This is very different from just learning how to use the software from a book or course. Here’s one of the reasons why:

Schedules must work for key stakeholder groups

The schedules must be drawn up to meet the needs of four main stakeholder groups:

  • The ‘Top Dogs’ (the bosses, clients, people who ‘own’ the project)
  • The Project Manager (the person who is organising the work) and their Project Support team (if applicable)
  • The people doing the work in the project (staff, contractors, service-providers, suppliers)
  • Other people in the organisation whose work plays into the process (e.g. staff from the finance department, procurement officers, HR officers)

The practicals

We use our Consultative Tutoring method for getting this going. The steps are not very straighforward, and takes some experience and discernment.

EXAMPLE

We may find that purchase codes from the company’s accounting system must regularly be imported into project plans to prevent duplicated effort; similarly, it may make sense to import tasks updated in spreadsheets from people executing the work.

We help you take such integration steps bit by bit in your own projects, rather than doing an expensive roll-out of new software which you may not even need, and which people are reluctant to use.


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