Practical Project Management for Management Consultants

First you have to establish what does it mean to manage well the project. Here I will define what it does mean for me and what I think you should strive to achieve during your project

Here I will show you what to do if a blurry image appears

Here I will show you how to find additional resources attached to the coruse like Excel files, presentations, links etc.

Here I will show you where you can find information on managing non-consulting projects

In the second section I will explain the importance of teaching and how to implement it in your team or company. If you want to do fast, efficiently good projects you have to have the right kind of people. You can say that preparation for the consulting project starts with proper teaching. In this section I will discuss how through teaching get good business analysts.

Consulting is teamwork so you have to define what values you want your team to follow. This is crucial as it will be something that will be the basis for the team culture. In this lecture, I will show my values that provide a good ground for managing properly the consulting project

As we have discussed previously you want to turn inexperienced graduates into seasoned consultants. This gives you greater chances of success during the project. Therefore, you have to define the profile of an ideal consultant and set your team member on the course to achieve this level. In this lecture, I will also show you the profile I have defined for an ideal team member 

For your team to cooperate you have to create and teach them standards, templates as well as turn them into modules as much as possible your process and end-products. In the next lectures, I will show you in details on how to achieve it

A lot of things are repetitive. Therefore, it makes sense to standardize everything. In this lecture we will show to do it in practice.

Next step after you created standards is to create templates. In this lecture I will explain how to do it in practice

Here I show you templates of excel analysis

Power Pointe presentation is the second most important tools to be used by Business Analyst in his work. After all it is not only important to analyse data and draw conclusions but also to show them in a nice manner to decision makers. Here you will learn basic rules on how to build your Power Point deck in fast and easy manner. You will see also some examples of good and bad slides. There are many advanced tools for presentation (i.e.) Prezi. Still Power Point is the most often used and widely accepted

For some things standards cannot be applied straightforward. You need to introduce modules to move forward. I will show you in this lecture how to implement it in practice

Standard folder structure is important tool to save time and introduce order. I will show you the principles of using it as well as a practical exampl

Here I will show you how in practice to train your people

Most consulting project are done in a bad manner. A lot of things that should be done ahead of time are done during the project and this slows you down drastically and causes later on a lot of problems. If you prepare properly you can shorten the execution time, create more value and earn more. In this section I will show you how to prepare and what kind of tools to use.

Here I discuss what is issue tree and why you should start with it

Issue tree is a simple yet powerful concept used in consulting for structuring discussion and picking the right topics to concentrate on. In this lecture I will show you the principles of using it as well as a practical example

In this lecture, I will summarize what kind of examples of issue trees we will present in the next few lectures.

In this lecture I will show you how the issue tree could look like for logistics

In this lecture I will show you how the issue tree could look like for a retailer

Here I will show you an example of an issue tree in FMCG

The next step is to create the presentation template, using the issue tree you have created. In the next lectures I will show you step by step how to create the template.

There 10 phases of producing the final presentation. You start with creating the structure of the presentation then you move to making sketches, template and slides. You end up with checking for errors and omissions. I will discuss briefly here each and every stage

There are 2 types of presentations: presentation that will be read by the customer on his own and presentation that will be delivered to the customer during a meeting. Those presentations different in size, delivery time, animations present in the presentation and last but not least font size. I will be discussing those difference in more detail in this lectur

In consulting you will be creating all the time different presentations for different purposes. I will discuss in this lecture different purposes and types of presentations

Here we will discuss the structure of the presentation and how to develop it

Once you have the section and chapters you should try to put the messages you want to convey. I will show the example of messages we created for this course

You should start by sketching the presentation on a piece of paper. There are 4 phase of sketching the presentations I will show them in this lecture. You will also see the sketch for this course

After sketching you have to create the template of the slide. I will show you examples of how a sketched slide is turned into a power point slide

Here I show you some useful templates for presentations

Here I will show you what kind of market research you can make and where you can find more information on what market research method to use and how to implement it in practice

Here I will show you what rules you should follow when creating the data request

In this lecture I will show you a real example of data request that I have to a customer. He wanted me to optimize processes at his stores.

In preparation phase you have to define the team and their roles. I will talk briefly her how to do it

How many people and whom you need depends on the type of the project. In this lecture I will show you some examples of team structure for different consulting projects

You have to also create the schedule of meetings (group meeting and individual ones). In this lecture I will show you example of an overview / schedule that we use for consulting projects

You also have to make sure that you have exchanged all the contact details to important people on the customer side as well as your team members

In section 4 I will show you some technical tips you should follow to make sure that you deliver value to the customers within the deadlines

Your work as a Project Manager is totally different then the work of a business analyst or consultant. A good project manager doesn’t work directly. He manages people and relations

In this lecture the tools and ways in which you should manage your team. I will also show you how your daily schedule should look like

Here I will discuss the tools that usually you would use during a consulting project

To-do list – highly popularized by David Allen in Getting things done are a great tool to make sure that you do the right things at a fast pace. In this lecture we will talk briefly about applying them in practice. I will show you the principles of using it, types of to-do list as well as a practical example, including the one I am using.

We will talk on the importance of deadlines, types of deadlines and how to set them

One of the biggest problem for efficiency is the so called Parkinson’s Law – Work expand so as to fill the time available for its completion. People when asked to evaluate the time certain things will take build in buffers. One of the ways to deal with it is the so called Critical chain. Here I will show you what it is

You should an interim meetings basically every week. I will discuss in this lecture why it makes a lot of sense

Here I discuss an example of model of FMCG business and use it as to show you how your analyses should look like from the very beginning of the project

Analyses should be made from the start according to the standards and look like end product. I will show you in this lecture what are main rules to be followed.

Here I will show you how to make sure that you do not get lost in the production of the presentation, when there are a lot of different consultants and business analysts doing some part of the presentation.

There are 2 main ways to control the progress of the project. You can use for this purpose the presentation template or a Kanban showing the status of all activities/analyses that are supposed to be delivered as a part of the project. We will look at the kanban in this lecture.

Buy-in is extremely important for the success of your project. I will show in this lecture what it is and how to achieve it

In this lecture, I will talk about the importance of formal and informal meetings with the customers 

Overdelivering is the key factor in building long-lasting relationship with your customer. Here I will show you how to achieve it 

It this section we continue with the tips on how to execute the project. This time around it will be more devoted to soft tips: how to treat people on the project to get great results.

Usually people talk to their pears. You and your team should build all sort of relations with the customer team. In this lecture I will show you why you should do it and how

You are competitive creature and you want to be in the spotlight but you should not steal ideas from the customer’s team. Always gives credit to specific worker

You will be tempted to show the customer the maximal potential savings / results he can get by implementing what you have created. In this lecture I will explain why you should downplay your estimations

You want to be a star which is ok. Yet as a Project Manager try to give a lot of attention to your team and the team on the customer’s side

Whenever there is a problem there are two ways to approach it. You can look for the culprit or to try to solve the problem. In this lecture I will show you why concentrating on the problem is much better solution

Time and again you will not know things specific for you customer. There are plenty of reasons for that. I will show you in this lecture why you should admit to that as soon as possible

In this lecture I will show you other small tips that I recommend implementing

The way you finish the project is of outmost importance. In this section I will show you how to finish the project to maximize the happiness of the customer with the results of the projects as well as to create opportunities for new projects.

In this lecture I will show you tips on how to train the customer how to use the end-products

When we talk about transferring the deliverables we have in mind 3 things that have to be done. We will discuss in the lecture what they are and when to use them

Here I will talk about defining scope

Here I will talk about PMO and how to build it

Here I will share with you some tips that will help you with your career.