This 2-day workshop teaches fundamentals of project management for new product development projects in a practical, discussion based forum. The scope includes both the process of project management as well as the skills needed to be an effective project manager. Prior to the workshop some historic projects will be identified to use as case studies to be used during the training. For each major topic these projects will be discussed to illustrate areas of historic success and areas needing improvement. The final step in the workshop is to develop an action plan to improve the project management process and skills of the participants. Members of the senior management team are invited to a brief wrap up session where the key improvement areas and associated action plans are presented. The target audience is project managers, product managers, senior design engineers, senior manufacturing engineers, functional managers.
1. Introduction
- What is Project Management?
- The project lifecycle
- Fundamental project constraints – the triple constraint theory
- Risk management – proactive vs. reactive project management
2. Project Management Process – Project Initiation
- Project initiation scenarios
- Transitioning from idea to project
- Developing a preliminary project charter
- Preparing preliminary schedule estimates
- Developing the business case
- Management review
3. Project Management Process – Project Planning
- Establishing the project team
- Identifying the customer and assessing customer needs
- Performing competitive analysis
- Developing concepts alternatives
- Performing a preliminary capability assessment
- Conducting design reviews
- Linking the project to the business strategy
- Finalizing the business case
- Assessing and managing project risks
- Summarize what is known and unknown – identifying knowledge gaps to be closed
- Consider technology maturity and intellectual property issues
- Developing the project plan based on the selected product concept
- Identifying tasks to be performed
- Determining responsibilities
- Estimating task durations
- Identifying task relationships and precedence
- Using task network diagrams as a team planning tool
- Estimating resource requirements
- Conducting a management review
4. Project Management Process – Execution, Monitoring and Control
- Communicating responsibilities
- Monitoring task performance
- Updating project status
- Identifying project performance issues
- Earned value and budget performance vs. schedule performance
- Taking corrective action
- Actions to respond to schedule issues
- Actions to respond to resource shortages
- Actions to respond to budget issues
- Assessing technical performance
- When to use management to resolve issues
5. Project Management Process – Closing
- Closing out a project
- Assess and report project performance
- Assess personnel performance
6. Other Success Factors
- Organization structure options and how they affect project management
- Team evolution in the project lifecycle
- Reducing project duration with concurrent engineering
- Extracting lessons learned
7. Project Management Skills
- The project manager’s role and responsibilities
- Attributes of successful project managers
- Team communications
- Motivational techniques
- Techniques for keeping the project on track
- Holding effective management reviews
8. Next Steps
- Develop an action plan to improve the project management process
- Develop an action plan for ongoing development of project management skills