Research shows that many projects don’t deliver the expected results when the deadline hits. Although this may not be officially classed as a failure, when projects fail to deliver the projected benefits, or are either delivered over budget or late, this is often deemed the effect of poor project management. And further research shows that total failures are estimated to be as much as 15% of projects. So how can you ensure that your project and company is not part of this percentage?
Accredited project management training can equip your staff and line managers with the skills and knowledge required, to not only deliver successful projects, but also to set realistic objectives from the outset of the brief. Research has proven that companies that have implemented an official project management methodology have a significant advantage over businesses that have not.
Qualified training will help your staff at all stages of a project, from concept to completion and everything in between. At the beginning of a project, the most important elements are: estimating project time and costs, generating ideas and defining exciting but achievable goals and calculating potential risks and pitfalls. During the project, there are techniques and tactics to help motivate yourself as the manager as well as the rest of your team.
Training can help you prepare: dependable project control and monitoring systems for the entire process, how to measure your deliverables along the way and whether you’re on target for your deadline. Anomalies need to be considered too, so good training will advise you on a course of action to take when unexpected obstacles raise their ugly head during your
project.
At the conclusion of your project, you obviously want to have all deliverables ready for your client and maintaining clear communication with them throughout the process is essential. It is rare that a project will always go to plan. Often clients can change their direction and therefore change the deliverables, and sometimes you and your team will come up against unavoidable issues where you’ll have to explain to your customer and develop an alternative strategy.
Project management training is suitable for most employees. At all levels of their career, they are certainly going to need some project management training and experience. Executives depend on successful project delivery to maintain customers, win new ones and achieve company objectives, so all team members need project management skills to plan and carry out their parts of the project.
John McE writes articles on a number of subjects including project management and related training. For more about this see Project Management Professional.
