Training
All training is tailored to the organisation in question. Prior to training, we discuss your business, and your current project. The training delivery is then customised around actual project work. Training lasts between 2-5 days.
Cost: All training is customised to the organisation. Please enquire.
Training is broken down into 4 modules as described below. The modules are each intended for different attendees as described in the appropriate section.
In general the training takes the following format:
Introduction to PrinceLite
Objective: understand the scope of PrinceLite as a complete project management methodology.
Module 1 Duration: ½ day
Target audience: project managers, programme managers, senior managers, business analysts
An end-to-end overview of PrinceLite.
- Comparing PrinceLite with P2. Leveraging your P2 investment
- Enterprise objectives, business goals, benefits traceability mapping
- A formalisation of genuine business change vs. the ‘Trojan horse’ of IT enabled business change.
- Formalising GAP analysis, project, programme and portfolio management
- Project stakeholder mapping, informal, semi-formal and formal sign-off
- High level, medium level and low level business requirements; exploring accuracy and precision
- Business modelling for IT; use cases, activity models, state modelling, wire frames, business objects, business rules
- Writing unambiguous briefs, PIDS and business requirements specifications
- The iterative project lifecycle, new milestones that deliver
Questions/tasks
Perform a current project artefact (product) audit.>
- State the artefacts you use now
- Who reads them?
- What do they contain?
- What purpose do they serve?
- Which artefacts are maintained?
Enterprise culture and organisation
Objective: understand how the culture of the enterprise and the nature of the project organisation contribute to the success or failure of any specific project.
Module 2 Duration: ½ day
Recommended target audience: programme managers, project managers, business analysts
2a. Culture
This module explores the differences between large organisations/enterprises and SMEs. We contrast the advantages/disadvantages of new projects vs. existing projects, and look at how the culture of the wider organisation affects the culture of the project. Depending on your organisation we discuss either the transformation from business requirements to technical (system) requirements in an in-house environment or through 3rd party procurement.
Where procurement is the norm, we investigate the relationship between fixed price quotes and time and materials estimates. We investigate effort estimation and the pricing of risk that arises from uncertainty.
Together we analyse different software engineering styles; from waterfall through iterative to agile. We discover the differences, the advantages and the pitfalls and understand the style that best fits your organisation.
We explore some P2 concepts that are taken for granted, such as the ‘project board’ and the ‘quality plan’ and show why these are not required. We break down the activities and the deliverables in the project and show how each one contributes to project delivery.
The symbiotic relationship between project management and business analysis is discussed.
Questions/tasks
- What is the style of project delivery your organisation follows? Example: waterfall vs. Agile. Describe the stages of a typical project and the milestones that define the movement from one stage to the next.
- Describe the degree to which P2 is embedded in your organisation. What works, what doesn’t?
- Assess your organisation’s record in delivering software projects. What are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? Critique yourself on the basis of time, cost and scope. How many ‘change requests’ are typical? Explore your organisation’s experience of change requests.
- What is the strategic importance of the current project you are working on?
- How big is it in comparison with past projects?
- What is the rationale for funding your project?
- What would the organisation be doing with the money if it were not funding your project?
2b. Stakeholder role modelling
The project terrain includes the business and the technical communities.
The project manager has two principle over-riding objectives:
- Keep the senior management happy so they keep funding the project. Senior management will stop funding your project if it goes on too long and does not deliver adequate progress
- Describe what is needed unambiguously so the technical team can build it without wasting time. Keep your promises to senior management so the project is delivered before the funding is curtailed.
The stakeholder map identifies the key roles and relationships in the project, including the project sponsor, SRO, PM, BA, and power users. The stakeholder map identifies and makes explicit the relationship between the need to seek and retain funding balanced with the achievement of progress. Therefore the stakeholder map serves as a critical project management tool to identify the chain of reporting for progress, and the identification of power users on behalf of the BA. The stakeholder map is also the basis of the communications plan.
The communication plan ensures those who need to know, those who want to know and those who feel they should know but who add no value are all captured.
Questions/tasks
- Develop your own stakeholder map.
- Develop your own communications plan.