Pump up your Project Team

Course of drowning your team into REAL project.

Description

The project management methodology went through a long path of development and in the modern world, the interest of experts in the project and program management is inclined from the processes and techniques for managing people. If a human being is in his place, it is biologically easy and natural for him to perform job position duties, and this leads to the fact that the whole team plays their role in the project by 200%. No need to adjust, redo the work, “motivate” and waste time on the destructive conflicts.

If you are planning a complex and important project, you need to create the exact right team and organize teamwork. And, perhaps, it would be nice to look at the behavior of the project team before entrusting the project to them?

“Pump up the Project Team” training gives you this opportunity.

What is the basis?

Expedition Project Management

According to “Tuchman’s Model,” there are five stages of psychological development of the project team:

• FORMING. The team gathers together, learns about the project, about their formal roles and responsibilities. The team members during this phase, generally, independent of each other and not particularly open.
• STORMING. The team begins to explore the work on the project, the technical solutions, and the approach to project management. If team members are not configured to cooperate and not open to different ideas and perspectives, the situation can become destructive.
• NORMING. Team members begin to work together and adjust their work habits and behaviors to promote teamwork. Team members begin to trust each other.
• PERFORMING. The team functions as a well-organized unit. Team members perform their tasks and solve problems safely and effectively.
• ADJOURNING. Team quits and moves to the next project.

All these phases are necessary and inevitable in order to develop the team to be ready for the challenge, problem-solving, planning, and work to achieve results. Usually, these stages naturally follow each other on the stages of the life cycle of the project. However, there are cases when the team gets stuck at one stage or even returned to an earlier stage. Nevertheless, if the team members used to work together on other projects, some destructive stages can be skipped.

It is clear that the most effective way for the team is working on stage performing and the least efficient at the storming stage. In order not to risk a real project, you can test-drive the team. This will give you the ability to understand team members’ expectations, skills, etc. And team members could be rearranged or tuned.

Why should you participate?

The general idea of the training consists of learning project management with the implementation of the mini-project – reach the mountain summit. Based on some of the unpredictability of the mountains, the team will have to refer to the preparation of the project seriously and carefully, and then on personal experience meet with all the hardships and privations of the mountain expedition.

In addition to exploring tools, methods, processes, and project management documents, training will help team members to distribute the roles in a real project, learn to work effectively with each other and improve interpersonal relationships. The informal communication and participation in micro-expedition on mountain trails reinforce a sense of confidence and establish a good working relationship.

Experience in training «Expedition Project Management» shows:

• how enthusiastically people rush into a new expedition project (FORMING);
• how some members of the team are baffled by the organizational and physical difficulties (STORMING);
• how rally the rest of the team in the last days before departure from mountains (NORMING);
• how they support each other in difficult situations while mountain hike (PERFORMING);
• with pleasure perform lessons learned from experience of the successful expedition (ADJOURNING).

Key features

• Ability to test-drive your team before giving them real project.
• Adjust project roles and find right persons for it.
• Get the completely ready team on the project start.
• The company will receive the formed team that psychologically will be on the stage of Norming or Performing.

• Project manager and his team of an upcoming project.
• Other stakeholders in upcoming project.

Topics

Stages of the creation of an effective team for Your project:

1. Your company forms a team of staff, whom you plan to entrust the implementation of an important new project.
2. The team goes through online psychological testing and will receive a transcript of test results and feedback from our experts.
3. The team is sent to the training, where team members will briefly recall/will study the general theory of project management:
   • how to start the project correctly;
   • learn how to fill and update the project documents (Charter, WBS, the procurement Plan and the communications Plan, baselines content, timing and cost of the project);
   • learn how to complete risk register and manage project risks;
   • create templates and run regular reports on the project;
   • work with a single schedule by using Microsoft Project 2013 Server EPM system;
4. The team will prepare an expedition to one of the closest 2-, 3-thousands high mountain tops and actually go to the mountains to reach the selected summit.
5. On expedition completion, team members will review the lessons from the project experience and (by the request of the customer) will take exams on project management and Microsoft Project usage.

Workshops

1. Kickoff Meeting.
   • Create Project Charter.
2. Assign Roles and responsibilities.
   • Psychological testing.
   • Analyze results.
   • Assign roles based on testing.
3. Create a communication field.
4. Planning of the expedition preparation.
5. Risk Management session
   • Create risk register.
   • Analyze risks.
   • Complete risk response actions.
6. Procurement planning.
   • Create expedition procurement plan.
   • Update project schedule with works related with procurement.
7. Prepare Expedition.
   • Organize logistics to the climbing start point.
   • Get necessary equipment and ammunition.
   • Prepare detailed “Expedition Roadmap”.
8. Go/No-Go Decision.
9. EXPEDITION.
10. Lessons learned
11. Team and roles Adjustment.

The knowledge and skills

After this “pumping”, the project management team will be predictable and be ready to implement projects of any complexity.

The overall effect of the training:

• the level of knowledge of the project team increase in the methodology of project management and technical tools usage;
• the sense of trust, cohesion, and cooperation will strengthen among team members, morale will be increased, conflict reduced and teamwork improved;
• the dynamic and cohesive team culture will be formed;
• individual and team performance increase;
• there will be opportunities for mutual learning and mentoring aimed at sharing knowledge and experience among team members.

At the same time project manager will get:

• problem-solving skills;
• create conditions conducive to teamwork;
• construction of an open and effective communication;
• constructive conflict management.