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2-Day IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Course outline

2 days
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Duration

2 days

Suitable for participants who have little or no project management knowledge

Course Overview

This course is intended for managers and executives in IT as well as participants of IT projects from business, operations, engineering, technical support and consulting, who need to acquire a high competency in IT project management, project control and documentation tools and processes. The entire course content is compliant with the standard Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) of the Project Management Institute (USA).

One of the objectives of this course is for participants to appreciate and enforce project management (suitable for participants from IT and non-IT backgrounds) as a system of procedures and controls that can regulate and stabilize project controls, through the use of project management methodology, tools and techniques. A demonstration of a Project Management Information System (PROMISE) is included.

This project management course is carefully designed to provide the best mix of experience, theory and practice in an adult-learning environment. Formal presentations will be brief and used mainly to introduce key concepts and significant elements of project management. Emphasis is on real case studies, and practical applications through “hands-on” action learning. Project management planning using Microsoft Project will be shown to reinforce the learning (participants may bring their notebook PCs with MS Project although this is not necessary). Throughout the course will require a high level of participation and team involvement. Maximum opportunities will be given to participants to inject their own examples and issues into the course and continually relate the material to their own contexts.

Objectives

  • Instilling Project Management lifecycle, methodology and terminologies, and making it the backbone of any IT project organization.
  • Clarifying the roles of senior management, project manager, team members and suppliers.
  • Understanding stakeholder influences and resolving conflicts in a project.
  • Conducting systematic and structured project scoping, scheduling and costing.
  • Understanding why and how project feasibility studies are conducted.
  • Making accurate task duration and cost estimations for various IT cost components, even when using uncertain information - determining worst-case, best case and most likely case for task/project durations, and costs.
  • Identifying and determining performance metrics for project tracking in an IT project.
  • Tracking project progress and making project reports – using network, milestone and Gantt chart diagramming.
  • Appreciating MS Project for planning, scheduling and tracking project progress.

At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

  • Have comprehensive understanding of the various processes of IT project management.
  • Have comprehensive application knowledge about the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).
  • Have an advanced set of project management tools and techniques for immediate IT project application at the workplace.
  • Participants will have a ready set of working templates, forms and checklists relevant for use in projects at their place of work.

Detailed Course Outline

DAY 1

PROJECT MANAGEMENT BACKGROUND

  • The need for project management knowledge and standard.
  • What are projects, phases, and project lifecycles?
  • The project management life cycle – initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing phases.
  • Project stakeholder conflicts of interest, and how to resolve them.
  • The time-cost-quality triangle of constraints (triple constraints).
  • Setting project objectives and requirements using the S.M.A.R.T. approach.
  • Organizational structure influences on projects – functional, matrix and projectized hierarchies.
  • The project hierarchy, roles and responsibilities among stakeholders – customer, sponsor, performing organization, project manager, team members, etc.
  • Assembling the team and how to profile/select your project manager and team members.
  • Why and how do IT projects fail?

INITIATING PHASE

  • Developing the Project Charter.
  • Activity: creating a Project Charter.
  • Project feasibility (technical) and cost-benefit analysis (financial) - Benefit-Cost ratio, Present Value, Net Present Value, Payback Period, and Return On Investment.
  • Determining initial project cost estimates (order-of-magnitude/top-down/budget estimation techniques) for project cost-benefit analysis.
  • IT cost dynamics and cost compounding.
  • Estimating IT resource cost components with a checklist.
  • IT project cost recovery.

PLANNING PHASE

  • Developing a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) from the project scope requirements.
  • Activity: constructing a WBS.
  • Develop a Task List from the WBS.
  • Activity: constructing a Task List.
  • Detailing resources and cost listings – human, material, facility, equipment, etc.; resource effort, quantities and costs.

DAY 2

  • Activity: creating a Resource Requirements list.
  • Task sequencing using network diagramming technique.
  • Assigning task duration and predecessors, and work estimating.
  • Scheduling the project using the Milestone diagram and Gantt chart.
  • Fine-tuning the Gantt chart with leading and lagging, and various project duration reduction strategies.
  • Understanding the critical tasks, non-critical tasks, and their role in the Critical Path Method (CPM).
  • Using bottom-up estimates for scheduling and cost control.
  • Planning for project risks – risk identification, assessment, and responses.
  • Activity: risk management planning.

EXECUTING, MONITORING & CONTROLLING PHASES

Executing the project plan, and tracking project schedule progress using the Gantt Chart.

Activity: Gantt charting and measuring project progress.

Responding to project risks (executing risk responses, monitor and control the execution of the responses).

The change control system – change request, change control board, change impact assessment approve/disapprove, change implementation schedule, and updating configuration documents.

CLOSING PHASE

  • Administrative close-out checklist - product verification (formal acceptance and handover sign-offs), closing project books, post-mortem, documenting lessons learned, archiving project documents, disbanding, rewarding and thanking the team.
  • Contract close-out administration checklist - final scope verification of supplier deliverables (as per contract), document lessons learned, closing the contract, and thanking the supplier.

ICT Project Case Studies

  • 1. Mobile Field Sales Force Automation using PDA & GPRS wireless technology.
  • 2. Web-Enabled Project Management Information System.
  • 3. Real Cases (Stories) on Challenges: System deployment and change management, change of user groups and effect on project, a new project manager facing difficulties to get team support and loyalty, project managers being treated like project administrators by the CEO, and many others.

Who Can Benefit

Managers and executives who are directly involved in planning and implementation of any kind of IT projects, and those requiring an advance set of tools to assist in schedule and cost planning, risk assessment and risk management.

Programme scope, delivery arrangements and suitability are confirmed during enquiry.