In this episode we discus the barriers to good communications and how they can be overcome. Based on the APM Body of Knowledge we cover the physical, emotional and geographic barriers to good communications in the project environment and the impact of these barriers on the success of the project. We also explore the use and format of a project communications plan to improve the flow of information in a project. This podcast is part of the parallel learning system an can be used in conjunction with our printed project management study guides, e-learning and APM project management training courses
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I have been following the project managers on twitter group for about 12 months and I am being to ask myself if any real project managers use #PMOT. This is not to say that some of the tweets aren’t interesting and relevant. But you do tend to see the same names over and over again. Many of them like me are project management consultants, trainers, bloggers or PM software providers. The question is how many of the followers are practicing project managers?

Let start with the difficult question of how many people use #PMOT?

This is not an easy question to answer as I can’t find a tool that tells me. All suggestions welcome. We have a couple of ways of finding out

1. The #PMOT Linked in group #PMOT has 81 members, very small.
2. The #PMOT Scores Page on the “plan is” site lists 361 users of the PMOT hash tag http://theplanis.com/pmotscores/
3. A search using Twitter Adder gives me 1001 users of the #PMOT tag and this seems to grow by about 80 users a week.

So it looks like the number of active members is quite small somewhere between 300 and 1000, given the millions of project managers in the world a very small population. I am sure someone clever has written an app the measure the trend in the use of #tags. @APMProjectMgmt tells me that for every contributor another 100 are following. So that would mean between 800 and 100,000 follow #PMOT. I tend to think is more towards the 800.

It’s interesting stuff guys but are the real project managers listening?

Personally I love #PMOT, I get some real hints and tips. To me #PMOT is a small family with the same names popping up now and then. Some of them have real personality. However in my job, as a project management training consultant, I get to travel the country meeting hundreds of project managers in a month. Generally, given the economic climate, they are all stressed over worked, struggling with increasingly demanding customers in an increasingly competitive market. Not one has seen or heard of #PMOT. So are the real project managers following #PMOT or is it just consultants and bloggers? I suspect that very few practicing PMs are live on #PMOT, they are too busy with the pressures of communicating in the project to communicate with the world.

So is #PMOT a valuable contribution to the development of Project Management, or just a bit of fun?

This is the $64,000 question. As it grows it may become a forum to learn real skills on project management. Personally I use it as a way to find out what is going on the “Blogosphere”, but really it’s just a bit of fun. See you at #pmottweetup and let’s have a face to face debate.Similar Posts:

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- Parallel Project Training has been appointed to provide the Prince’s Foundation community of practitioners with project management support and development training for the build environment -

18 May 2010: Parallel Project Training, a specialist training provider in APM project management training
has today been appointed by the Prince’s Foundation for the Build Environment, an educational charity which aims to improve the quality of people’s lives by teaching and practising ecological ways of planning, designing and building.

The Prince’s Foundation selected Parallel Project Training to support the development of project management within its community of practitioners. Parallel Project Training offers a pragmatic approach to training and a wide range of unique and highly innovative learning solutions in a variety of different formats, including study guides, podcasts, on-line e-learning and traditional classroom based training delivery. This ethos complements the Prince’s Foundation’s belief that applying time-tested principles in an exceptional manner is a vital, key component for efficient project management.

Parallel Project Training will be facilitating application workshops, which use projects from the Prince’s Foundation as case studies. The workshops follow the same structure as the APMP syllabus and offer students the opportunity to enhance their skills and best practice knowledge in project management in line with the Association for Project Management’s Body of Knowledge. At a later stage individuals will be given the opportunity to take the APMP qualification.

Paul Naybour, Business Development Director of Parallel Project Training said “This is an excellent opportunity for us to work with a likeminded organisation. We fully expect to learn as much from the Prince’s Foundation’s approach to project management as we do from our own experience. We believe we can offer the charity valuable and cost effective solutions for project management training”.

Tim Goodwin, Chief Operating Officer of the Prince’s Foundation said “I was impressed by the experience and flexibility offered by Parallel Project Training, we are looking forward to working with them to develop more formal approaches to project management”

-Ends-

About Parallel Project Training

Parallel Project Training was formed in October 2009 by John Bolton and Paul Naybour and is supported by a pool of associates, advisers and consultants. Paul’s background is in the management of rail and infrastructure projects, leading major training programmes for many of the key players in the rail and transportation sector. In addition to rail experience, John has a strong pedigree in major programmes in the software and services sectors along with significant involvement in the management and development of professional project managers. Both are very highly experienced project management professionals, each having over ten years experience as project management development professionals. Parallel Project Training is based in Reading and offers a highly innovative approach to project management training. The courses include APMP, planning, risk management, estimating, and project leadership and will lead to accreditation where available. They are delivered using a combination of printed study material, e-learning, podcasts and classroom workshops. Parallel offers exceptional value for money with their innovative approach to efficiency and reducing impact on the environment – offering more for less.

About the Princes Foundation

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment is an educational charity founded by HRH The Prince of Wales and operating to a model of practice-based learning. The Prince’s Foundation engages in live projects at the scale of the region, the city, the neighbourhood, the town, in order to develop new ways of regenerating and building more lively and more environmentally sustainable communities.Similar Posts:

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- Parallel Project Training introduces a project management training course designed to introduce students to the essential elements of Project Management -
 

APM Introductory Certificate in Project Management

4th August, 2010: Parallel Project Training, an innovative new specialist training provider in APM project management training and APM certification, has launched a new two day introductory training course for the APM Introductory Certificate (APM IC). The APM IC is the UK professional body for project management with over 14,000 individual members and 400 corporate members. The Introductory Certificate is its preliminary course for project management professionals.
 

The Parallel Project Training APM Introductory Certificate course follows the APM IC syllabus and covers the essential elements of project management. It is designed to help new project managers develop a better understanding of project management, become familiar with the processes, tools and techniques of project management and enable them to make an effective contribution to the delivery of successful projects.
 

Graduates from the Parallel Project Training Introductory Certificate course will be able to describe a project’s context, write detailed and useful project documentation including business case and project plans, carry out work breakdowns of a project as a first step in planning, carry out risk analysis and stakeholder analysis of a project and be able to sit the APM IC exam with confidence.
 

The course is broken down into the following seven modules:
 

Project Management in Context – differentiating projects from non-projects, exploring programme and portfolio management, the influence of the business and political context on project success, the critical role of the sponsor in project success and support that can be provided by a project office.
 

Planning and Strategy – to clarify how success will be measured from the outset, the influence of stakeholders on requirements, how that can (or cannot) be managed.
 

Executing the Strategy – to drive the project forward to a successful conclusion.
 

Project Management Techniques – to make sure the project is fully understood and estimated fully including costs for completing the project using a number of methods and configuration management to control changes to the design.
 

Business and Commercial – to ensure the business case is robust and the supply chain is delivering value by including the purpose, role and ownership of the business case and working with suppliers through the procurement cycle.
 

Organisation and Governance – to ensure the business remains in control of the project including effective project hand over and learning lessons from the project and clearly defining roles and responsibilities for the project and business deliverables.
 

People and the profession – to encourage effective and strong leadership, manage effective communications, building a project team and leading projects to success
 

The Parallel Project Training APM IC course includes high quality APM IC course manual, which allows students to prepare and coordinate their study plans. The course manual explains the APM IC in simple steps as well as providing sample questions and MP3 podcasts. These cover important topics included in the APM IC exam – a one hour session of 60 multiple choice questions, which students must sit on the last day of the course.
 

Paul Naybour, Business Development Director of Parallel Project Training said “We expect this to be a very popular course as it is an excellent first step for people looking to embark on a project management career. The fact it is only two days long means students can easily devote the relevant time and study to the course without having to take vast amounts of time out of the office. We are proud to be offering both public and corporate APM IC courses in October, November and December 2010.”
 

-Ends-
 

About Parallel Project Training
 

Parallel Project Training was formed in October 2009 by John Bolton and Paul Naybour and is supported by a pool of associates, advisers and consultants. Paul’s background is in the management of rail and infrastructure projects, leading major training programmes for many of the key players in the rail and transportation sector. In addition to rail experience, John has a strong pedigree in major programmes in the software and services sectors along with significant involvement in the management and development of professional project managers. Both are very highly experienced project management professionals, each having over ten years experience as project management development professionals. Parallel Project Training is based in Reading and offers a highly innovative approach to project management training. The courses include APMP, planning, risk management, estimating, and project leadership and will lead to accreditation where available. They are delivered using a combination of printed study material, e-learning, podcasts and classroom workshops. Parallel offers exceptional value for money with their innovative approach to efficiency and reducing impact on the environment – offering more for less. 

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In this podcast we discuss the typical responsibilities of the project manager, sponsor users, team members and suppliers. We relate these responsubilities to the APM body of knowlege. These podcasts are just part of our Parallel Learning System and can be used in conjunction with our printed APMP study guide

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To widen its range of product offering Parallel Project Training has today launched the APM Introductory Certificate in project management. This course is ideally suited to those new to project management who want to understand the core behaviours, processes and tools of project management. Delivered over two days this course is supported by high quality pre-course material including podcasts and mobile e-learning. The course is available both as part of our public programme and for in-house corporate clients.

The course covers the following topics.

1. Project Management in Context;
2.  Planning and Strategy;
3.  Executing the Strategy
4. Project Management Techniques;
5. Business and Commercial;
6. Organisation and Governance;  

For more information on the APM introductory Certificate in Project Management visit www.parallelprojecttraining.com

Our learning material for this course includes mobile learning for you use before you start the course

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Successfully delivering projects in an increasingly competitive environment is a real challenge. At minimum a clear definition of the scope, clearly defined resources, strong commercial management, disciplined change control, strong leadership and first class client management are required. In addressing these, project managers must meet the needs of two masters; the client and consultancy business.

Balancing these different, and often conflicting needs, is a key theme of this session.

This session is distilled from training provided to Halcrow, Scott Wilson and Parsons Brinckerhoff, Network Rail, Transport for London and many others.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the course delegates will be able to:

1. Clearly describe the importance of project managers’ role to the profitability and satisfaction of client needs
2. Explain why and how to manage consulting project throughout the life cycle. Selling, Starting, Delivering and Closing. Specifically this will include effective implementation of the following project control processes
   1. Scope management and planning.
   2. Project management planning and scheduling.
   3. Risk management.
   4. Cost management including planning and forecasting using earned value.
   5. Control of changes.
   6. Issue management and communications.
   7. Manage a contract
3. Demonstrate strategies for managing the client relationship and expectations within the constraints of a contract.

Duration

This course is 2 hours in duration.

Certification training is available in addition to this course as described above.

Target Audience

This course is aimed at anyone who is new to or planning to move in the engineering consulting project management.

Biography

Paul Naybour is passionate about the use of project management in engineering projects to engineering projects. He has a wealth of experience helping engineering consultancies to improve project management and has worked on both sides of the fence. He first love is Nuclear Power Stains and ne may end up taking a real jobs soon. For now he is Business Development Director at Parallel Project Training, co-author of “Your Journey to Professional Project Management, How to Pass the APMP a study guide” and host of the free APM Project Management Podcast channel on iTunes which has over 7000 download since its launch in January 2010

Down load slides here Essentials of Project Management for Consulting EngineersSimilar Posts:

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This podcast describes the APM project lifecycle and why projects are broken into phases. We also look at the difference between and project and extended lifecycle. This podcast is part of our parallel learning system can be used stand alone or in conjunction with our printed study guides, distance learning and face to face workshops.

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Question

“To be an effective Project Manager it is essential to have knowledge of the project topic – only civil engineers can be PM’s for civil engineering projects”

Yes

Do Project Managers need to have specialist technical knowledge? I would argue that they do. That is not to say that they need to understand the minutiae of the detail but a good solid background experience and a broad knowledge of the technical products will turn a so-so project manager into an excellent one. I have spent thirty years running projects of various shapes and sizes but mainly in the software and services industries. Should I be appointed to a similar sized construction project? I will be able to do it, eventually, but it will probably cost more, be riskier and a lot more stressful for all concerned. A project manager with experience and knowledge of the job in hand will be able to

• Hit the ground running, they will be able to formulate plans, build a delivery coalition and be able to understand how efficiencies and excellence can best be achieved
• Have credibility amongst the team and other stakeholders. This may exist in someone new to the discipline but it would be a brave client who commissioned a new nuclear power plant from a firm whose project managers were excellent at software projects and nothing else
• Converse sensibly with contractors and others about the problems that they face and help to convert these into a sensible contractual solution
• Identify and predict major risk areas with far more effectiveness than someone without these attributes, this will save time, money and too many ‘blind alleys’.

There are dangers of course, the primary one being that of the PM who simply has to get involved in all the detail, slowing things down, duplicating effort and not extracting the best for the team. There are also grave dangers where too much experience and knowledge mean that we keep re-inventing the problems of old and get ‘stuck in a rut’. Like most things it is a balance, whilst some knowledge is useful for the reasons identified above, too much knowledge can get in the way,

No

So now I’m intrigued. Was the manager of the T5 project an expert in luggage conveyance systems or an expert in modern building methods. Or thinking on, perhaps they were an expert in aviation transport logistics or even retail outlets. For that matter, expertise in restaurant management or even anti-terrorism security may be of the essence.

The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t matter.

Only the simplest of projects involve just one technical discipline or topic. By far the majority of projects have a myriad of such specialisms and to imagine that the only person who can manage such projects is someone with recognisable expertise in all of them is clearly ridiculous. Apart from any other considerations, which project could afford anyone with this many qualifications?

Project managers manage projects. They do not manage departments, or teams of individuals, sharing the same expertise. If they did then they would be “Functional Managers” and as students of organizational theory can explain, these resemble “Project Managers” in the same way that chalk resembles cheese.

The management of projects is about the management of the overall objective. It is about delivering the big picture by bringing together all the pieces that make up that picture. By necessity the role requires a broad perspective, sometimes referred to as a “helicopter view”, of the overall endeavour. The management of individual specialisms relates only to how these individual “pieces” fit together and involves defining their input, asking after and supplying the necessary support and interfaces they need, and then verifying that they have completed the work satisfactorily. The minutiae of how individual specialists achieve their objectives is something the project manager is drawn into at her or his peril. Not only is it an impossibly big task for all but the simplest of projects but it involves “landing your helicopter” and all the narrowing of perspective that this entails.

In fact, such a scenario is a common cause of strife within projects when the technically expert Project Manager concentrates only on those project elements that coincide with their own technical discipline. It ensures some project elements are neglected whilst upsetting the specialists in question who resent being micromanaged.

The full story of T5 is yet to be written but it does seem that the teething problems were not due to technical failures within any discipline mentioned above. The failure seems be associated with a failure to recognize the need for training of staff. There was a piece of the jigsaw missing: the sort of thing that stands out only when viewed from above. And while you are in your helicopter, “any sign of my suitcase from up there”?Similar Posts:

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