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The Project Planning in Context E-course is a PDF download that I have developed over the past few months in my own effort to assemble and codify the best information about planning and executing projects. I have used this system for myself in setting and achieving some pretty amazing goals.
$12.95

Reasons for Project Planning in Context

By planning within this structure, you will help to ensure that your plans are fully considered, well focused, resilient, practical and cost-effective. You will also ensure that you learn from any mistakes you make, and feed this back into future planning and decision making.

Project Planning using the In Context Process will help you to plan and manage ongoing projects up to a certain level of complexity - this will depend on the circumstance. For projects involving many people over a long period of time, more formal methodologies and approaches are necessary…

It is best to think of Project Planning in Context as a cycle, not a straight-through process. Once you have devised a plan you should evaluate whether it is likely to succeed. This evaluation may be cost or number based, or may use other analytical tools. This analysis may show that your plan may cause unwanted consequences, may cost too much, or may simply not work. In this case you should cycle back to an earlier stage. Alternatively you may have to abandon the plan altogether - the outcome of the planning process may be that it is best to do nothing!

Finally, you should feed back what you have learned from each planning exercise into the next.

What to look for in each section

By the end of the course you should understand how to plan, schedule, and manage small and middle-sized projects. You will know how to complete them on time and on budget. While running a project you will know which jobs are most important, and which deadlines are most important to meet. You will also be able to decide when to take remedial action to bring a project back on course.

These skills are perfectly sufficient for running small and medium-sized projects, and will allow you to balance the four contexts of time, cost, scope, and quality which are present in all projects. As projects become larger, however, a pragmatic general management approach can often be overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the projects being run. Larger projects benefit from formal, methodology-based project and program management. This is a specialty of its own and beyond the scope of this course.

We have covered the Basics in the above Introduction, as well as in the introductory E-book. The rest of the course is broken into three sections, each developing the skills and tools for the following areas of interest:

1. Planning – The conception and definition of a project are essential to its execution and success. This part of the process may even uncover the possibility that you should not actually progress with the rest of the process.
2. Organizing – The second portion of the course focuses on the principles that will guide you through the detailed planning and ultimate execution of the project. It also describes tools for planing such as Gantt Charts and Critical Path diagrams. We will also discuss planning and action steps for very simple,or short-term projects that do not require as much detail.
3. Controlling – In the final portion of the course we will examine the steps needed for performing the actions of the project and how to measure your progress.

During the course, keep in mind that the most important things that you need for the successful planning and execution of a project are Information, Communication, and Commitment.

Look for the Core Principles for Review at the end of each section. These short summaries include the basics of what you need to know to make your project a success.

Have fun!

$12.95

Project Planning in Context ©

Table of Contents and Overview

There are three basic areas of interest in this model:

Planning, Organizing, and Controlling.

Each of which will be examined in turn:

Planning

• Conceive the idea
• Define the Project (summarized in the e-book “Project Planning in Context”)
• What is the Need behind the Need
• Clarify what you want to accomplish
• Envision the Result
• Brainstorming
• Affinity Diagramming
• Plan the project – The Four Contexts
• Time
• Cost
• Scope
• Quality
• Balancing the Contexts

Organizing

• Principles
• Organizing
• Tools
• Gantt Charts
• Critical Path Analysis
• PERT analysis
• You and your team
• Identify and Assign Tasks
• Activities
• Communicate the project plan to your project team
• Start the Project
• Scheduling Simple Projects
• Action Plans for small-scale projects
• Manage the project team
• Motivate
• Inform
• Encourage
• Enable the project team

Controlling

• Perform the actions
• Check, measure, review project progress
• Adjust project plans
• Inform the project team and others.
• Close the Project
• Complete project review and report on project performance
• Give praise and thanks to the project team.

Appendix

• Resources and Brainstorming questions for project planning

This is the summary and Table of Contents for the Project Planning in Context E-Course. This introductory offer, including the complimentary E-book, is only $12.95 for the next two weeks!

$12.95

Get the Project Planning in Context E-book and get started

Project Planning in Context is a PDF format E-book that is available to subscribers only, for now. Click here to subscribe to Productivity in Context and get a link to your download.
$12.95