Workshop Outline

Project Management: Advanced Techniques

An AIPM Endorsed Course

Check out what our endorsement means here.

Foundational Knowledge

This workshop is designed for people who are familiar with the thomsett approach to project management, have project management experience and wish to gain a deeper understanding of the management process. It is preferable that workshop attendees are experienced project managers and have previously participated in the PM: Essential Techniques Workshop.

The Workshop

The management of business projects is the critical factor in the professional delivery of products and services to business clients. For over 30 years, the project management "industry" has focused on the process and technological aspects of service delivery only to find that their clients are becoming increasingly frustrated with both the quality and responsiveness of their output. Project management is primarily about ensuring that organisations obtain added value, responsiveness, quality and service from their project teams.

This two-day workshop provides an advanced approach to the project management of service, system and product development projects. This intensive workshop presents participants with a set of leading-edge techniques developed over the past 10 years by  thomsett INTERNATIONAL on many large and complex business and I.T. projects. These techniques are not available from books or universities. They have come from extensive project consulting and from many years of trial and error.

The techniques introduced in this workshop have been recognised by the Australian Computer Society as "best practice" and are the basis of a Masters degree-level Certification Programme in Project Management managed by the A.C.S.

Workshop Structure

Given the focus on advanced techniques, this workshop has been designed as a series of tutorials. The specific sequence and timing of the tutorials depends upon the experience and learning expectations of the participants. This enables participants to select which topics are of interest to them and to encourage interactive discussions between both the workshop facilitator and other workshop participant’s experience.

Tutorials covered include:

1. The advanced project management process

This session covers the various project contracts required for managing complex projects - Business Case, Quality Agreement, Stakeholder Agreements and Staffing Contract - and overviews the project management process. It focuses on the Business Case and its related plans.

2. Rapid Application Planning [RAP]

This session overviews the Rapid Application Planning process, similar to JAD, and the various techniques and documents used to support RAP sessions.

3. Project Stakeholder Management

This session examines the critical issue of project stakeholders or service providers. It covers techniques for analysing stakeholders’ relationships and for developing various stakeholders agreements. It also explores the role of stakeholders in benefits realisation.

4. Modeling Objectives / Added Value

This session concentrates on techniques for developing accurate and measurable project objectives and the relationship between objectives and return-on-investment. It also presents a powerful approach to added-value analysis and benefits realisation planning.

5. Quality Requirements

This session concentrates on powerful techniques for modelling quality expectations or requirements. It also considers the impact on quality expectations on other project management issues such as estimation and risk. It presents a technique based on Quality Function Deployment to show how quality assurance techniques are integrated with project management.

6. Risk Assessment and Management

This session overviews the various approaches to project risk analysis, assessment and management. It also explores risk reporting, risk mitigation models and risk management plans.

7. Advanced Metrics

This tutorial follows on from the estimation tutorial and the Added Value tutorial. It presents an integrated approach to process, product and quality metrics based on "best practice".

8. Virtual Teams

This tutorial explores the new project management team structure - the Virtual team. It compares this team to the traditional "whole-of-life" team and presents methods for project managers to lead Virtual teams.

9. Implementation Strategies

This tutorial presents various techniques for implementing the advanced models “back home”. It provides a step-by-step approach to assisting participants in managing the change process required for successful implementation of best practice project management.

Documentation

This workshop also provides participants with diagnostic models, a full copy of the advanced planning documents used by thomsett INTERNATIONAL, and a large number of readings.

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