Project Management for Sponsors --Praxis Learning Networks

Project Management for Sponsors -- PM170

As a project sponsor or executive, you depend on project managers to deliver business results for your organization. But they can't do it alone. They need your help to support the right processes, provide the right information and resources and ask the tough questions when necessary.

You will learn about the psychology of change and how using a few simple tools to help projects manage effectively can save time and money to increase value as well as help those in the organization to be happier, healthier, and more effective.

This foundational workshop will give you the understanding of modern project management concepts. You will also learn the skills you need to understand how to work with project managers individually and as part of a project management office (PMO) and how to enable them to achieve the project results you expect.

Our instructors are PMP-certified project management specialists who have been on both sides of projects as project manager and as project sponsors. We have helped many organizations develop effective relationships between executive sponsors, stakeholders and project teams.

Topics

Becoming familiar with the core concepts of project management and the project lifecycle
Understanding the roles people play on projects and how each contributes to project success
Understanding an approach to portfolio management and how management by objectives can help you select the projects that really matter to the bottom line
Analyzing the projects potential and determining how it fits into the portfolio
Describing the function of project governance and understanding fundamental project politics (e.g., project realities in large organizations)
Understanding why planning seems to take so long and finding ways to allow for a planning cycle appropriate to the complexity of the project
Increasing your return on investment by serving as change agent for the project outcomes
Understanding the typical time and decision-making commitments project managers need from you to complete a successful project
Providing project managers with the resources they need to be successful, such as budget, people and time for the project, authority to manage project resources and make project decisions, providing project management training and support resources
Understanding how changes to the project impact cost, time, scope and quality and reset your expectations appropriately
Anticipating change, helping protect the project from unnecessary changes, and communicating changes to the project manager
Discovering ways to encourage and actively support the use of PM best-practices and learning how they can impact projects and company objectives
Using assessment methods to analyze project performance, identifying the major causes of poor project performance and developing an approach to address poor performance before your project suffers
Learning which questions to ask during execution/control to cut through the unnecessary detail or the smoke and mirrors to assess true project performance

Who Should Attend?

Project Sponsors
Executives
Functional Managers

Prerequisites: none

Text/Materials: Course binder

Duration: 1 day workshop

Professional Development Credits: 8 PDUs

Cost: $575

Course Dates and Location:

June 19, 2009 Chicago Register

December 11, 2009 Indianapolis Register

Customize this course: This is a custom course ranging from two to 16 hours; please contact us at 317.275.2870 for scheduling. PDUs would be based on the number of hours for the custom course.