Project management ‘masterclasses’ (In-House)

Session outlines

Session objectives

• Understand why stakeholders matter to projects
• Be able to identify and engage stakeholders
• Be able to categorise stakeholders by their significance

1 Key principles

• What does ‘stakeholder’ mean – in theory?
• What does this mean in practice?
• Why stakeholders matter
• Consequences of missing stakeholders
• The stakeholder management process:
  • Identify
  • Assess
  • Plan
  • Engage

2 Identifying stakeholders

• Rapid listing
• CPIG analysis
• PESTLE analysis
• Drawing on the knowledge and experience of others
• Other ways to identify stakeholders

3 Assessing stakeholders

• Which stakeholders are significant?
• Stakeholder radar
• Power-interest maps
• Power-attitude maps

4 Planning

• The adoption curve
• Dealing with obstacles
• Who should engage which stakeholder?
• How should the project’s organisation be structured?
• How will communication happen?

5 Engaging

• Seven principles of stakeholder engagement

Session objectives

• Understand how clarity of requirements contributes to project success
• Use different techniques for prioritising requirements
• Agree requirements with stakeholders
• Manage changes to requirements

1 Understanding and managing stakeholder needs and expectations

• What are ‘requirements’?
• What is ‘requirements management’?
• Sources of requirements – and the role of stakeholders
• Are stakeholders sufficiently expert to specify their needs?
• Do they understand the detail of what they want, or do they need help to tease that out?
• What do stakeholders want to achieve?
• Working within constraints
• Prioritising requirements – three techniques

2 MoSCoW prioritisation

• ‘Must have’, should have’, ‘could have, ‘won’t have this time’
• When to use MoSCoW

3 The Kano Model

• Customer satisfaction – ‘attractive’ and ‘must-be’ qualities
• When to use Kano

4 Value-based prioritisation

• Understanding risk v value
• Using risk v value to prioritise features and schedules

5 Agreeing requirements

• Perfect v ‘good enough’
• Establishing acceptance criteria
• Requirements traceability
• Agreeing project scope

6 Changing requirements

• Why requirements change
• Why change control matters
• Impact on projects
• A formal change control process
• Paying for change – managing change for different types of project

Session objectives

• Understand the different purposes estimates satisfy
• Be able to use different estimating techniques
• Understand how to achieve different levels of accuracy

1 Key principles

• What’s an estimate? Informed guesswork
• What needs to be estimated? Costs, resources, effort, duration
• Tolerances
• Precision v accuracy

2 Estimating through the lifecycle

• Start
• Plan
• Do

3 Early estimates

• Comparative (‘analogous’) estimating
• Parametric estimating
• Using multiple estimating techniques

4 Bottom-up estimating

• Bottom-up (‘analytical’) estimating
• Pros
• Cons

5 Three-point estimating

• Three-point (‘PERT’: Programme Evaluation and Review Technique) estimating
• Uncertainty and the range of estimates
• Calculating a weighted average
• Three-point with bottom-up

Session objectives

• Understand how to create a viable schedule
• Be able to use different forms of schedule
• Understand the concept of the critical path

1 Key principles

• The planning horizon
• Rolling wave planning
• Release planning

2 Viable scheduling

• Creating a viable schedule
• Define the scope
• Sequence the work
• Identify the risks and build in mitigations
• Identify the resources
• Estimate the effort and durations
• Check resource availability
• Refine until a workable schedule is produced

3 Critical path analysis

• The critical path
• Network diagrams
• Sequence logic
• Practical application:
  • Network diagram with estimated durations
  • The ‘forward pass’
  • The ‘backward pass’
  • Calculating total float
  • Identifying the critical path
  • Calculating free float
• Gantt charts

Session objectives

• Understand the difference between risks and issues
• Be able to identify and assess risks
• Understand ways of mitigating risks
• Manage issues

1 Key principles

• Understanding risk
• Threats and opportunities
• The risk management process
  • Preparation – proactive risk management
  • The process – identify, assess, plan, implement
  • Stakeholder communication
• Roles and responsibilities
• Risk management strategy
• The risk register
• Risk appetite

2 Risk identification

• Brainstorming
• Interviews
• Assumption analysis
• Checklists

3 Risk assessment and prioritisation

• Probability, impact and proximity
• Triggers
• Qualitative risk assessment
• Qualitative impact assessment
• Qualitative probability assessment
• Probability / impact grid
• Bubble charts
• Risk tolerance

4 Planning countermeasures

• To mitigate or not to mitigate?
• Categories of risk response
• Avoid and exploit
• Reduce and enhance
• Transfer
• Share
• Accept
• Contingency
• Secondary risks

5 Issue management

• What is an issue?
• Tolerances
• Issues and tolerances
• The PRINCE2 view of issues
• Ownership of issues
• An issue management process
• Issue register

Session objectives

• Understand what to include in a budget – and why
• Choose – and use – the appropriate estimating technique
• Align the budget with the schedule
• Understand how to monitor spend and control costs
• Trouble-shoot effectively to get projects back within budget

Session format

1 Where is the money coming from?

• Can we pay from revenue? Do we need to borrow? How long will the project take to pay back?
• The lifecycle of the budget
• Through-life costs
• Stakeholder involvement

2 Estimating costs

• Reminder: the relationship between estimates
• Reminder: possible estimating techniques
• What do we need to estimate?
  • People
  • Equipment
  • Materials
  • Facilities and operating costs
  • Work package estimate
  • Estimated project costs
• Estimating agile projects

3 Aligning budget and schedule

• Scheduling and financial periods
• Spreading the budget

4 Reserves and agreeing the budget

• Contingency reserve
• Management reserve
• Agreeing the budget

5 Cost control

• Planned spend over time
• Actual spend over time
• Work completed over time
• Evaluating different scenarios: delivery v spend

6 Trouble-shooting

• Why are we where we are?
• What has caused the project to spend at the rate it is?
• Why is it delivering at the rate it is?
• What are the root causes?
• What can we do about it?