Advanced Programs
Stays & Days™ Advanced Scheduling Workshop:
Quantitative Insights, a Competitive Simulation, & Personal Workshops
• A 1-day, 7 PDU (0.7 CEU) instructor-led program
This sequential simulation for the experienced project manager combines individual initiative and team cooperation with competitive play, risk analysis, gut instinct, and some exciting dice rolls to introduce several advanced scheduling concepts. You’ll learn: important scheduling techniques used in the simulation, how to plan for extraneous risk events, how to maintain a consistent risk level, how to calculate merge, and how to game your own project plan.
The Herding Cats™ Game: Earned Value in Action
• A 1-day, 7 PDU (0.7 CEU) facilitated simulation
Herding Cats™ is a simulation that will be familiar to anyone who works on complex technical projects that are difficult to manage. This experiential learning tool gives you the opportunity to test and apply your understanding of project management in a risk-free yet realistic environment. You and your team will be given a full description of a “project” (including the business case, risks, and trade-offs), and asked to manage it to deliver more stakeholder value than competing teams’ projects. After the simulation, you and your team will reflect on: the skills and techniques you used in the simulation; what worked and what didn’t; how the earned-value metrics helped you adjust your plan; what you would change; and how useful lessons might be applied to your actual projects.
Earned-Value Project Management (1)
Day 1: Elementary & Intermediate Earned Value
• A 1-day, 7 PDU (0.7 CEU) instructor-led program
Review the earned-value basics before exploring The PMOBK® Guide approach to earned value. Among the ideas presented are the Cost and Schedule Performance Indexes (CPI and SPI) and the new To Complete Performance Index (TCPI). New Leaf introduces its own unique formula for computing the “atypical” SPI. The cost Estimate at Completion (EAC) and the schedule Estimate to Complete (EACt) are both explained, together with the cost Estimate to Complete (ETC) and the Schedule Estimate to Complete. A spreadsheet entitled “The Magic Table” shows you how to apply earned-value ideas to small projects with “invisible” earned value. You’ll practice the many earned-value calculations with worked examples and with your own projects.
The program concludes with the exciting game of Herding Cats™, an experiential learning tool to test and apply your understanding of the program’s concepts. Upon completion, you’ll know how to apply the fundamentals of earned-value analysis in a practical setting.
Earned-Value Project Management (2)
Day 2: Advanced Topics in Earned-Value Execution & Control
• A 1-day, 7 PDU (0.7 CEU) instructor-led program
Participants must either have taken the 1-day New Leaf review of the earned-value basics (see Day 1: Elementary and Intermediate Earned-Value) or be experienced earned-value users. The program will introduce several powerful New Leaf formulas and indexes: a formula for computing the “atypical” Schedule Performance Index (SPI); the Staffing-to-Schedule Index (StSI); the Remaining Work Index (RWI); the Re-baselined Staffing Index (RbSI); four different methods to forecast a project’s schedule; and an error analysis of indexes. The program features a 5-benchmark method to create the most conservative, correct project re-baseline. (This program is intended as the second of two 1-day programs.)
Project Portfolio Management:
Managing the Business Challenge of Multiple Projects
• A 1-day, 7 PDU (0.7 CEU) instructor-led program
This program shows you how to maintain an on-going relationship between a project’s need to balance scope, schedule, and cost, and the organization’s need to achieve its strategic objectives. For an individual project, you will explore how to judge a project’s overall business worth, how to value the product’s component features, and how to report on (and respond to questions about) the project’s business value at the critical phase reviews.
For the project portfolio, you will learn how to rank projects, how to revise that ranking, how to get the information you need, and how to optimize resources across projects. You will learn how to avoid the common error of choosing a project from a value-ranked list (which can cost 25% of a portfolio’s value).
At the end of the program, you will know how to: value trade-offs within a project; prepare for an effective project phase review; make the critical go/no-go decisions at every life-cycle phase; and execute an effective on-going portfolio review. (This program may be followed by the 1-day Multiple People on Multiple Projects or the 1-day Portfolio Workshop.)
Multiple People on Multiple Projects:
Managing the People Challenges of Multiple Projects
• A 1-day, 7 PDU (0.7 CEU) instructor-led program
Explore ways to administer people within a project and across the portfolio. (This program may be preceded by the 1-day Project Portfolio Management.) Individuals will learn how to balance commitments to several projects with regular functional job obligations.
Project portfolio managers will learn how to get the information needed to make good resource decisions about each project in a portfolio. Everyone will learn how to optimize resources across several projects.
The program emphasizes tools and techniques for real business needs. Upon completion, you will be able to balance and allocate resources within a project and across the portfolio. You will leave the program with spreadsheets and graphs to use back at work. (This program may be followed by the 1-day Portfolio Workshop.)
The Portfolio Workshop:
Building & Balancing a Strategic Portfolio
• A 1-day, 7 PDU (0.7 CEU) instructor-led program
This all-day, hands-on workshop allows you to build and balance your own strategic portfolio of projects. (This workshop can follow either of the 1-day programs, Project Portfolio Management or Multiple People on Multiple Projects.) After a quick review of PMI’s definitions for portfolio management, you’ll begin with a generic portfolio of 16 key descriptors for 35 project candidates. You will follow an 8-step method to select and sort the projects into an aligned portfolio. You will establish value metrics and calculate the difference in value between your “best-in-category” and your “best-overall” results. Working with your own team’s copy of the generic model, your team will develop a thoughtful portfolio that delivers strategic value.
The final exercise lets you transform the generic model into your own organizational model. Using the transformed model, you will select and resource-level a portfolio that optimizes the strategic value to your organization. The workshop will use Microsoft’s Excel and Project.
Project Portfolio Combination
• A 3-day, 21 PDU (2.1 CEU) instructor-led program
A combination of three programs: Project Portfolio Management, Multiple People on Multiple Projects, and The Portfolio Workshop. For more details, see the individual descriptions for each.