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The Project Manager's Control Tower: Overview of the Approach
The Project Manager's Control Tower is an approach to project management designed for cross-functional corporate projects with practical methods for dealing with people, teams, budget and software. Developed over twenty years of project management experience and delivered to thousands of practicing managers from organizations such as USWEST, Jones Intercable and IBM.
- Sophisticated tools for planning and strategically positioning your project
- Techniques for managing people and teams and developing a high performance culture
- Training on PM software that makes planning, budgeting and tracking efficient
- Methods for coping with politics, organizational change and project launch
Project Conceptualization: the First Challenge
We are not supplied with a neat blueprint of what the organization should look like at the end. Conceiving a project is the first phase of the Project Manager's Control Tower; we call it Broadbrush Planning. This step in managing cross-functional corporate projects requires the integration of many skills. The days when project management was a narrow mathematical science are over. Project managers (PMs) in the corporate world must take an active role in the strategies and tactics of the projects they run.
This is not a world of just Gantt and PERT and CPM calculations. Successful PMs must meld traditional project skills with strategic analysis, techniques to develop high performance team cultures, political and negotiating skills and much more. The Broadbrush planning phase integrates these elements so we do the "right" project with the "right" team and the "right" authority.
Our Training Process
The Project Manager's Control Tower is an approach to managing projects that integrates all these tools and techniques into a process that ensures project success. We do not teach it with academic theories and concepts. All our courses require:
- Advance reading for each module,
- Participation in Internet discussions with other practicing managers, and
- The completion of five or more project case studies on PM software and
- Written analyses of business situations