Friday, May 29, 2009

Project Management Training - A Key To Profitable Organization

from George Purdy

It is safe to say that for an organization, there is no important task than to develop their important asset of all: it's workforce. Training workforce is very important to help each employee to understand and reach his potential; educate the workforce and connect them emotionally to achieve organizational objectives. Project management training is a training framework which helps organizations to achieve these important goals.

We can broadly classify project management into project planning and managing the project as per the plan. Fine project management training should include sessions on resource planning, risk assessment methodologies, estimation techniques, schedule preparation and tracking, resource management. Training should take into account a proper balance between management and planning aspects of project management.

There are a lot of choices available to an organisation on providing project management training to it's workforce. One way is to develop internal trainers and training framework within the company. This type of in house training has the advantage of saving costs, giving flexibility on the training content. However it may take long time to reach a matured stage for the training framework.

One more alternative way is to use the services offered by professional training institutions, whose main objective is to provide professional training to business organizations. An organisation that doesn't have the needed resources to train the workforce in house, can take advantage of the services offered by these training institutions. This could save lot of time and energy. But these services may be very dear.

One of the useful ways is to have a good collection of management books in a company library.One such book which one can get hold of in management lierature is Training for profit: a guide to the integration of training in an organizations success.It explains the opportunities and the advantages that a person gets from workforce training and corelates them to the financial performance of the organization's.It also acts as a helpful guide to the internal trainers by helping them to know the innovative methods by which a workforce can be trained.

In order to successfully build a team and carry out a project, a number of soft skills are essential. These include communication skills, cross-cultural competence, interpersonal skills, the ability to negotiate and effective customer interaction. Project management training needs to incorporate these skills into its curriculum. Having a well-trained workforce is very important, and no organization should underestimate the impact it can have on profitability.

Training employees in project management helps organizations to achieve their predetermined objectives in executing projects. Areas of project management training include project planning, resource planning, risk assessment and estimation techniques and preparation and monitoring of schedules The training can be internal in order to save on costs and have flexibility in training content; or it can be given by external institutions, if the organization does not have in-house resources for training. Providing access to management books such as Training for Profit: A Guide to the Integration of Training in an Organizations Success is also a good alternative.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Conducting effective meetings

An organization of any size requires meetings. Meetings help different people with different job responsibilities cooperate to complete projects and achieve objectives.

But as Peter Drucker noted, an abundance of meetings is a sign of a diseased organization. If you conduct effective meetings, they will become shorter and less frequent.

Here are a few guidelines for conducting effective meetings:

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Silos, Politics and Turf Wars


A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors

by Patrick M. Lencioni

Lencioni addresses a serious problem facing most organizational leaders. A recent study by the American Management Association found 97% of executives believed `silos' have negative effects on organizations, 31% believed they have extensive destructive consequences, and 83% believed they existed in their companies.

Read more at http://www.pivotalpersonalbest.com/silos.htm