Project management

We offer an array of workshops in the discipline of project management. Looking to develop project management skills in up-and-coming project managers?  Want to encourage project management behaviors in your non-project managers?  Need to up the ante in your current and experienced project managers? Look no further than the offerings below!

For questions or more information, email or call us at 515.988.3938.

What Sets Cygnet Apart?

A great classroom experience only takes you so far. Click on our Taking Flight and Coaching & Immersion Programs for more information about how we help participants move from classroom to culture.

Taking Flight

At Cygnet Leadership Solutions, we want to ensure that you obtain the best return on your training investment possible. Therefore, we encourage participants to explicitly state how they will change their behaviors as a result of their workshop experience.

Flight Plans

After each workshop, each participant will complete and file a Flight Plan documenting the key concepts that the participant found valuable and applicable to his / her professional goals, along with specific actions that he / she commits to performing in the workplace to leverage the classroom experience. The Flight Plans even have deadlines so that you know when to expect changes in behaviors!

The classroom facilitator can either encourage each participant to share the Flight Plan with his / her management, or we can formalize the Flight Plan by collecting a copy and forwarding it to the appropriate management contact. It's up to you.

Master Flight Plan

At Cygnet Leadership Solutions, we can "train up" just about anybody. But it takes management's support to ensure that workshop participants carry out their Flight Plans back on the job. Therefore, some of our clients have found it beneficial to meet with us for a few hours after a workshop or a program to gain insight into what their participants learned, and how they can support the use of new skills in the workplace.

This post-session is an optimal time to work as a management team in understanding your own roles in helping your project managers and business analysts succeed. You will craft a Master Flight Plan that you can follow to get the short and long-term results you need.

Coaching and Immersion Programs

Although classroom learning is an effective means of conveying new concepts, tools, and even ways of thinking, actually applying concepts in a real-world environment can paralyze even the best of the best. Therefore, Cygnet Leadership Solutions offer a Coaching and Immersion Program approach.

Select a project management or business analysis program and customize it with one-on-one or small group coaching. Participants will be responsible for "homework" after each workshop to ensure they are applying their newly learned skills back in the workplace. A coach with proven experience in the discipline will meet with each participant on a regular basis between workshops to guide and assist the participant in applying the new skills and supply supplemental information and reviews as necessary.

Our clients find that this approach improves their ROI from the workshops and hastens positive change in their organizations. Ask us about a standard Coaching and Immersion Program schedule that we can then customize to your specific needs.

Workshops

Project Management Fundamentals
3 days
Learn and apply tools, techniques, and skills to initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control, and close a project. Emphasis is on the end-to-end project management process and planning. Case study based and highly interactive. Intended for project managers who manage mid-to-large sized projects.

This workshop is included in the Level I Project Management Program.
A Project Management Focus on Requirements
2 days
A project must be on time and on schedule to be a success; but, it also must deliver an end result that matters to the business. Requirements are the key to the "correct" end result. This workshop is intended for project managers who must define high-level requirements and work with a business analyst to define detailed requirements and for those project managers who manage smaller projects and are also expected to define the requirements.

Participants define requirements from a business perspective and a scoping perspective and learn to engage their stakeholders in the requirements conversation. Participants gain insight into detailed requirements and the business analysis process that delivers "good" requirements.

This workshop is included in the Level I Project Management Program.
Working Your Project Plan
2 days
A great follow-up to Project Management Fundamentals! The learning process remains case study based, but focuses on monitoring and controlling the project, reporting project performance, re-forecasting, and taking appropriate corrective action all while managing stakeholder expectations.

This workshop is included in the Level II Project Management Program.
A Focus on Risk Management
1 day
For project managers who would like a more in-depth look at the risk management processes. Participants develop a risk management plan; use SWOT analysis, Ishikawa diagramming, brainstorming, and assumptions analysis to identify risk events;  identify risk triggers; use decision trees and expected monetary value analysis to analyze risks, and develop risk response plans and estimate the necessary resources to manage risks. Fun and case study based!

This workshop is included in the Level II Project Management Program.
A Focus on Scope Management
1 day
What's in and what's out? Then, how do I keep the "in" in and the "out" out? We hear this question a lot! Participants use facilitative tools to define the necessary scope and build accountability to that scope with their stakeholders using a case study. Then, participants manage to that scope through performance tracking, change control, and stakeholder negotiations.

This workshop is included in the Level II Project Management Program.
Nuts and Bolts of Project Management
2 days
A fun end-to-end practical application of the project management process that is highly interactive and case study based. Intended for project managers of smaller projects and "non-project managers" who really do manage projects amongst their other duties. Our clients love this workshop for their marketing, HR, accounting, customer service, and executive assistance units!
Project Team Member Fundamentals
2 days
Immerse your team members in a hands-on practical workshop in which they learn the project management process from the team member perspective. Team members learn how to participate in creating a WBS, estimate task effort and duration, communicate with stakeholders effectively, and contribute to risk management and corrective action.
A Focus on Stakeholder Management
1 day
Stakeholders can throw wrenches into the best of projects! Learn who is a stakeholder, methods to identify your stakeholders, and develop an understand their motivations regarding your project. Then craft and execute stakeholder management strategies unique to each stakeholder that will keep them engaged for project success.

This is a great workshop for any project manager or for those project managers that want an update on the newest PMI Knowledge Area of Stakeholder Management.
Procuring and Managing Vendor Services
2 days
Intended for project managers who rely on contracted resources to deliver projects. Determine appropriate contract types for various situations, craft a statement of work, integrate contracted resources into the project team, and provide effective performance data and feedback to the appropriate parties. Manage difficult situations in which a party does not fulfill their contracted obligations.
Agile Project Management
2 days
Apply Agile concepts to a case study project by developing a project roadmap and then crafting and managing "sprints" for functional deliveries. Create a product vision and a set of themes, formulate iterations and releases, write and estimate user stories, and manage backlogs and burnup/down charts.
Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP) Exam Prep Express
2 days
Learn to apply for and pass the Agile Certified Practitioner Exam as it is administered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Delivered by an ACP certified instructor that can turn a grueling exam prep into a fun and motivating experience!
PMP/CAPM Exam Prep Express
5 days
Prepare for the PMP Exam as it is administered by the Project Management Institute. Complete the application, practice hundreds of test questions, and learn test-taking strategies. A dynamic PMP-certified instructor uses a variety of techniques to ensure that participants remember exam concepts and remain engaged and motivated. Provides the 35 hours of classroom hours PMI requires to sit for the exam.
An Executive View of Project Management
.5-1 day
Totally customizable to meet the needs of your executive team! Link your strategic plan to projects that will evolve your organization toward its vision and achieve its annual goals from year to year. Develop a portfolio management approach with prioritization processes to manage organizational capacity. Learn ways to measure project and program success, hold sponsors and project managers accountable, and leverage project management concepts to deliver results efficiently.

W e recommend that clients work with us to integrate the organization's current project processes into the workshop presentations and discussions.
Strategic Behaviors of the Effective Sponsor
.5-1 day
Project sponsors gain an understanding of the project lifecycle, terminology, and the integral role they must play in a project's success. Sponsors learn to develop a partnership with their project managers, formalize expectations, and hold project managers accountable to delivery goals. Understand signs that indicate when sponsor intervention in a project is necessary.

We recommend that clients work with us to integrate the organization's current project processes into the workshop presentations and discussions.
Program Management Fundamentals
2 days
Following the Project Management Institute's program management standards, participants experience a case study program from end-to-end. Participants determine when a program is an appropriate mode of delivery, determine what to include in a program, and create program success criteria. Participants then structure their program components, staff the program roles, and establish the program's governance processes.

We recommend that participants have a solid foundation in formal project management processes and standards.
Effective Care and Feeding of Your Portfolio
2 days
Maintaining the operational processes of your organization that keeps the wheels turning day by day while evolving your organization into something new and different through program and project work can be a daunting charge. Learn how to balance operations and change effectively through portfolio management and effective delegation of accountability, resource management, and risk management. Like other workshops, this is case study based to drive home the concepts in an interactive manner.

Project Management Programs

We recommend that clients develop project management skills with their organizations by using a program approach. Programs can be customized with other workshops to better fit the needs of your organization. Ideally, each program is delivered over 8 to 12 weeks, providing participants the opportunity to practice the concepts from each workshop prior to learning additional skills.

LEVEL I Project Management Program

The Level I Project Management Program is intended to introduce project management skills and best practices to your project managers and formalize and lend consistency to project delivery throughout your organization. It consists of the following workshops in consecutive order:

  • Project Management Fundamentals (3 days)
  • Mastering the Human Dynamic (2 days)

    Mastering the Human Dynamic

    It doesn't get more interactive than this! Participants learn the concepts of emotional intelligence, communication, listening, trust, influence, problem solving, negotiation, teaming, instilling accountability, and conflict management. Each lesson concludes with a group activity that demonstrates and instills the lesson concepts. Group discussions and action plans help bridge the concepts into action and results outside of the classroom.

    Intended for everyone who works with others in any capacity. Especially effective for formal and informal leaders, managers, supervisors, and high-potentials.

    This workshop is included in the Level I Project Management Program, and comes from Leadership & Change.
  • A Project Management Focus on Requirements (2 days)

 

LEVEL II Project Management Program

The Level II Project Management Program moves the project management focus from planning to executing the project and measuring project performance. In this program, project managers further develop skills to be proactive in foreseeing project issues and taking pre-emptive action  with the support of their stakeholders. The Level II PM Program consists of the following workshops in consecutive order:

  • Working Your Project Plan (2 days)
  • Effective Meeting Facilitation (2 days)

    Effective Meeting Facilitation

    Who hasn't attended an unproductive meeting? More importantly, who is running these things? Answer: All of Us!

    Meetings are important tools to deliver results, but can turn into the biggest resource suckers in our lives. Participants apply meeting basics from developing realistic agendas, inviting the "right" participants, neutralizing debilitating attendee behaviors, and creating timely minutes. Beyond that, participants actively use new and refined meeting leadership and facilitation tools and techniques and craft their own "Facilitation Toolbox." We cover face-to-face and virtual meetings concepts.

    This workshop is included in the Level II Project Management Program and the Business Analysis Program and comes from Leadership & Change.

  • A Focus on Risk and Scope Management (2 days)