Project management

Course summary

This two day course looks at every aspect of managing a project. Working on your own case study, you will learn and apply the many tools and techniques involved. It will help you get more structure into your management of projects.


Course outline

This course deals with the technical aspects of project management, including planning and estimating time, budgeting and costing, and risk analysis. We also explore the 'people' skills involved: communicating with project teams, stakeholders and project champions.
Over the two days you will learn how to

• define a project
  • analyse the key issues for your project
  • draw up effective terms of reference for a project
  • clarify your project's aims, objectives and success factors
  • Understand the stages of a project including mapping the project and the project tasks
  • grouping the project's tasks into meaningful categories
• plan and sequencing your project
  • understanding and working with critical time points
  • Using a Gantt Chart showing the project tasks, their timescales, how these are linked and related and what is the resulting critical time-line.
  • constructing a critical time line
• risk management
• draw up a realistic project budget
  • constructing a project budget outlining the main elements, and how each might be estimated and taking into account all project costs, support costs and overheads
  • which meets the requirements of project stakeholders and funders
  • describing how income will be derived from the project, if appropriate and over what timescale
  • constructing a simple cash flow forecast for the project
  • reading a project's management accounts
  • keeping to budget
• work effectively with your project team
  • constructing a project team.
  • understanding and overcoming the the barriers to building a high performance team
  • using the Belbin team types as a useful tool in developing your project team
  • Understanding and using the 'team lifecycle'
  • communicating with your team and the rest of the organisation
  • dealing with conflict in the team
• work with stakeholders and champions
  • understanding who your stakeholders are and what influence and interest they have in the project
  • communicating with stakeholders
  • influencing stakeholders
• Monitor and evaluate your project
  • desiging a simple monitoring system
  • Using critical success and failure factors
  • developing parameters for the project and monitoring progress against these parameters
  • metrics for projects, and what evaluation methods to use when metrics are not appropriate
  • Where metrics cannot be applied to monitoring, show what will be observed to demonstrate that progress has taken place
  • Using external monitoring systems (eg a funder's evaluation format)

"The trainer was a wealth of knowledge and made things very relevant to my work". NP, Sanctuary Housing
"Fabulous ! The programme was well designed and well executed. Most of all it was very enjoyable!" JF, Stoke on Trent Early Years and Childcare Services


Who is this course for?

The course is aimed at those with only a little experience of project management who want to learn the basic skills and get some tips and techniques for introducing the disciplines of project management. It would also be very useful for those who have some experience of small projects and want to further develop their skills.

This is a stand-alone course, and is also part of our Certificate in Leadership and Management Programme (University of London)



What will this course help me do: learning outcomes?

By the end of the workshop, you will be able to plan your project effectively,
estimating time factors accurately and dovetailing the work of different projects
efficiently. You will recognise the different stakeholders involved in your projects
and be able to devise strategies for each of them. You will have a useful tool for
risk analysis which you can apply to a wide range of situations and you will be
able to cost the different elements of your project accurately and monitor your
project budget.