Build and Manage Effective and High Performing IT Project Teams    (ITPT-001)
Update your PMP® with 18 PDUs

This course targets project, program managers and team members operating in an aggressive IT project environment. You will learn techniques to plan and manage the relationships with your team members and external project team components, such as vendors, virtual team members and customers. Students will integrate basic people and team management techniques and timing within the IT project framework in order to effectively build and manage a high performing team.

This course addresses the components and challenges project managers face with managing the people who comprise the IT project team. Project managers cannot ever assume that people will respond "as planned" during their project lifecycle. Interpersonal, communication, management and team building skills are essential to any project’s success. Project simulations and course activities focus on learning and applying team building techniques across multiple phases of an IT projects – from project initiation through project closure. The course lecture is supplemented with hands on group exercises that reinforce and apply the course concepts.

Course lecture is supplemented with hands-on group exercises to reinforce course concepts, focused on effective methods and techniques for understanding and managing the teams and team members working on IT projects.



Summary of Course Topics

Build and Effective Operating Framework for Your Team

• Evaluate the corporate culture and its effect on your project team
• Recognize that the dynamic and aggressive needs of today’s IT projects require significant involvement from the project manager relative to managing the people doing the work.
• Analyze the level of responsibility, authority and accountability of your program and project managers, including the areas of procurement, contracting, financial, human resources, project planning, and relationship management.
• Map out the project environment and define authority and accountability structures for effective management of your current and future project team.
• Create templates to communicate effectively within your project environment and with your project team and stakeholders.

Dealing With External Project Team Members: Suppliers and Customers

• Understand and apply team-building strategies on outsourced IT projects relative to your vendors and customers.
• Define and address the leadership paradigm of outsourced IT projects.
• Managing relationships, expectations and performance with your external project team players.
• Methods of tracking project process and knowledge as well as measuring progress on project tasks and activities.
• Working effectively with customers and developing disparate groups into teams.
• Dealing with human resource issues within outsourced project teams.

Challenges of Managing Virtual Project Teams

• Understand and apply team-building strategies on projects where team members and stakeholders are working in different locations.
• Techniques for making a virtual team behave like a co-located team
• Working effectively with virtual team members – communication, delegation, and structure.
• Techniques for managing multicultural project teams in global project environments.
• Communication and delegating responsibility and accountability to your virtual project team members.

Build and Maintain a Thriving Project Team

• What makes high performance teams different and why it matters
• Apply process and performance observation and feedback methods
• Managing team differences and disturbances
• Build team involvement and buy-in to the project work at hand – commitment, consensus, trust
• Facilitate growth of your team – problem solving and management approaches

People Management Fundamentals

• Assess your project team’s strengths and weaknesses
• Delegation skills and tactics for IT project tasks and responsibilities
• Basic methods and techniques for managing the team – goals, roles and responsibilities, relationships
• Setting and managing to the benchmark for expectations and team behavior
• How to use assertive skills to leverage success
• Communication planning and implementation throughout the project lifecycle

Improve IT Project Team Performance

• Understand how teams work across the basic stages of team development
• Understand how IT project phases (initiation, planning, control, execution and closure) map to team development, expectations and performance – it’s a moving target.
• Project initiation: managing and navigating the honeymoon period for your team
• Project planning: addressing involvement, definition and delegation of work to be done
• Project control: monitoring and communication project progress and changes
• Project execution: techniques for elevating team performance and productivity
• Project closure: methods to effectively bring closure to a team project
• Relate and understand the stages of team development to the IT project phases: initiation, planning, execution, control, closure
• Brainstorming as a basis for team involvement in the project – timing and techniques
• Maintaining motivation of the project team
• How to negotiate project problems

Enhance and Improve Your Interpersonal Skills and Effectiveness as a Leader

• Methods of providing feedback to team members on performance and expectations
• Understand your leadership style relative to your team and maximize it’s effectiveness
• Influence skills relative to project requirements and processes
• Communication and listening skills: understand and apply them
• Managing relationships beyond the direct project team: internal and external stakeholders

Who Should Attend?

Experienced project managers learn skills that reinforce their existing knowledge base and develop new skills to successfully lead and manage the team members that comprise their projects. Interpersonal skills are offered to enable the new project manager to negotiate for effective resources within the organization.

New project managers learn the best practices needed to get a proper start in their project management career. Effective team building tools and techniques are presented to build and execute a successful and productive project team.

Project team members learn techniques to succeed as integral team assets for product delivery that meets the quality expectations of the project sponsor. Techniques that leverage the strength of each member are developed to improve communication within the project team.

Click here for the Course Description document.     

Please contact us at courses@rhymingplanet.com or 720.904.7809 for additional information about course pricing and customization.