Project Management for Engineers teaches the fundamentals of project management that are relevant to the needs of most technical project leaders. A key objective of the workshop is to provide an approach to technical project planning that enables project teams to put together realistic, comprehensive plans quickly.

Traditional, agile, and hybrid project management methods are presented, with exercises that show how to plan projects for successful outcomes using best-practices that will fit within most existing product development processes. A Technical Project Plan Template is provided, which is useful for companies that don’t use a template; and for those that do use a template it can be used to enhance your project planning.

The examples used in the Project Management for Engineers sessions are drawn from a broad range of product development team environments at small, medium, and large companies serving many industries. You will also benefit from the workshop leader’s direct experience contributing to successful engineering projects for over 25 years.

Project Management for Engineers enables you to:

• Establish common project management language on your teams
• Manage remote team members
• Develop realistic, comprehensive plans quickly
• Improve the accuracy of project estimates
• Produce on-time and on-budget deliverables
• Improve team communication through excellent project planning
• Develop risk mitigation plans that consider internal and external dependencies

Agenda

Project Management Basics

• What is “Project Management” and why is it important?
• Project management terminology
• Project lifecycle
• Triple constraint
• Requirements management
• Project metrics

Project Planning

• Planning benefits
• Engineering project planning challenges
• Planning templates and checklists
• Internal and external dependencies
• Communication plans
• Project planning exercise

Project Lifecycle Models

• Waterfall process and modified waterfalls
• Spiral model
• Agile model
• Staged delivery
• Evolutionary delivery
• Design-to-schedule
• When to use ad-hoc methods
• Hybrid models
• Lifecycle model selection exercise

Project Estimating

• Prerequisites for accurate estimates
• Delphi method
• Analogy method
• Rapid prototyping method
• Top-down method
• Bottom-up method
• Best/worst case methods
• Work breakdown structure
• Estimation exercise

Project Scheduling

• Scheduling basics
• Milestones, targets and forecasts
• Scheduling tools
• Steps for creating a schedule

Risk Management

• Examples of risks
• Risk assessment and mitigation plans
• Risk brainstorming

Stakeholder Management

• Definition of stakeholders
• Levels of stakeholders
• Stakeholder relationships
• Communication and influence
• Stakeholder exercise