Managing technical projects is all about delivering the right technical solution to satisfy a customer’s needs.

Managing technical projects is about managing requirements and the evolution of those requirements to a final product or solution.  It’s about balancing competing requirements to ensure a “best-fit” approach is selected.  It’s about selecting the right technical approach, in the context of budget, schedule, and business needs.  It’s about managing the customer interface including customer expectations as well as technical interfaces.  It’s about managing complexity.

While traditional project management methodology’s focus on cost and budget is sufficient for managing non-technical projects it falls short for technical projects.  Effectively managing technical projects requires new techniques and methods designed specifically for achieving technical success within the confines of business, budget, and schedule objectives.

This three-day, exercise intensive, course provides an end-to-end overview of the technical project management process.  The course uses a threaded case study to create a simulated environment in which you will bring a technically complex IT project to a successful completion.   In doing so you will gain new skills and techniques you need to successfully manage technical projects.

The course provides an intensive overview of managing technical projects throughout the project lifecycle from project conception through successful delivery.

The course is designed to familiarize you with best practices that you can immediately employ in your technical development efforts.

After completing this course you will have an excellent understanding of how to manage a technical project to ensure a successful delivery and a satisfied customer each and every time.

Course Format

The course is three-days in length and based on a threaded case study using a simulated IT project.

Interactive lecture sessions and discussion are used to prepare participants between project phases.  The course is highly experiential to ensure that students learn by doing.

Who Should Attend

Technical project and subproject managers, engineering managers, technical professionals, and anyone involved in technical development or integration projects.

·      Differences between technical and other projects

·      Best practices in successfully managing technical projects

·      How lifecycle models relate to project success on technical projects

·      How to select an appropriate lifecycle model

·      How to tailor the lifecycle model based on technical complexity and business needs

·      How managing requirements throughout the lifecycle is critical to project success

·      How to manage and control requirements throughout the project lifecycle

·      How to perform requirements trades to ensure a satisfied customer within schedule, budget, and business constraints

·      How to select the best technical approach (system architecture) based on requirements, schedule, budget, and business objectives

·      How to plan for and ensure trouble free system integration

·      How to plan for and ensure successful system test and delivery

 

Course Outline

·      Overview

§      What is a technical project

§      What makes managing a technical project different

§      The technical project and business environment

§      Best practices in managing technical projects

·      The technical project lifecycle

§      Lifecycle models for technical projects

§      Best practices and lifecycle models

§      Effectively tailoring the technical project lifecycle

·      Technical project management – It’s all about managing requirements and risk

·      User requirements

§      What are user requirements

§      Best practices in user requirements

§      Eliciting and writing good user requirements

§      Analyzing and managing user requirements

§      Managing requirements changes

·      System requirements

§      What are system requirements

§      Converting user requirements to system requirements

§      Requirements analysis and trades

·      System concept selection

§      Developing system concepts

§      Analyzing system concepts

§      Selecting a system concept

·      System development

·      System Integration and test

§      Planning for system integration

§      Making sure the pieces come together

§      System testing

·      System verification and validation

§      Proving you’ve met the requirements

§      Measuring customer satisfaction