Project Management: Techniques for Consulting & Client Projects

By Dick Billows

A methodology to sell and deliver profitable fee-for-service consulting engagements that build long-term clients. First, you learn how to identify the needs of client decision-makers. You learn how to identify the performance pressures they face and how to craft the best solution(s). This lets you effectively "sell" the project to the buying client and gain approval. You also learn the tools for assessing the decision-makers' perception of your capabilities and what you offer them.Second, you learn a consulting project methodology that yields projects that are consistently on time and within budget. This methodology is efficient and scalable for any project. It allows you to unearth what the client wants so you can manage their expectations and deliver the business value. Third, you will master project best practices. They include scheduling, estimating and optimizing projects to deliver maximum benefits. You learn seven different estimating methods and multiple schedule optimization techniques. You also learn how to identify and mitigate risks. Fourth, you will learn management and leadership techniques for using performance evaluation and reward techniques that build team members' commitment to the project. You will be able to train your team to estimate more accurately and report their progress in ways that let you identify and solve problems early. Fifth, you learn change control processes for handling change requests to keep the client happy without damaging the project's return on investment. You master a project managers' best tools for controlling the client's expectations. You'll learn to view the project as having four corners and master how to quantify the trade-offs between these four: duration, budget, scope and risk. These trade-off techniques allow you to custom tailor the project to meet the client's needs at the lowest possible cost.Sixth, you learn techniques for spotting problems early and solving them while they are small. We explain how to use earned value and variance tools to keep executives informed about trends in the projects' results, their impact on the bottom line and the forecasted cost of the projects in the entire portfolio. These techniques change the organization's problem solving tactics by making them prospective rather than retrospective. You'll learn how to become a problem solver who works "out in front" of the project team, not one who's focused on last week's problems.Seventh, you'll master techniques for managing all the projects in the portfolio. The above mentioned techniques provide firm partners and management with the data required to shift resources between projects and maximize the portfolio's yield. You learn three configurations of the project office which plays a central role in feeding decision-making data to executives. The data allows them to operate as a "control tower" that tracks all the organization's projects.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1091712808
• ISBN13: 9781091712805
• Release Date: March 2019
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 1.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.8" x 8.5"