Are you leading or involved in projects that are critical to your business or your team or your organization? What are the challenges you face while managing these projects? Do you feel yourself to be in control of the project and are able to track all deliverables to get successfully completed by the deadline? Do you have methodologies, clear processes, and systems in place to manage your projects? Are your projects able to meet the business objectives they intended to achieve?
This section of our website is targeted at individuals who manage projects as a primary function of their work. Continue with these tutorials to gain an operational understanding of the basic concepts and tools of project management as well as advanced tools to manage the real-world challenges you will face. We will start with the basic concepts and tools and slowly move to advanced topics improving your project management skills.
We will address the core concepts behind “Project Management” and help you navigate through the real-world challenges and troubleshoot problems that may be affecting your project team’s performance and work. We will give you tools to deal with miscommunications, conflicts, or sagging loyalties that get in the way of high performance. We will also give you an opportunity and toolkit to put those concepts into practice during the learning sessions.
1. Exposure to real business projects with high business impact
2. How to create a well-defined project with clear deliverables
3. Tools and concepts behind defining project scope, detailed guidelines
4. Moving from theoretical concepts to a great learning experience
5. Short and precise structured course output
6. Exposure to best practices and good use of project management tools
7. How to leverage very good teamwork during projects
8. How to ensure the impact of the project on pre-defined business objectives?
9. Ensuring that the participant learn & apply project management tools & techniques
10. Time & commitment impact – for the participant, you and for your team
11. Impact of learning on your role - does participant is able to apply some of the skills & knowledge learned on actual job
12. Developing people and ensuring the learning has an impact on the performance
13. Help participants better understand the strategy & challenges of their own businesses
14. Tools to make people aware of cultural differences between geographies/businesses
15. Enhancing the ability to see the big picture
16. Increased hands-on knowledge & understanding of other functions within the organization
17. Understand the power of best practice sharing - “participant will start looking for connection within the business before doing things by himself”
18. International best practices that can be applied in business projects
19. Guidance on applying tools & knowledge
20. Increased self-confidence - “Participant is now able to voice her opinion & challenge others in the meeting. He/She drives project more proactively”
21. An eye-opener on a variety of career paths “participant is realizing there are other options available for them than a current role for her next move”
22. Noticeable improvement in leadership skills
23. The participant is using the new network to get fresh ideas/advice
24. The project gave visibility & exposure to the participant
25. Developing presentation skills
26. Tools to evaluate what can be done differently
27. Practical, real-world project management examples (Customer Focus)
28. Career Benefits - More & wider responsibilities within the same department; New role (lateral move, promotion); Move to the management role
29. Make participants aware that the higher they go, the more they will have to work on things in parallel
30. How do you manage everything; how do you set priorities, resources, etc.?
31. Prepare participants for bigger roles; How to deal with uncertainty?
32. Other areas of development - Teamwork … collaboration…
Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. The best time management techniques improve the ways you work. Time management refers to managing time effectively so that the right time is allocated to the right activity. Learn more about the five steps for effective time management viz. study, identify, analyze, decide, and implement.
Have you ever resonated that there seem to be as many different ways to lead people as there have been great leaders? When we recall the success of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte to Steve Jobs and Jack Welch, we also notice that they all used different approaches that were suitable to their specific situations and circumstances. Over the last century, researchers and psychologists have developed simple ways to describe the “Styles of leadership” and in this section, we will explore these commonly known leadership styles.
Reasons behind Wastage of Time
Under-utilization of time may be due to the faulty system or faults of manager/officer/leader or due to lack of planning. There could be many factors driving the procrastination behavior like system issues, personal work habits, and lack of delegation, personality traits, and bad working habits of the leader, failure to tackle interpersonal conflicts, obstacles, and lack of far-sightedness.
Four main areas in an organization that need special focus when we discuss the change in an organizational setup are organizational structure, technology, work environment, and the people. Some people call it a process, system, and people. Change in an organization includes adapting to change, controlling change, and effecting change.
David Kolb produced this popular model for learning in 1984. The model suggests four stages of learning which most learners go through in order to learn effectively. Leaming is itself a process of change. Something is added to our perception and prepared us for the next impression, which will change our understanding yet more, however minutely. The Kolb contribution is a significant one because it practically equates change and learning.
Tools for Developing Your Team
If a manager has too many weak spots in the talent of the team, the ability to empower the team members to independently execute the project is impaired. Assignments fall behind schedule or stretch out because the needed skills or knowledge are not in place when needed. To successfully execute important projects, hiring talented people, and increasing the talents of existing staff are most important.
Benefits of Teams in Workplace
The use of formal work teams is commonplace in modern organizations. But why we have teams? What are the benefits or advantages that teams provide for organizations and employees? Do we really need to adopt formal team structures and use team-building approaches in organizations? Read this article to explore and learn the benefits of having formal teams in organizations.
In our present Hitech scenario, society is changing very fast. What are the skills that are most relevant for leaders in relation to the changing economic environment? Leaders need to develop skills to drive innovation and change in order to play a more central role in their organizations’ activities. How do managers accept the change and meet business expectations by becoming a key figure in driving change and innovation?
Building Perfect Creative Team
One misconception around creativity is that creative act is essentially solitary. Most of the world's important inventions resulted not from the work of one lone genius, but from collaboration of a team with complementary skills. Managers should build teams with the ideal mix of traits to form a creative group and then establish the conditions that make creativity much more likely to occur.
Laissez-faire is a style of leadership that affords the group members a great deal of independence. Tasks are delegated to the group members and they are responsible to see the project through to fruition. Research has shown that this style of leadership leads to the lowest levels of productivity. This article explains this style and covers the implications of having a hands-off approach and the situations where this style could be effective.
Leadership has been defined in different ways by different sets of scholars. In very simple terms leadership can be defined as the skill of a person to influence an individual or a group for achievement of a goal in a given situation. One can use different dimensions and perspectives to define leadership. Through the evolution of leadership thought, leadership has been defined in various ways discussed here.
Tips for Effective Time Management
After studying and analyzing how time is spent, why time is wasted, and where time is wasted you need to decide about the changes required for effective utilization of time. For this purpose, a large number of remedial measures can be taken by you. The first and foremost determinant of a planned and purposeful utilization of time is to develop consciousness of the value of time at all levels of the organization. Planning, goal setting, and defining priorities are concerns to addressed immediately.
Productivity is defined not in terms of the number of goods produced, but in terms of value-added per employee. Customers don’t really buy goods and services but in fact, they buy a value - something they value. The future is all about tangible products fulfilling intangible needs. Ideas like this can transform a business and provide them a competitive advantage to thrive in the future.
Communication is defined as the process of meaningful interaction between two or more persons with a view to arriving at a common meaning and understanding. There are different types of communication and these are used on different occasions. In this section on communication skills, Technofunc will equip you with the skills most needed in today’s dynamic, demanding workplace.
Investment Theory of Creativity
Sternberg in the year 2006, proposed the investment and confluence theory focused on understanding creativity. According to the investment theory, creativity requires a confluence of six distinct but interrelated resources known as intellectual abilities, knowledge, styles of thinking, personality, motivation, and environment. It emphasizes that creativity is not about one thing, but about a system of things.
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