Introduction

“Wow, this is great stuff. If anyone ever asks you ‘What does a Project Manager do?’ direct them to this course.” – Leah Henig.

Going deeper than the DPPM course, covers the ten most important lessons that contribute to project success. Includes real life stories of difficult situations and the best way to handle them.  Provides a 25 year career shortcut to help make you the most effective project manager and leader of teams.

• The Magic Of Accountability.  How to leverage the power of accountability to give you the *authority* you need to ensure project success.  Includes the magic sentence that will maximize the probability of the organization giving you what you need.

• The Importance Of The WBS.  How the work breakdown structure (WBS) makes everything else in PM easy.  With a story of how, as a very junior manager, I once got a very senior and aggressive team to become WBS believers.  Includes a real WBS my team prepared for a $140M aerospace project.

• The Power Of Process.  The reason best practices can solve almost any problem, no matter how complex.  Why the precedence diagram is your most important PM tool, even more important than the Gantt chart.  Includes a real precedence diagram for that same $140M aerospace project.

• Planning The Risk Budget.  How a well planned risk budget makes the entire PM life-cycle work. Eight common risks you should always consider.  Why you should focus only on the top ten risks.  With a professional risk register template in Excel.

• Managing The Risk Budget.  Real life advice on how to best manage the risks once underway.  The rule of thumb for how much risk budget you should have as you proceed.  The show-stopping sentence that enables you to keep as much risk budget as possible when under pressure to give some up.

• Backfitting Scenarios When Needed.  How scenario-based testing helps convince the customer the project will do what they need and automatically signs off the requirements at the same time.  A real life story of how backfitting scenarios once helped ensure the success of my complex $20M project.

• Make Friends With Procurement.  Why it is so important to formally close your procurements and prevent additional spending, even by mistake.  And, in general, why the PM should make friends with all the supporting departments to make your job much easier.

• The Top 3 Drivers Of Project Success.  A true story about a PM that made all three of the most common mistakes on a single project.  And how any one of the three most important drivers of project success could have saved him.

• Focus On The Success Path.  The over-riding importance of the success mindset that any leader should broadcast to their team.  A real example of how my team was able to shorten a 3.5 year schedule to 3 years under pressure because we believed there was a solution before we knew how to do it.

• The Benefits Of Telling The Truth.  Why truth is solid, safe ground.  With a real life story about how repeatedly telling the truth as a young project manager, when my boss obviously did not want to hear it, ended up being the best thing I could do for the project, my team, the customer, and my boss.  And got me promoted to functional manager of a 55 person organization.

Making these lessons yours will greatly increase the probability of success of your projects, and give you a 25 year career shortcut.

The course also earns you two Professional Development Units (PDU’s) in the Business Acumen (Leadership) category.