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PROJECT
MANAGEMENT and BUSINESS ANALYSIS TRAINING
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These are just some of the reasons why the need for project management and business analysis training exists, and why our approach, evolved through decades of lived experience in managing projects, has been built the way it has.
See, there are endless providers of project management and business analysis training, and almost all of them focus on people who are, or who will become, card carrying Project Managers or Business Analysts as their full time profession, using the training as a stepping stone to certification. And that's great. We do that, too.
But here's our difference. For over 30 years, we have also delivered project management and business analysis fundamentals training to business professionals who have, or will have, very different business cards: Owners, Vice Presidents, Directors, Managers, Supervisors, Software Developers, and Business Analysts, to name a few. Why? Because of what we said up front: sooner or later, everyone needs to know how to successfully manage a project.
And, even if you are so fortunate as to have dedicated Project Managers and Business Analysts working with or for you, it really helps to know what they are talking about: the nature of programs and projects, the major approaches to project management and when they are applicable, the cadence of project phases and activity, the critical role of business case development, requirements capture, stakeholder engagement, change management, budget and resource allocation, estimating and scheduling, and phased testing and acceptance of deliverables.
What To Look For in Project Management and Business Analysis Training
Important Note: Currently all instructor led, in class courses are suspended due to COVID-19. All offerings are available through instructor-led online delivery.
When you are looking for project management training, whether it is for highly targeted topics or part of a comprehensive program, our guess is that you don't want to be sitting in a classroom listening to endless theory and wasting time on exercises that don't reflect your professional reality or address your needs. You do want:
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a highly immersive, experiential, challenging session, where you not only learn from highly respected Project Managers and educators, but from your peers who are also attending, with the opportunity for you to share your wisdom and experience;
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an unrelenting focus on real life application to the leadership challenges you face every single day, in real projects, with real stakeholders, customers, clients and your people;
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Models, frameworks, tool kits, and processes that you actually get to practice for value during the session, and ample opportunity for in-session coaching, so that you can return to work ready to apply them the very next day;
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Follow up and follow through with your instructor and new network of professionals, with ongoing access to webinars, ask the expert online sessions with industry leading guest speakers, online team spaces for sharing, and the ability to bring your instructor back as coach/mentor to work with you and your team in real situations.
That's where we come in.
Stop Thinking About What Courses You Need to Take. Start Thinking About What You and Your Project Managers and Project Teams Need to be Able to Do
There is a place for courses that have been put together by others, with a list of topics that flow together to tell a particular story and deliver a standardized knowledge and skill set. Almost every single course out there has been built based on averages: what do most people, and most companies, need to learn, most of the time? Well designed, standardized courses, deliver to most attendees, a good portion of what they need to know. The vast majority of training providers are in this camp: monolithic, one size fits all.
Some training providers have standardized courses, and will customize them, for a fee, adding or subtracting topical coverage. And that's great. You get the chance to hone in some on those particular things that represent your way of doing things, your models, your terminology, and some branding. This is clearly better, but still not optimal.
Our multiple award winning learning and development experts have been building impactful technical and people-focused adult education and training programs for over 35 years, including standardized, customizable and bespoke tailored-to-one programs, for individuals, and for local, national and global clients. And this we know: training needs to be about you and built around your needs, not the other way around, requiring you to fit into someone else's vision and version of what you need to learn. To be fair, if you are starting from square one, guidance is essential. But let's be real here. In order to deliver maximum value, your training provider must know you, know your challenges, know what is it you already know, and work with you in partnership to take your people to the next, natural stage in their professional development. In short, know your gemba, the place where your leaders create value, and what it will take to enhance that.
That is why, yes, we have packages of topics that, for many, will make sense, as highly immersive 1 day courses. They provide solid foundations. If your needs are more selective, we want you to be able to configure your learning experience right down the topic level. So we have taken all the blocks apart, so that they can be recombined with maximum flexibility to deliver exactly everything you need, and nothing that you don't.
We offer a full range of 1 and 2 hour topical modules on all aspects of leadership, and build from there to create immersion learning sessions that speak directly to your project management development requirements. We start by working with you to understand your needs. What is important for your people to know? What is urgent? What do they already know and can put into practice? What is the current state of your leadership competency bench strength, as compared to the leadership challenges you face regarding strategy execution?
Together, we put together a strategic plan for project management competency development that is as unique as you are. We identify those critical, high priority modules and schedule them in ways that make it easy, and very cost effective for you. And we go further. Once those essential building block competency modules have been selected, we add the connective tissue that brings it all together for actionable and successful project management. The result is an unsurpassed, deeply effective learning program that translates to immediate and long term positive impact.
This is how we work with you: as fully dedicated partners in your success, with a degree of high touch engagement you won't find elsewhere. We will help you build a strategy and program of study for your very complex and intersecting project management development needs, to make it simple, feasible and cost effective to bring you and your team, from executives to front line supervisors, to that critical, next level of competency and measurable performance in project management.
Project Management and Business Analysis Modules, Bundles, Courses and Schedule
Here's a list of currently available project management and business analysis courses and topics. If there's something you don't see here, but need, our team of experts can quickly develop it for you. You can configure your program of studies any way that suits your requirements and preferences:
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Purchase individual 1 and 2 hour modules from any course in the program. These are normally delivered as self-paced, online training.
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Bundle modules from different courses together to create fully customized sessions. With overall durations of a least 3 hours and 5 participants, they can also be delivered online with live instruction.
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Purchase our immersion learning, 1 day courses. Each of these courses are scheduled once a month. With COVID-19 restrictions in place, we currently offer online, live instruction only.
Project Management Essential Concepts and Skills - 1 day
Building the Firm Foundation
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Portfolios, Programs and Projects, and the key competencies required to lead them
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Comparative approaches, their major components, terminology and tool kits, applicability, benefits and risks: waterfall, iterative and agile project management
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The Project Management Mandates: business value creation, requirements, solution selection/design, development, quality assurance and testing, risk management, budgets and estimating, scheduling, tracking progress and work remaining, scope and change control, and solution acceptance / project closure.
People Leadership for Project Managers - 1 day
Building Focus, Engagement and Performance
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Creating and aligning your project team competency sets with project goals
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Mapping the delegation of phase leaders, team leaders and individual contributors to value-laden deliverable sets
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Creating a project culture of peer coaching, high touch communication, ownership and professional development
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Individual and task group goal setting, estimating and scheduling of work, coaching for performance and professional development, and providing feedback
Project Management Application and Activation Workshop
Living Your Project Leadership With You
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It is very common to come back to work after intensive learning, sit down with your coffee or tea, and ask yourself "now what?" Knowing where to start, and how to apply what you have just learned to your actual, everyday realities and challenges is critical, and sometimes difficult. We get it.
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With our Project Management Application and Activation Workshops, you bring your instructor back to work with you. These workshops can be scheduled from 1 day to up to 5 days duration. We work side by side with you and your team, coaching you as navigate the many daily challenges Project Managers and projects face.
Foundation Skills in Business Analysis - 1 day
Establishing a Clear Focus on Requirements Fulfillment
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Establishing and leveraging the Product Scope / Project Scope relationship for business case development and vetting, creating the project plan, configuring project resources and timelines, front-loading quality and assurance, and solution acceptance.
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Why product scope drives project scope, and managing requirements change.
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Elicitation techniques: choosing them wisely
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Introduction to the requirements capture toolkit: user stories, use cases, process mapping using BPMN
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Linking project deliverables to the needs of strategic, tactical and operational requirements levels
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Functional, non-functional and transition requirements, and how they will affect the development and acceptance of project deliverables.
Requirements Elicitation and Management with Use Cases- 1 day
Laying the Foundation for User-Centric Solution Development
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Scoping the solution context and user/client experience: business and system use case diagrams
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Components and interrelationships: the system boundary (subject), primary and secondary actors, associations, includes and extends relationships, generalization and specialization, system to system interactions
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Documenting the process - Use Case Detail: basic, alternate and exception flows, handling conditional logic, preconditions and post conditions.
Business Analysis Within Agile Projects -1 day
Integrating Requirements Management with Scrum
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Scrum and people roles and relationships: comparison with waterfall roles, project manager versus scrum master, executives, product owner, customers, developers, testers, where the business analyst fits in
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Requirements capture, management and fulfillment tracking: user story generation, grouping and splitting; mapping requirements to effort and scheduling: product, release and sprint backlogs; requirements and estimating; the daily scrum and sprint retrospectives; burndown charts and tracking work remaining; embracing and managing change.
Process Mapping and Optimization with BPMN -1 day
Integrating Project Requirements with Business Functions
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The relationships among business functions, business processes, business procedures, business data and business rules
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Business Analysis and Process Mapping synergy: how each reinforces the effectiveness of the other
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Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN): comparison with other modeling techniques - ANSI flowcharting, UML activity diagramming
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Mapping the AS IS and TO BE state of a business process
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Mapping functional organizations and groups: pools, lanes, external pools; deliverable and information sharing
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Visual syntax and logic flow: activity flow objects, markers, sequence, decisions and loops (gateways); default flows, exception flows and process rollback through compensations, mapping child / sub processes, indicating time, working with data.
Business Analysis Application and Activation Workshop
Living Your Requirements Capture With You
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It is very common to come back to work after intensive learning, sit down with your coffee or tea, and ask yourself "now what?" Knowing where to start, and how to apply what you have just learned to your actual, everyday realities and challenges is critical, and sometimes difficult. We get it.
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With our Business Analysis Application and Activation Workshops, you bring your instructor back to work with you. These workshops can be scheduled from 1 day to up to 5 days duration. We work side by side with you and your team, coaching you as navigate the many daily challenges Business Analysts face during requirements capture and management.
Schedule
With the current restrictions due to COVID-19, we are scheduling the delivery of all our courses on an on-demand basis for our clients, limited to online, instructor-led modality. Please contact us at info@gembasafety.com if you are interested in more information, or to schedule a course for your team.