Choosing Project Management Training
If you want to improve how your business delivers projects, invest in the people.
It’s people who do the work of projects. They use the project management tools you’ve bought and installed. They assess project risk, develop plans, create schedules and lead the team. And they need to be competent and confident at doing that work.
There are lots of different ways to improve the skills of your project management teams including mentoring, coaching and more, but in this article we’re focusing specifically on how to choose project management training so that you get the most out of it.
You want your training time to be valuable and provide a return on investment for your people. Here are five areas to consider when choosing the right project management course.
1. What is covered in the course?
There are hundreds of project management courses available, and the first thing to consider is what do you want people to come away knowing about?
A new starter in a relatively junior position may need a two-day project management fundamentals course to quickly pick up the basics. Someone moving from a technical job into a pure project management role would need a more substantive course, like a four-day project academy class.
If you are looking for technical tool training, make sure the delegates attending already have a good understanding of project management, otherwise they won’t be able to benefit from everything they learn. Sending them on a project training course before they do software training will ensure they can apply best practice scheduling techniques and so on.
2. How is the course delivered?
Let’s say you are preparing to send everyone in your PMO team on a project management course. That’s 12 people. They will all have different learning styles but you have to choose one course provider.
It’s common these days for courses to use a range of modalities to teach, so trainers are equipped with skills to make sure the learning reaches all participants. That could include an element of online work, pre-course reading or self-assessment, as well as classroom teaching and follow up afterwards.
It should go without saying – but we’ll say it anyway – that technical software training needs every delegate to have access to a computer to work through exercises. They should come away from the course feeling confident to use the software day-to-day, and they need hands on time to achieve that.
In our experience, having a group of people go through the same course is a great team building opportunity as well. They will have a shared experience, and they’ll be able to support each other with common terminology back at the workplace.
It’s often easier (and sometimes cheaper) to have trainers come to your office and train your team than it is to pay travel and accommodation expenses for a large team to be out of the office for a few days. Look at whether the course can be delivered in-house to benefit from that.
3. Will people go on to take an exam?
Some businesses encourage individuals to earn project management certifications. This can be valuable if you work with clients who request certified project managers. However, as long as you have common working practices, and good processes in place, it’s not essential to require your staff to be certified.
If you do expect team members to go on and take certification exams, make sure you choose a course that will help them succeed.
Tip: If your colleagues are already certified, look for training delivered by organizations accredited with their professional body. Then they can count their project management training towards their continuing education requirements.
4. Who is delivering the training?
You may have suitable internal staff who can run training courses for your team, but it’s more common to either hire in an expert trainer or send colleagues out to be trained by an external trainer.
If you have a large team, or you are trying to drive up project success rates by increasing the skills of your team over time, it’s worth creating a relationship with one training provider. They’ll be able to get an understanding of your business processes and challenges, so they can support you going forward.
Using one provider also creates consistency of approach, jargon and process so everyone has access to the same content.
Ask training and consultancy firms who provide this service (like us) to give you references so you can ask real customers what it is like working with them. The training relationship you build could be with you for several years, so it’s important that the company you choose is a good fit for your values and corporate goals.
If you can work with the training firm to build a bespoke course based on your internal processes, that’s even better! You’ll find delegates have to do less tailoring so they can hit the ground running when they return to work.
5. How practical is the training?
In our experience, delegates learn best through hands-on exercises and real-life examples.
Look for a pragmatic class that’s going to take you through the project lifecycle, with plenty of exercises, small group work and feedback sessions. Teamwork exercises should reflect real world situations – things that delegates will face day-to-day when they return to their day job. It’s easier to draw parallels with what you do each day when the examples used in exercises are relatable to your business environment. They’ll go back to their desks armed with the knowledge, skills and techniques to handle whatever their project throws at them.
Project management training is essential to ensure your team has the best possible chance of project success. You can boost business results, cut delivery times and make more of an impact if you have trained staff able to plan and deliver projects effectively.
So… now that you know what to look for in a training provider, why not check out the project management courses we offer? They could be just what you’re looking for!