Martin Training Associates

IT PRO Essentials: C.O.R.E. Skills for
Managing IT Projects & Requirements

Workshop Description

Learn a team-based, collaborative approach to project management that will improve your bottom line results. Intended for everyone in the organization, this hands-on, highly interactive workshop immerses participants in the simple, easy-to-use Martin Training C.O.R.E. PM method, with minimal lecture and maximum class involvement.

You'll learn how to create a charter and a project plan, and how to monitor project progress and control change. While working on a case study, or a project of your own, you'll learn how to apply this robust, PMBOK aligned method to real-life projects and relate what you have learned to your own project experience. Discussion questions will help you relate what you've learned to your own real-life experiences.

Capturing the user’s requirements is a key component of managing a project successfully, particularly IT projects. Learn a simple, step-by-step method for defining business, user and technical requirements that engages both the user and the team in the requirements gathering process. This three-day, highly interactive workshop is focused on skill building and so participants leave with skills as well as knowledge that they can immediately apply to their next project.

The requirements engineering methodology taught is based on Karl Wieger’s requirements process as outlined in his book, Software Requirements, published by Microsoft Press. Participants receive a copy of his book as a reference guide.

Participants spend a large percentage of the classroom time in skill building exercises that are case study driven. They practice each step of the easy to follow method in order to be prepared to practice the process when they leave the course. Lecture and group discussion enhance and ground the learning.

Workshop Target Audience

Project leaders, business analysts, software developers, managers, user representatives, process improvement leaders

Length of Workshop

4 or 5 Days (5 Days is the preferable length)

Learning Objectives

The major learning objectives for the workshop include:

  • Work with the sponsor to start the project off in the right direction
  • Become a better project leader
  • Lead a team through a collaborative planning process
  • Maintain team member accountability during project execution
  • Learn to conduct a JAD session
  • Learn how to capture user requirements
  • Learn to translate user requirements into technical requirements
  • Learn to manage requirements throughout the execution phase of a project

What You Will Learn

HOW TO:

  • Foster team participation
  • Create a team contract
  • Create a charter
  • Define the scope of the project
  • Set scope boundaries
  • Break down the work
  • Determine who should be on the team
  • Develop a deliverables schedule
  • Estimate staff effort & spending
  • Assess risks
  • Create countermeasures to reduce risk
  • Manage changes to the plan
  • Monitor project progress
  • Hold status meetings
  • Write a status report
  • Manage an issues list
  • Capture lessons learned
  • Assemble a project plan
  • Write a close out report
  • Craft realistic and well-defined requirements agreements between development organizations and customers.
  • Structure diverse requirements information into well-organized documents.
  • Avoid ambiguous and incomplete requirements.
  • Align system functionality with user goals and organizational business objectives.
  • Build a collaborative relationship between analysts and customers.
  • Identify user classes and representatives of them to provide input during requirements development.
  • Facilitate clear communication by representing requirements in a variety of textual and visual ways.
  • Make appropriate business decisions to incorporate proposed requirements changes into a project.
  • Track project status by monitoring requirements status.
  • Avoid requirements-related miscommunications and errors that lead to expensive rework and customer dissatisfaction.

Detailed Agenda

DAY ONE

  • Introductions
  • Introduction to the Project Process
  • Exercise - Project Problems
  • Roles & Responsibilities
  • The Components of a Charter
  • Exercise - Write a Charter
  • Exercise - Discussion Questions
  • Creating an Issues List & Lessons Learned List
  • Kicking Off the Project
  • Exercise - Team Thinking Styles
  • Building a Team
  • Team Contract
  • Principles of Team Leadership
  • Project Leader Skills & Characteristics
  • Exercise - Project Leader Self-Assessment
  • Scope Definition
  • Exercise - Scope Definition

DAY TWO

  • Project Types
  • Interim Deliverables
  • Subproject Work Breakdown Structure
  • Exercise - WBS
  • Exercise - Discussion Questions
  • Risk Assessment
  • Exercise - Risk Assessment
  • Reviews & Approvals
  • Exercise - Discussion Questions
  • Communication Planning
  • Estimating
  • Exercise - Schedule Preparation
  • Scheduling
  • Exercise - Creating a Schedule
  • Critical Path
  • Contingency
  • Shortening the Schedule
  • Documentation
  • Staff Effort Estimate
  • Spending Estimate
  • Exercise - Project Solutions

DAY THREE

  • Assemble the Plan
  • Change Management
  • Exercise - Project Solutions
  • Team Meetings
  • Status Reporting
  • Exercise - Team Meeting
  • Communicating with the Sponsor & Customer
  • Close Out (End PM part of Workshop)
  • Introduction to Requirements
  • Requirements Overview
  • Requirements Development

DAY FOUR

  • Business Requirements
  • Voice of Customer
  • User Requirements (Part 1)
  • User Requirements (Part 2)

DAY FIVE

  • Technical Requirements - Models
  • Technical Requirements - Writing
  • Verifying Requirements
  • Requirements Management
  • Requirements Close Out

PDU's

35 Units (5 day workshop)

Prerequisites

None

Materials Provided

Workshop notebook, Software Requirements book