Project Management Coaching

Is this your situation?

• Your project team is overwhelmed with problems
• You experience chronic crises and delays
• The scope of your project is ambiguous
• Requirements exist in various emails
• You have no sound project estimates upon which you can rely
• Expectations vary with each each of your stakeholders

You know that project management activities could be performed better to avoid these problems; however, taking the team out of their work environment for a multi-day project management class sounds too long.

The Process Group offers onsite coaching on project management skills to ensure that your projects run smoothly. The coaching sessions result in:

• project goals aligned with management’s expectations
• improved estimation and scheduling accuracy
• approaches to dealing with challenging deadlines
• improved communication among project stakeholders
• engaged, well-informed project team members
• team proficiency using their new skills

Below, we list the typical just-in-time project management skills that are deployed during these coaching engagements:

• developing light-weight project plans
• managing requirements and negotiating goals
• determining and mitigating risks
• formulating more accurate estimates and schedules
• negotiating and aligning commitments
• measuring progress and refining the plan
• communicating project status with management, stakeholders and customers
• addressing sticky issues that arise among team members, management and customers

Coaching details

There are two primary objectives of this service. The first, is to have projects put on the right track, and the second, is to leave them self-sufficient with their new skills.

One coach can support one large project or two small projects at a time. For example, a large project might be 20-100 people. Here, we would work with the overall director, the project manager and his/her direct reports. A small project might be 10-15 people. In this case we would work with the entire team. Alternatively, we can coach two or three smaller projects in parallel.

A coaching engagement can run from one week to several weeks. Initially, the coaching time would be intense (for example, 4-5 days per week) for a few weeks. After the initial period, this would diminish to 1-3 days per week, based on the need. Long-term, checkups would be provided (for example, 1/2 day per week).

This style of skill delivery can be applied to all Process Group services (e.g., requirements development, supplier management, peer reviews).