We are a unique training and consulting firm made up of people that have “been there and done it.” If you have ever been associated with projects in the high tech industry whether product development projects or any other project in the company, you will relate.
Have you ever had to do a project with too few resources and too little time, and too many features? We can help you!
Bottom line: project leadership is managing results and relationships, to ensure satisfied expectations from your project stakeholders and customers.
After both working with and consulting with the most successful teams in Silicon Valley, we give you tools to lead project teams through the labyrinth of influencing, educating, and achieving to meet the end result you need in a predictable manner.
The Product
The Dashboard project plan!
The Dashboard is a one page project plan. Yes, you read correctly. How many times have you either been handed a project plan or handed out a project plan of many pages? What did your team do with it? Did they read every page, digesting everything? With all the activities everyone is engaged in these days, we sincerely doubt it.
Doing what we know how to do and have done many times before will not necessarily achieve the results we need now! This project plan is based on the end result required, not empirically building from the task level to the project level. Creative thinking is required to do things differently than we’ve done before to make bigger gains in less time with fewer resources. We give you tools to achieve that.
The Training
The workshop is the way students learn to create the Dashboard project plan. The workshop is paced to the attendees. The average duration is 6-8 hours.
Everyone is asked to bring a project they are currently working on or will be starting very soon.
Participants are taken through the process of creating their own “first cut” of the Dashboard project plan.
The participants learn:
a flexible, easy-to-use framework for planning and managing projects, including those with a high degree of uncertainty
a common language to promote understanding;
lots of tools and techniques for making projects manageable
Day to day leadership responsibilities of the team leader and participants.
We conduct the workshops at the site of your choice. We like classes to be between 3 and 16 people. Pricing includes all materials.
What's in it for me?
To answer the question, we'll let our customers speak for us. Here are comments from clients who have participated in our workshops.
"Writing down what's happening on my project so I can see it in black and white helped me focus on problem areas I didn't realize were there."
"The exercises using our real-life scenarios were great!"
“Being able to apply real work projects to new methodology made the workshop more interactive and valuable."
"The best part for me was developing a project schedule using your methodology."
"Understanding how to identify and sort out project community members, relationships and actions for the different project phases will help me to juggle all the threads of my project."
"From my perspective this class provides valuable information on how to put a project together."
“This class is about the human factors in project management, which often are not considered in real life or in other classes."
"The exercises on risk assessment were real-world for our team."
"Breaking down the planning stage - making the project workable and manageable was the best part for me."
"We generally jump into MS Project - which seemed incorrect, but I wasn't sure. Now I know its premature. There is some clear thinking that needs to take place first. Thanks for straightening me (us) out."
"Analyzing the overall project - thinking about the various parts and their interdependence - was invaluable."
"The discussions and exercises on managing conflict helped me learn more about myself."
"Very informative for my project management needs. These skills are crucial to the success of my projects and for me."
"The group exercises enabled us to see how others do project management."
"I liked the part about getting other team members committed to my project because I have been skipping it."
"The real-world, hands-on exercises makes you think about a specific situation on your project and be able to formulate possible courses of action."
"The models helped me realize things that may not be intuitive."
"Well defined. Easily transferrable to my current job requirements."
"The project team building and processes/states that teams go through was great! Now I understand better the stuff that drives me crazy."
"The interaction with my teammates to develop our project plan was invaluable. We never seem to take the time to think about what we are going to do before we try to do it. You helped us get clear about what's important and understand the risks involved. I feel better now about pulling this thing off. God Bless You!!"
"Your experience gave us insights on our specific issues and problems."
"The class exceeded my expectations! I will definitely recommend it to many coworkers who can benefit from this insight."
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Executive Forum delivers programs designed to help companies build stronger leaders, manage change more effectively, and construct more productive and sustainable organizations.