PGA PM Course IV: Project Planning and Management

Perk Group Africa fundamentals of project planning and management

Target Audience

Middle-Level Managers, Project Managers, Project Coordinators, Accountants, Personal Assistants, Entrepreneurs, Business Executives, Human Resource Managers, Team Leaders of private and state corporations, NGO’s and anyone seeking to enhance their professional skills.

Description

Projects are all around us. Almost every organization runs projects. We are engaged in projects at home and at work. Across settings, planning principles, and execution methodologies can offer ways in which projects can be run more effectively and efficiently. Project management provides organizations and individuals with the language and the frameworks for scoping projects, sequencing activities, utilizing resources, and minimizing risks.

Day 1: Welcome to the world of projects

In the first module, we’ll gain an understanding of what a project is, what it isn’t, and why that matters. We’ll consider how projects are defined and a project’s three objectives. We’ll look at a model for examining a project’s organization and its stakeholders, and then analyse those stakeholders using a power/interest grid. We’ll look at the main reasons why many projects fail and then learn how to measure success. Finally, we’ll review the key stages in the project life cycle and highlight the important features of each stage.

  • Course Welcome
  • What Is a Project?
  • How Do We Define a Project?
  • Considering the Organization & Stakeholders
  • Project Success & Failure
  • Case Study
  • Project Life Cycle

Day 2: Details of project planning

In our second day, we’ll start digging into the details, focusing on how to develop a project plan. We’ll understand why we plan and what a plan should or should not include. We’ll discuss the process of scoping out a project and see tools that can help us identify what should be included in our project. We’ll learn about sequencing project tasks and the nature of the dependencies among project activates. We’ll learn how to determine a project’s duration and critical path, how it is determined, and why it is useful. We’ll see how we should schedule a project and, finally, we’ll review how you can make changes to a plan to support your overall project objectives.

  • Why Plan?
  • Project detailed Scoping
  • Identifying Dependencies
  • Determine the Completion Date & Critical Path of projects
  • How Do We Schedule?
  • Making Changes during the project life
  • Reflecting on Common Mistakes
  • Getting Started with Microsoft Project

Day 3: Project risks and risk management

In our third module, we’ll consider the risk and uncertainties projects face. We’ll understand what is risky about projects. We’ll identify and assess project risks and prioritize these risks in order to focus our attention on those most impactful to the project. We’ll consider schedule risks in detail and ask,

  • What is the likelihood of finishing the project on time?
  • What are the drivers that may cause delays in my project?
  • We’ll see how a project budget can be set to include a contingency. We will also consider situations with a high degree of ambiguity and identify methods that can useful in these situations.
  • Identifying & Assessing Project Risks
  • Managing project timeline
  • Project Cost Risk Analysis
  • Planning for Ambiguity

Day 4: Project execution

In our final day and last module, we’ll move from plan to action and consider the execution phase of a project. We’ll learn about the earned value approach for monitoring and controlling progress. We’ll consider the individuals who are executing the project and how their habits impact project progress. Finally, we’ll review and summarize the course, and our journey from project definition through execution and completion.

  • From Plan to Action
  • Earned Value
  • Course Conclusion

Learning Objectives

This is a basic course on the key concepts of planning and executing projects. We will identify factors that lead to project success, and learn how to plan, analyse, and manage projects. Learners will be exposed to state-of-the-art methodologies and considering the challenges of various types of projects.