Project Management Training

Project management training is an integral part of the personnel development system of any organization doing business mainly with projects. Here, we describe its most important aspects:

• Integration into the organization's training management system.
• Principles of a project management curriculum.
• Main elements of a project management curriculum.
• Design and delivery.
• Mentoring and coaching.

(1) Integration into the Organization's Training Management System

We have to integrate project management training into the organization's training management system which follows this generic process:

There are mainly two groups of training requirements.

• Organizational needs: sales, turnover, profit, project-relevant technical areas of expertise etc.
• Individual needs: acquiring knowledge and skills, personal development, better career opportunities, etc.

The combination of these organizational and individual needs leads to a comprehensive project management curriculum.

(2) Principles of a Project Management Curriculum

The project management curriculum must match to the organization’s project manager development system.

Corresponding to the basics of learning in organizations, it supports and accelerates the natural way of learning by doing, offering a structured system of seminars, workshops and training programs for beginners, project managers (PM's), advanced project managers (APM's) and senior project managers (SPM's).

(3) Main Elements of a Project Management Curriculum

A structured project management training system or curriculum could consist of these main elements (first column), delivered with different methods and intensity on the four consecutive levels of Beginners, PM's, APM's and SPM's (corresponding to the levels of learning, cf. learning in organizations).

Core Elements

Project Management Training - Introductory Course:

We created an e-book in pdf-format that introduces the fundamentals of project management. Ideally, you use it in order to prepare for classroom training in project management. It consists of five lessons, complemented by five tests and a final test, which are integral part of the book. The tests help you to check your learning progress and also enhance your understanding of project management. Together with the e-book you receive a separate answer key for all tests, also in pdf-format. Click here for more info, or at .

Alternatively, there is a computer based training (CBT) available which you easily install on your computer and run in your preferred browser. Like the e-book, it is also organized into five lessons, five corresponding tests, and a final test. It takes typically four to six hours to work through the whole course including all the tests. Click here for more info, or at .

You can run this course also as web based training (WBT), with limited functionality, but free of charge.

Cross-functional Elements

(4) Design and Delivery

An organization can design and deliver training with its own resources, sub-contract it to external vendors, or combine both.

Where ever we need participants to understand, apply or analyze / evaluate / create, predominant format of project management training is classroom training and workshops. There, we can use methods like work on case studies, role plays, simulation, facilitated discussion and best practice sharing, etc. If we focus on delivery of content the participants have to remember, or if we want to train certain basic skills in form of frequent repetitions, we can use computer or web based training. Usually, we integrate these forms into hybrid or blended learning, combining classroom and workshop methodologies with computer or web based approaches.

(5) Mentoring and Coaching

From the perspective of the organization, a very important aspect of project management training is the aspect of learning transfer:

• How can participants of a seminar or training program transfer their learning into their work environment so that the organization benefits in the predefined way?
• What can the organization do in order to support and guide that learning transfer?

Within a mentoring program experienced staff members, so called mentors, support talents to transfer their learning from seminars into real projects and identify areas of improvement and further learning opportunities. Similarly, independent coaches can help colleagues on all levels to identify their own training needs, learning barriers and blockages and to remove them.

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