Advanced Monitoring and Evaluation of Projects

Course Introduction

No matter the size of your project, it's a complex puzzle of interconnected parts that must align to meet deadlines, stay within budgets, and uphold quality standards. Even a minor hiccup can cascade into delays and financial setbacks. Keeping everything synchronized is a daunting task, causing stress for both project managers and sponsors. That's why every project requires a robust project control system to track progress and evaluate performance, alongside project managers equipped with the right soft skills to lead, influence, negotiate, and motivate team members.

During project execution, the culmination of planning efforts leads to visible progress, impressing senior managers. But how do we gauge progress accurately? While numerous metrics can be tracked, only a select few truly reflect the project's performance.

To effectively monitor, measure, and assess project performance, a thorough planning and initiation process is crucial. This lays the groundwork for defining objectives, success criteria, key performance indicators, timelines, risks, budgets, and benefits—essentially setting the standards against which progress will be evaluated.

This training course will delve into:

• Defining project success and failure
• Understanding governance mechanisms for supporting initiation, planning, execution, and closure
• Establishing key performance indicators, metrics, and reporting structures
• Utilizing proven planning techniques to control project scope, schedule, costs, uncertainties, communication, and quality
• Implementing effective project execution and control methods to aid reporting
• Developing soft skills to complement planning strategies and manage expectations effectively.

Training Objectives

By the end of this training course, participants will be able to:

• Understand how projects originate and get started
• Agree key performance indicators and success criteria and understand why they are necessary
• Learn the processes, tools and techniques of project planning with a risk management focus
• Lead, Influence and negotiate with people to deliver what they promise and make projects successful
• Understand project team members and enable project teams to be highly productive
• Build effective dashboards with the knowledge of scorecards to report project performance?
• Measure, forecast, present status, and control project performance by employing earned value techniques

Training Methodology

This training course will utilise a variety of proven adult learning techniques to ensure maximum understanding, comprehension and retention of the information presented. Over five days, this training course is highly interactive and practical. It uses a wide variety of concepts and models to explore effective leadership in projects. Case studies, diagnostic self-assessment questionnaires, role-playing activities and group exercises to give delegates the opportunity to discover, practice and consolidate their learning. Delegates will have the opportunity to assess and discuss the application of the content to their own project and to devise their own personal developmental plan for each aspect of the course.

Who should Attend?

This training course will be of great value to anyone managing or involved in projects; anyone wanting to get involved in projects, regardless of their professional background or industry

This training course is suitable to a wide range of professionals but will greatly benefit:

• Project Managers / Team Leaders
• Project Technical / Workstream Leaders
• PMO staff
• Project Sponsors / Owners
• Business Functional Management or personnel

Day One: Project Basics

• Organisation Vision, Mission & Strategy
• Characteristics of projects
• How project success is measured
• Project context and the environment
• Initiation
• Defining project scope

Day Two: Planning Projects with Execution, Monitoring and Control in Mind

• What is project planning?
• What work has to be done?
• In what order will the work be done?
• How long will work take?
• Who do we need to undertake the work, including acceleration techniques
• What tools can we use to communicate our plans?

Day Three: Risk Management

• How much will the project cost?
• Risk Management processes, tools and techniques
• Designing the monitoring and control system using S curves
• Introducing a change control system
• The value of Audits
• Baselining

Day Four: Monitoring and Control, Evaluation, Reporting & Hand-over

• Setting up Project Control Systems
• Selecting Appropriate Key Performance Indicators
• Project execution
• Monitoring Performance through Earned Value Management
• Reviewing what has been achieved and reporting progress
• Controlling Project Handover to Operations

Day Five: Looking After and Leading the Team

• Project people selection, team building and empowerment
• Leadership vs management
• Negotiating and delegating with confidence
• Meetings and safe communication with stakeholders
• Conflict handling
• Project closure
• Lessons learned