reading
    d. Cause and effect
    e. Presuppositions

Who Should Attend: Managers, employees, executives, project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, subject matter experts, trainers, team members and project leads.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Have you ever issued a requirement to a number of potential suppliers and received responses and subsequent deliveries that were less than satisfactory or not what you really wanted? This can lead to disagreements and conflict with your supplier, leading to expensive changes, confusion, not receiving what you thought you asked for or an unsatisfactory conclusion to the purchase.

Whether part of an RFP or written against a master contract, the SOW is the most important document of the procurement process. If the requirements aren’t accurate, the vendor may have room for interpretation and may not deliver everything you really need, leaving the organization with solutions that don’t fit, services that aren’t what you needed or systems that don’t work properly. This often results in change orders, additional costs, delays, or sometimes, abandoned projects. This course will help you recognize the key elements required of an SOW that will help you achieve what you want with minimum levels of frustration and cost.

Course Description: This course covers how to maximize your chance of a successful delivery by focusing on the creation of a solid, tight SOW.

Topics List:
• Successful Statements of Work
• Problems caused by SOWs
• Requirements for a successful SOW
• Contents of a SOW
• Response required from sellers

Outline

  1. Successful Statements of Work
    a. Keys to success and causes of failure
    b. Flexibility matrices
    c. Creating a SOW
  2. Scope Definition
    a. Determining and defining deliverables
    b. Assumptions
    c. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
    d. Key components of a SOW
  3. Key Requirements and Structure of a Response
    a. Format
    b. Baselines
    c. Characteristics of a good schedule

Who Should Attend: Project managers, sponsors, team members, resource managers, subject matter experts, executives, senior managers and functional managers.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Would you like to decrease the problems on your project by 90%? Some experts estimate that proper project risk management can do just that! Have you ever been caught by surprise on your project? Or mishandled the ever-changing requests being handed to you? This is especially difficult when working on a project that you did not plan or manage from the beginning. How do you address the various requests that come in? What’s the difference between a risk, an issue, and a change?

This interactive session will show you how to use best practices in project risk management and change management to achieve positive results on your project initiatives, and even includes an effective planning and brainstorming technique to use with individuals or groups. We will take you beyond the theory for a hands-on practical approach to managing risks and change on projects.
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[accordion close=”1″ title=”1171 – Managing Stakeholders: 2 Hours”]How would you rate your typical relationship with your stakeholders? Friendly and respectful? Perhaps a little combative or frustrating? Do you even know who all your stakeholders are?

Stakeholder management is a hot topic now, with everyone wondering how to engage and communicate better with one another. If you have ever been caught by surprise by a stakeholder group that wasn’t appropriately involved on your project, whether in timing or in intensity, this session is for you.

At the core of stakeholder management is the art and science of setting and managing expectations. Proper stakeholder management goes far beyond setting expectations in one area, such as scope. Attend this session to learn more.
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[accordion close=”1″ title=”1191 – Managing Multiple Projects: 2 Hours”]Global competition, corporate right-sizing, and a growing project-based economic model require organizations to “do more with less.” Project management practitioners have learned that these shifts in the economy affect the project management discipline as much as – if not more than – any other functional area. More than ever before, project team members are required to not only take on more responsibilities in existing projects, but also engage in more projects in the same amount of time.

Course Description: The Managing Multiple Projects seminar is a half-day, instructor-led session designed to introduce attendees to better practices, processes, and techniques that will help the project management practitioner do a better job of leading, monitoring, and controlling concurrent multiple projects and programs.

Topics List:
• Project Definition
• Project Dependencies
• Portfolio Management
• Project Prioritization and Time Management
• Cross-Project Risk Management
• Project Reporting and Communications
• Cross-Project Controls
• Schedule and Cost Analysis

Outline

  1. Project to Portfolio View
    a. Projects, Programs and Portfolios
    b. Challenges
  2. Identification and Categorization
    a. Goals
    b. Constraints
  3. Prioritizing and Balancing
    a. Multiple Constraints
    b. Prioritization
  4. Monitoring, Controlling, and Reporting
    a. Milestones
    b. Review and Reporting
  5. Summary and Action Planning

Who Should Attend: Executives, senior managers, resources managers, project/program managers, and project team members who are responsible for the successful delivery of multiple projects.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

So here’s the situation: You need to start building the project plan for the latest initiative, but you can’t do that because the requirements haven’t been defined. Sound familiar? Now you can lead the charge to get requirements defined by using the tools provided in Requirements Management. Requirements management starts by analyzing stakeholders system needs (not wants), then validating these in a form that users find easy to read/absorb and then moving forward into design and development. Secrets to this vital early understanding include the approach used by a business analyst (BA) to elicit and analyze information and techniques used to model the users’ processes.

Course Description: This seminar session introduces a simple and powerful set of techniques enabling the IIBA’s BABOK to be quickly implementable and thorough, so that requirements are correct, complete, consistent and accurate (and derived efficiently). The course provides a high-level overview of the process.

Topics List:
• Requirements decomposition
• Identifying stakeholders
• Stakeholder communication
• IIBA Body of Knowledge
• Elicitation techniques
• Context diagrams
• Process maps
• Use case development
• Requirements analysis and documentation
• Solution assessment and validation
• Change control

Outline

  1. Overview of Requirements
    a. Requirement types
    b. Explain the differences between scope and requirements
    c. Decompose needs to scope via requirements
    d. The role of stakeholders in requirements
  2. Developing Requirements
    a. Describe the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) development steps
    b. Overview the major development techniques
    c. Describe how to develop XY Charts and other process maps
    d. Develop Use Cases from XY Charts or process maps
    e. Derive requirements from Use Cases
    f. Create a traceability matrix
  3. Managing Requirements
    a. The process of continuous validation and verification
    b. Use a change control procedure

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, project leads, senior managers, resource managers, program managers, project team members.

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It happens to everyone. The meeting that you are facilitating comes to an abrupt halt over an unbreakable disagreement. No one will budge and the deliverables are suddenly at risk. You can’t move on without that person’s support and you are too frustrated to move forward. This course will help you understand the nature of conflict, why people react so strongly and how to alleviate the tension and work toward productive outcomes.

Course Description: Managing Difficult Personalities is a two-hour, instructor-facilitated seminar session designed to help you learn how to manage conflict and deal with various difficult personality types in order to solve problems and create results.

Topics List:
• Characteristics of Conflict
• Impact of Conflict
• Reaction to Conflict
• Assertiveness
• Feedback
• Types of Difficult People
• Communications and Negotiations

Outline

  1. Difficult People and Conflict
    a. Characteristics of Conflicts
    b. The Relationship Between Difficult People and Conflict
    c. Effects of Dealing with Difficult Personalities
    d. Guidelines for Interacting with Difficult People
    e. Providing Assertive Feedback
  2. Dealing with Difficult Personalities
    a. Categories of Difficult Personalities
    b. Dealing with Each of the Categories of Difficult People

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team members, executives, senior managers, functional managers and service professionals.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

In a perfect world, everyone respects each other and work gets done at a rapid pace. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. People disagree, emotions flare and people get defensive. Conflict is a bad thing and must be removed…or should it? What if you could learn to recognize the signs, maintain your neutrality and use that conflict to create more productive sessions? What if you could learn to recognize the behaviors that distract from efficiency and deal with them rationally to keep teams on track?

Course Description: This two hour course covers rules for dealing with difficult people, how to give effective feedback, various types of difficult personalities and how to manage the various difficult personalities.

Topics List:
• Defining conflict
• Characteristics of difficult people
• Reacting to conflict
• Rules for dealing with conflict
• Providing feedback
• Effective listening
• Types of difficult personalities
• Dealing with difficult personality types

Outline

  1. How Difficult People Lead to Conflict
    a. Outline the characteristics of conflicts
    b. Explain the relationship between difficult people and conflict
    c. Describe the effects of dealing with difficult personalities
    d. Introduce guidelines for interacting with difficult people
    e. Explain how to provide assertive feedback
  2. Dealing with Difficult Personalities
    a. Describe the categories of difficult personalities
    b. Explain how to deal with each of the categories of difficult people

Who Should Attend: Managers, project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, subject matter experts, trainers, team members and project leads.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Have you ever come away from a conversation and felt like you really didn’t get the information you need?  It could have been a conversation with a client, a co-worker, a doctor, a service provider or your partner. Every day we rely more on technology to do our communicating; whether leaving quick voice mails, sending brief emails or texting. It’s getting more challenging to have productive discussions and conversations when the need arises.

We’re all short on time, so how do we maximize the face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) time we do have? It’s all about asking the right questions! Too often we are passive participants in conversations and therefore don’t gain the full benefit of discussions.

Course Description: In this session, we’ll highlight the challenges of today’s communication trends and give you ways to elevate your conversations.

Objectives:

  • Discuss the benefits of using questioning skills during conversations
    • Learn about questioning techniques that you can begin to leverage immediately
    • Get tips and tricks for planning out your conversations in advance so you gain information effectively and efficiently

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, trainers, project leads, executives, senior managers, resources managers, program managers, project team members, administrative assistants, subject matter experts, event planners, supervisors, analysts.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

Have you heard about the benefits of project management, but don’t see the results in your organization? There is data that show that project management has a positive impact on organizations. So why isn’t it working the way you intended in your organization? Your organizational culture could be getting in the way.

In this session, we will share the data on the impact project management can have and how to adapt your PM approach to the organizational culture. By adapting the process and knowing what’s most important in the PM process, you allow your team to successfully deliver their assigned projects, in spite of the hurdles, or barriers.

Course Description: This session discusses five major organizational barriers and how to work around them to experience the value that project management can bring to an organization, especially if you are not at a level in the organization to change the culture. The approach works for employees of all levels, from project team members to managers to senior management and sponsors. The session includes a variety of activities, including lecture, group discussions and exercises.

Topics List:
• Value of project management processes
• Culture and the top 5 project management hurdles
• Overcoming the top 5 hurdles within the culture
• Recurring themes for overcoming the hurdles

Outline

  1. Value of Project Management Processes
  2. Culture and the Top Five Project Management Hurdles
    a. Fire fighting and drama
    b. Turf protection
    c. Miracle workers
    d. Unrealistic expectations
    e. Micro-management
  3. Overcoming the Hurdles Within the Culture
    a. Fire fighting and drama
    b. Turf protection
    c. Miracle workers
    d. Unrealistic expectations
    e. Micro-management
  4. Recurring Themes For Overcoming the Hurdles

Who Should Attend: Project managers, team leaders, functional leaders, technical specialists, project team members, trainers, project leads, executives, senior managers, resources managers, program managers, administrative assistants, subject matter experts, supervisors.

Click here to download a printable .pdf version of this description.

For more information on our courses, call us at +1.972.489.2029
or email [email protected]

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