Program Overview

This workshop is for project managers who have been challenged to deliver project results on time. One leg of the project triple constraint model, project time management is particularly challenging. It seems to most project managers that, no matter how realistically they try to forecast the project schedule, something happens to delay it. That feeling is echoed by their stakeholders who often conclude that projects will always be delivered later than promised.

Our goal in this two-day workshop is to examine the challenges and techniques of project time management with the goal of improving on-time performance of your projects. As we do that, we’ll need to address the implications of uncertainty and project schedule risk. We’ll also have to examine how we talk to our stakeholders about the project schedule and how we manage their expectations about project timing.

Duration

Two Days

Delivery Methods

- Instructor led Classroom based

Audience

This course is intended for both project team members and project managers wishing to gain a fluent working knowledge of commonly accepted best practices for planning and management the project schedule baseline. Team members and managers looking to improve their scheduling and project milestone management skills and looking to improve their understanding of how to deliver their projects on time should take this course. Students on a track to take the PMP examination should take this course.

Prerequisites

Project Management Foundations or equivalent project management experience.

Course Objectives

The objectives of this workshop are to:

• Identify why the project schedule is so difficult to manage
• Increase the capability of individuals, managers and project team members to deliver projects on time
• Provide training that is consistent with best practices and the PMBOK® Guide, Fourth Edition
• Increase the fluency of project managers to develop a defensible and realistic project schedule
• Integrate milestones and deadlines into the overall project plan
• Increase fluency in managing variances and schedule changes
• Introduce participants to the vocabulary of project time management and key time management concepts
• Engage in exercises built around a single, workshop case study designed to allow us to apply the techniques we have learned

Participants in this workshop will master several skill sets including:

• Identifying schedule activities as an extension of the work breakdown structure
• Creating a project network diagram
• Estimating activity durations and resource requirements
• Identifying the critical path
• Compressing the schedule
• Leveling resources
• Implementing schedule variance analysis and controlling changes
• Communicating project needs and status

This workshop also includes several optional, supplementary modules that explore additional, advanced concepts in time management. Those supplementary modules include Monte Carlo analysis, the challenges of deterministic estimating, critical chain estimating and the theory of constraints. Those techniques may not be of use to all projects but may solve some project scheduling problems and add additional rigor to project time management. The instructor will determine which of those modules will be addressed based on the needs of participants in the workshop and the availability of time to cover those modules. Even if those modules are not covered in the workshop, the materials are presented for your review and further study.

Course Content

Working with both ITIL® and Project Management the course includes theory, discussions, and quizzes with relationship to:

Day 1

Module 1: Introduction to the workshop

• Introduction to the purposes of the workshop and the agenda for the workshop; getting to know one another and identification of your goals for the next two days.

Module 2: The challenges of project time management

• The challenges of project time management; risk tolerances; root causes of schedule problems; the naval gunnery problem

Module 3: Project time management in context based on the PMBOK® Guide, Fourth Edition

• The role of project time management; the processes of project time management; the interaction between project time management and the other project management knowledge areas

Module 4: Activity definition

• Identifying schedule activities by decomposing the work breakdown structure

Module 5: Activity sequencing

• Analyzing activity dependencies and creating the project network diagram

Day 2

Module 6: Resource estimating

• Identifying the resources necessary for performing project activities

Module 7: Duration estimating

• Using a variety of techniques for assigning durations to activities

Module 8: Schedule development

• Pulling the schedule elements together to create the schedule; schedule compression

Module 9: Schedule control

• Identifying schedule performance; reporting on the schedule; schedule control

Module 10: Workshop wrap-up

Program Material

A printed copy of the student manual will be distributed to the participants.