Projects across the globe range in size and value. While some projects are focused within local communities, some projects are extremely large-scale international investments. Although the fundamentals of project management apply to most plans, a project’s size is likely to translate into a number of factors that influence the way we perform project management.

Organising global events such as the World Cup isn’t quite as simple as putting on a couple of football matches. The level of preparation that goes into large sporting events would blow the average project manager’s mind and that’s why an entire committee dedicates time to making it work.

National security is often a silent partner. It remains ready and waiting for the arising of a national disaster. Despite the misconception, national security plans aren’t simply instruction booklets gathering dust, waiting to be opened in case of an emergency. National security plans are constantly shifting and evolving in order to reflect any potential or imminent threats.

When it comes to risk management, the stakes are never higher than when dealing with people’s safety. Failure to ensure that the correct protocols are followed means that the danger of death becomes very real.

If you want to promote healthy competition in your workplace then the first step might be adopting a workplace reward system. These are incentive programs that encourage engagement, competition and productivity. There are number of different ways you can create reward systems to benefit your business.

Project Management is one of the most competitive industries in the world. There is fierce competition across the board, with companies battling it out for the contracts that showcase their skills. In order to get ahead in the field, there are a few factors you need to remember to give yourself the advantage.

There is a competitive streak in all of us to some degree. It is undoubtedly stronger in some than in others, but it definitely exists. The presence of competition in a work or sporting context brings the best out of some people. Indeed, it is often the biggest measure of someone’s ability to see how they respond to adversity and the threat of competition from rivals.

As a provider of both internet based and land-based teaching courses, we are able to say that we place a lot of value in the idea of mobile learning. E-learning has all the benefits of a contemporary lifestyle whilst adopting the university based ideals of self-motivated learning. But do land-based teaching courses offer anything that e-learning can’t?

All projects come with an element of risk, that’s just a fact, but there are many ways in which great project managers are able to manage this risk, keeping it from derailing a project and spelling failure for them and their team. It doesn’t matter how confident the project team are when entering into their new venture, risks are seemingly always there, and are very hard to avoid, and it’s important for project managers to know how to avoid them, manage them and resolve any problems caused throughout the duration of their project.

The first responsibility of the project manager is to assess risks before starting, thus reducing the likelihood of running into issues at a later date and crafting plans around predicted problems that may come up. Accepting that this is going to be something that needs to be considered is important, as a project manager who proceeds without imagining risks is one who will have a more difficult time managing them later. Accepting things are going to happen is only the first stage, but it’s one of the most important parts of effective risk management that paves the way for everything else.

From here, the practice of risk management is an ongoing duty for project managers, with diligent attention paid allowing for project managers to monitor and assess risk as they proceed through the stages of the project. Resources are precious, of course, and this is why attempting to deal with every single minor problem is a bit of a fool’s errand. Project teams are advised, then, to accept the arrival of risks and have an effective risk management strategy in place to tackle them when they do.

Expert training for project managers is vital to mastering these skills, the Management of Portfolios (MoP™) guidance provides advice and examples of how to apply principles, practices and techniques which help to optimise an organisation’s investment in change alongside its business as usual (BAU) work. MoP™ helps organisations to answer a fundamental question: ‘Are we sure this investment is right for us and how will it contribute to our strategic objectives?’ Investment is the key word because portfolio management is about investing in the right change initiatives and implementing them correctly.

MoP™ achieves this by ensuring that:

• The programmes and projects undertaken are prioritised in terms of their contribution to the organisation’s strategic objectives and overall level of risk
• Programmes and projects are managed consistently to ensure efficient and effective delivery

Who’s it for?

This training and qualification is aimed at those involved in a range of formal and informal portfolio management roles encompassing investment decision-making, project and programme delivery, and benefits realisation. It is relevant to all those involved in the selection and delivery of business change initiatives including:

Members of Management Boards and Directors of Change

Senior Responsible Owners (SROs)
Portfolio, Programme, Project, Business Change and Benefits Managers
Business Case Writers
Project Appraisers, Business Process Owner

Bigger risks demand a more practical approach, of course, and this is where smart project managers begin planning around potential risks and problems as much as possible all derived from studying MoP™. If a particular risk has the potential to completely derail a project, for example, project managers must plan around this eventuality before beginning, thus avoiding it altogether. If an unfortunate clash in commitments can be seen, such as training scheduled in at a time when you know work will be heavy and deadlines looming, it’s important to adapt the schedule accordingly to avoid such conflicts.

But large risks can be made smaller, by limiting the impact of these risks. This is referred to as mitigation, and is probably the most commonly used risk management strategy for project managers. The big problems that need to be accounted for are made smaller and easier to fix through pre-emptive measures such as training for team members, and this can reduce the chance of problems being large enough to effect the overall health and progress of the larger project and what it is trying to achieve. This can sometimes also have the effect of eliminating the risk altogether, which is the absolute best result.

There is, surprisingly, such a thing as positive risk, which come in the form of risks related to desired results. Maybe you don’t have enough resources to account for massive success? In these circumstances, it’s important to maximise the impact of that risk, rather than diminish it, and have strategies in place to cater for the aftermath should it come. Risk management is all about assessment and action, with the latter only really required when the former has identified certain areas as high risk and in need of attention. When this has been done, it is the task of the project manager to simply monitor and control the rest.

Risk management is one of the most important tools in the project manager’s toolbox, and is something that can make or break a project as it moves forward. With training in disciplines such as MoP™ available from ILX, practitioners can learn all of the skills they need along with methodologies that can be applied to projects in a real business setting. Assessing and managing risks on a project can help to keep teams from facing insurmountable odds further down the line, and project managers who are able to properly identify and deal with risks is much more likely to guide their project to ultimate success.

In an ideal world, we’d all finish up on projects well ahead of schedule, doing away with any chance of procrastination and eradicating those annoying little speed bumps that come up along the way. But this isn’t an ideal world, as we all know, and the reality is that, in the IT sector as well as almost every other industry, some 75% of projects fail because of missed deadlines. When dealing with clients and expectant managers, deadlines are just one of those necessary evils of being a project manager but, with small changes in attitude to those deadlines, some pretty wonderful things can start to happen.

Time is something none of us feel we have enough of, but it’s also something that is essential to our success. In this regard, finishing projects bang on the deadline can often feel like an insurmountable challenge and, when it’s met, a huge triumph for the project manager and their team. But finishing a project early is the Holy Grail, with time after completion for tweaks and changes to be made where needed. Without this grace period in which a manager and team members can take stock and reflect on what might still need to be done, important things can be missed and mistakes can be left without appropriate time to fix them.

Working ahead of schedule also affords project managers with more time to manage problems, conflicts and unexpected risks during the project, as well as afterwards, with potential disasters prevented from completely derailing a venture and throwing projects into a state of turmoil from which they may never be able to recover. When working ahead of schedule instead of constantly racing against the clock, then, project managers and their teams are able to stop, deal with problems and then continue without the stress of falling behind on tasks and missing little milestones.

With training for project managers with courses from ILX such as PRINCE2, professionals can learn about key ideas and methodologies that can develop their skills as a project manager, as well as how to apply this knowledge to their everyday roles while working on a project. Offering both theoretical and practical experience through classroom-based or virtual learning, PRINCE2 courses are designed to develop a project managers’ ability to manage projects, teams and guide them to ultimate success with the principles of an internationally recognised project management method.

But, if completing projects ahead of schedule was that easy, we’d all be doing it on a daily basis, but there are a few things that can be done to prevent those things that threaten to reduce productivity and push projects behind schedule from actually happening. The biggest problems for most project managers are:

• Procrastination – faced by project managers, as well as anyone working on something that needs to be done by a certain date, procrastination is something the plagues even the most focused project professionals. There is always something masquerading as more important, more interesting or more urgent – such as email – but, by indulging these things in the moment, it can become impossible to focus on the task at hand.
• Timeframes – experienced project managers will know that, no matter the size of the project, it will most often, somewhat inexplicably, take as long as the deadline allows. That means that the same project can be completed in a week as can be finished in a month, and setting long deadlines can actually curb productivity in this regard. While timeframes have to be reasonable, attention must also be paid to the ability of projects to expand to the deadline assigned.

What, then, can be actively done about these issues? It is human nature to put things off that we’d rather not be doing, but it is the nature of project management that those tasks that seem least appealing are often the most important to the overall health of the project. To motivate yourself and your team, then, it is useful to think of all of the benefits of finishing early:

• Achieve Perfection – perfection is what we’re all going for, of course, but even if the perfectly executed, 100% completed project isn’t always possible, more time affords teams extra room to make sure everything that can be done, is done. When fighting against the ticking clock, it’s tempting to get things to around 95% completion with no time to check and improve things, and this can be avoided when leaving space at the end of project to tweak and change things.
• Domino Effect – logic dictates that, when the previous project is completed ahead of schedule, project managers can actually get started on their next big endeavour early. Yes early. One of the biggest benefits of a new, more efficient way of working is that, with one project comes another, and you’ll suddenly find yourself with more time than you possibly could have imagined.
• Dissipate Disaster – while things are always going to arise that cause problems with a project, whether that’s conflict within the team, last minute changes or software problems, but leaving yourself enough time to cater for this can make the whole experience less stressful, with less chance of disaster making you late in delivery of the project.

It can be incredibly difficult to work to anything but the threat of the last minute deadline but, with so many unknowns when planning a project and so much risk inherent to the process, it can be a major mistake to do this. With all of the benefits of working ahead of schedule and completing projects early apparent to most project managers, a few alterations to the way in which they and their team work can make all of the difference. Many ways in which project professionals can work towards this are learnt through training on courses such as PRINCE2, offered by ILX along with many other project management training courses. Contact us today to find out more about our excellent training