Improve Your Projects
Background and description
As the pace of change in organisations has increased, so has the amount of project work people are expected to do. Project management skills have therefore become important at all levels of organisational life.
However, many people are thrown into project work with inadequate training. To make matters worse, traditional project management training tends to be about project administration and control rather than practical everyday application and actually getting the job done. Improve Your Projects is different. It will show participants how to set up projects and get them off to the best possible start. It will also show how to carry out projects in a systematic, step-by-step fashion and how to involve people at each stage.
Improve Your Projects provides a common sense approach that is practical and is proven to work in the real world. Thousands of people have attended the course from a wide range of organisations and industries, from Chief Executives to junior managers and experienced project professionals to novices.
Duration and who should attend
Duration
2-days
Who should attend?
People who lead any type of project - large or small, working alone or leading a team.
The following people should not attend
| • | People who are not involved in projects |
| • | People who champion as well as lead projects, lead a natural work team and chair meetings should attend Universal Improvement Skills |
What participants will learn
| • | What a project is and how it is different from day-to-day work |
| • | The UIMPROVE framework for setting up and running projects. This can be applied in all organisations and industries |
| • | Five Key Concepts that underpin the approach |
| • | How to set up projects properly with a clear remit |
| • | Different roles in projects |
| • | Different ways to involve people in projects along with tools and techniques for doing this |
| • | How to run a Project Kick-Start. This is an initial meeting that is highly structured and involves a wide range of people to ensure buy-in and alignment and get the project off to the best possible start. |
| • | A set of project methodologies that provide step-by-step guidance from the beginning to the end of any project |
| • | How to take an individual project and break it down into its component parts, identifying timescales, actions and milestones |
| • | Tools for planning and organising Brainstorming, Clustering-by-Theme, Must-Should-Could, TPN Analysis, Chronological Clustering and Gantt Charts - how and when to use each of these |
| • | Techniques for working with project teams - simple but highly effective structural techniques that will increase participation, variety, productivity and enjoyment of project team meetings |
Participants learn both hard and soft skills. Project methodologies, tools and techniques sit alongside how to involve people and how to handle project team meetings in an integrated fashion.
Style and structure of the course
Improve Your Projects has been running and continually refined since 1994. It follows a tried-and-tested approach that is highly participative and practical with chalk'n'talk cut to a minimum. One of the things that sets Improve Your Projects apart from other project management training is that participants are asked to apply what they are learning to their own real-life projects. This includes the opportunity to pick the brains of our experienced Consultants.
Participants receive our comprehensive manual, The Complete Guide to Improvement. This contains easy to follow, step-by-step guidelines including everything covered on the course and a lot more. Participants can also download support materials from our website.
Download
Click here for the Improve Your Projects Briefing Note.
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| Improve Your Projects for Fife Council |
Improve Your Projects for Austin Health |
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| See the video of Fife Council at the 2009 UIMPROVE Facilitators Conference |
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| Improve Your Projects for Peak District National Park |
Improve Your Projects for Walsall MBC |