Programme outline
Participants familiarise themselves with a 'best practice' view of projects based on UK experience. They acquire knowledge of a range of practical techniques which can be called upon as required to support the project management process and gain practical experience of how to apply them. Participants also gain help in devising action plans to address the project problems they face.

Programme content

Day 1
Welcome and introduction
What makes project work different from other responsibilities?
What difficulties might we face?
Discussion and group work to identify the problems we need to address.
The project process
Identification of the different phases or steps encompassing the basic framework within which we can place a range of techniques we can use selectively, according to the needs of the project.
Project identification and definition
How to refine the project concept into a clear statement of objectives.
Group work on defining the necessary actions to define the project.
Project planning
An introduction to the techniques available to us: simple scheduling, bar charts, layered planning (with work breakdown structures), task boarding, critical path networks (two types), GANTT charts, resource loading diagrams.
Case study
Group work on a case study which gives a practical hands-on opportunity to use the various planning techniques available (plus how these processes can be handled by project management software).
Group work 

Day 2
Review session
Brief recap of Day 1 so that we are ready to go forward.
Ready to implement
What we need to do to ensure our plans are realistic and that we have established the infrastructure and teamwork for implementation.
Group work on a checklist of requirements.
The project leader's role
Making the plans happen will be a test of our management skills.
Small group work to identify what is required to develop a project leadership role model.
Controlling and managing progress
Group work on what we need to do to monitor progress and keep the project implementation on track.
Feedback and discussion.
Project closure
Although this is the shortest phase of the project process, it is as vital as any other.
Small group work on a checklist of both active and post project evaluation.
Course review
An overview of the complete project process and identification of what we can apply in discharging our own project responsibilities.
Action planning