#pm_ngt (a brief description)

#pm_ngt is a holistic integration of the best elements of well-known and less known frameworks for delivering shareholder (& tax-payer) value through project based change and beyond into business-as-usual (Review our #pm_ngt training courses).

#pm_ngt starts with the observation that business’ react to change and seek return on investment. It is this not projects that matter. Projects are an unwelcome necessity between 1st evaluation of options and 3rd delivery of benefits. These are the three time-frames. Within them are the three layers of Direct (maintain capital), Manage (maintain capability) and Develop then Deliver (create then maintain process).

The elements of the PMBoK-Guide, PRINCE2 and Dimension Four plus Complex Adaptive Systems, Six-Sigma, Lean and Agile are all overlapping. When used for exams and in the hands of zealots they are contradictory and xenophobic. When used pragmatically they are complimentary.

#pm_ngt levereages your existing sunk PM investment, fills gaps, resolves contradictory overlaps in ‘common frameworks’ and adds the people centred focus to provide guidance that improves delivery of benefits from project based investments.

#pm_ngt Addresses 3 Layers of management across 3 time-frames of investment

Developing Capability

The ability of  ‘best practice’ is often disappointing and unworthy of the title. It is a clearly observable fact that current pm capability is not universally as good as it should be.

Declarations of success in project circles may in other spheres be more correctly recognised as “only partial failure”. We asked “What would increase an organisation’s ability to prosper from change? 

We call the answer #pm_ngt; it is an inclusive blend of soft-skills, agile and traditional wisdom that resolves contradictions and sets aside exam centered nonsense. A key element of #pm_ngt is that it is a company culture so shared behavioural understanding is required at the Direct, the Manage and the Develop & Deliver tiers of the organisation. Each tier needs tools to model the future, cascade intent and receive escalation of the ‘Devil in the Detail’ issues. We note that a project ‘is a Decision Making Architecture’ 

#pm_ngt is delivered as a B2B offering that blends e-learning, v-learning and instructor led learning. All three delivery modes use materials that you can preview on the training course page, otherwise read on for an overview of #pm_ngt – jump to the previews of the #pmngt Concepts, Methods, Procedures, Tools & techniques

#pmngt – Mission, Vision and Objectives

The #pm_ngt Mission is to Improve the  state of the art of project management practice.

The #pm_ngt Vision is that improving the state of the art in project management requires two changes:

• First the contents of current pm guidance needs to be seen as necessary but incomplete and wrong in places
• Second project management training needs to be re-oriented to be about improving corporate capability to return value to shareholders*
• * Currently 1) pm training is oriented towards those who develop products not those investing in benefits, 2) it is delivered as an individual endeavour of cram-in-a-week forget-in-a-month not a collaborative skill for life

Objectives of #pm_ngt:

• Widely communicate an explanation of the ‘art  & science of pm’ that is an integration of the best of existing project management frameworks; so that existing investments are leveraged, so that where strengths exist we ensure practitioners are capable of capitalising on them*, so that where errors exist they are clearly diagnosed, explained & corrected, so that contradictions between existing frameworks are resolved and their integration explained and gaps filled.†
  *Cram-in-a-week exam-oriented training means trainees are rarely equal to translation of classroom knowledge to Back@Work…™ skills. Cram-in-a-week is all about explicitly knowledge while Real-World use is all about tacit skill in using the knowledge

†PRINCE2 is widely mis-sold as ‘complete’ but lacks activity planning and status evaluation guidance while the PMBoK Guide is full of these tools but lacks the control structures of PRINCE2 while both lack any understanding of or support for definition of investor’s objectives, Realisation of Benefits tracking, expression of Value Cases or coping with change, and all of this requires a context of support to bring knowledge into use as skill.

Actions (the last 2 actions are yours, the first 7 are mine):

• Deliver PM training offerings that match needs.Projects are inherently collaborative; so should be taught consistently but differently to people with roles across the management hierarchy (from  top-2-botton™).
• Investments often start in vague notions, pass through a project’s life-span and persist as returns are harvested; so should be taught to a syllabus that covers the steps and tools needed from Capital Injection to Return on Investment (from End-2-End™).
• Training is an investment and useless if it does not lead to skills used Back@Work ™; so must be taught so that it is Relevant-2-Reality™
• Write 3 books! book-1 Passing the PRINCE2® Exams- One can only credibly criticise what one can clearly demonstrate mastery of… (see our $99 (& instructor led) APMG accredited  PRINCE2® Foundation & Practitioner courses in the courses section)
• book-2 Passing the PMP® exams – ditto the above thoughts – udemy course coming soon
• book-3 #pm_ngt: using D4®, PRINCE2® and the PMBoK Guide® together in a Relevant-2-Reality™, Top-2-Bottom™ and End-2-End™ manner – (Discussions with Best Practice publishers at advanced stage)
• Harness available training and support technologies (e- and v-Learning)
• Develop training for delivery in-person, via virtual environments and other digitized means
• Ask your self “Why might I benefit from skills in delivering change?
• Contact us to discuss your needs +44 (0) 84 52 57 57 07

Handling Change

Change is necessary to deliver strategy and to avoid threat. Sometimes change is the response to tactical pressures, sometimes it is triggered by a fleeting opportunity to be capitalized upon.

Sometimes embracing change is optional
but often it is unavoidable; the only choice is ‘in control’ or victim

When faced with a desire or a need to move your organisation from its current state to a new operating state we suggest that there is advantage from having the ability to make the transition as fast or as cheaply or as profitably or with least pain or as safely or… as possible.

Change is inevitable;
isn’t it sensible to be able to handle its arrival with focus on
what matters most to your people?
With the most positive and least negative consequences?
Is your current capability matched to the capability you would like to have?

How We Do What we Do: ‘Product’ view

We have improved the state of the art in project management: we focus on the integration of the best elements of PM frameworks to match the daily reality of business life. The result is a pragmatic set of ‘common-sense’ structure, grounded in reliable principles and powerful tools. Together it all links board-room intent to boiler-room action™.

• Our training provides tools and techniques matched to the different needs of direction setting senior management, delivery oriented technical staff and the all those with the important duty to exercise day-to-day middle-management control.
  • Our training merges th ‘normal’ explicit steps of using techniques such as Decomposition with the soft-issues of group dynamics, motivation and trust that is required for graduates of training events need to become practitioners in real world environments.
• Our specialism is to guide enterprises to add the best insights, tools and techniques of Dimension Four®, PRINCE2® and the PMBoK Guide® to their working practices (and set-aside the exam-only distractions).
  • We label our approach “Project Management; New Generation Thinking”; #pm_ngt.#pm_ngt specifically addresses considerations from top to bottom of the organisation and from beginning to end of the change (investment) journey.
  • #pm_ngt links business strategy’s right to left, target driven world to technician’s left to right dogma.
  • Planning tools to backcast from outcomes with constrained delivery dates and resource consumption link to tools to forecast actions today and tomorrow. Backcasting is from well defined objectives formulated using D4’s Recognition Events®.
  • #pm_ngt’s set of tools and techniques support the time-span of initial idea, through projects (Capital Injection) and all the way through benefits delivery (revenue – or other utility: not all benefits are about money).
• #pm_ngt is portfolio based, it places decision making about each change initiative in the context of the organisation’s complete portfolio of uses of people, skill, will, materials and money
  • #pm_ngt combines D4’s focus on a Value Case with PRINCE2’s use of a cost case and  PMBoK’s tools to estimate. The result is an auditable link from corporate strategy to value that methodically and rigorously confirms actions lead to value and sources of value are supported by action.
  • Clear linkages between Strategy, action and value are the catalyst for improved Project Risk Management in terms Finance Directors and other senior board directors can take great comfort from increased control
  • #pm_ngt has different but linked tools and structure for each level of the hierarchy of direction setters, day-to-day management and technical/ operational staff.
  • #pm_ngt delivers a shared understanding across the communities defining, creating, and receiving changes
• #pm_ngt training is as much focussed on the psychology of organisations and te interaction between people as on the tools to aid those interactions. Expertise in Breakdown Structures an specification of Acceptance Criteria is useless without insight to develop motivation, trust, willingness to engage and means to harness stress and conflict to drive innovation, deign of solutions and delivery of achievements.

How we Do What we Do: ‘Delivery’ view

We know that the success rate from project management training is also often disappointing so we asked “How can we increase organisation’s value received from training (change)? Our answers is a key element of the improvement in the Project Management State of The Art – it is only a improvement when it is in use across the organisation. We are sure you recognize that business success needs an approach that works across the management hierarchy and works in ways that the standard project management text-books do not describe. #pm_ngt includes a training approach that differs from the standard approach too.

Implementation of #pm_ngt provides training, mentoring and support for staff in use of techniques (tools) and structured but flexible steps matched to the needs of each level of the organisation’s management hierarchy and each phase of the benefits time-line. There are thee time frames and 3 levels of involvement.

Using familiar approaches is quick and easy, but using new, ultimately quicker (or better) approaches always faces an inertia-hurdle. The classroom is useful for swift knowledge acquisition but real-world use is vital for the transition to fluency and skill. When the skill is a ‘shared set of behaviours  then support across the management hierarchy is also vital to embedding skills.

Our training approach matches the three tiers of the organisation:

• Level One: The ‘top’ of the organisation where Strategy is developed Right to Left, Resources allocated, Limits set, Escalations received, Decision made and Incentives created
• Level Two: Where Day to day control of both current business-as-usual and creation of future-state-business-as-usual is exercised within delegated limits
• Level Three: The ‘bottom’ of the organisation where detailed Left to Right scheduling and estimating are performed, where Technical execution and Reporting of actual status starts

Our training advises each tier of their duties, decisions, actions and communication interfaces – their context. We address both the content of #pm_ngt and also how to prepare for attending the training sessions and how, post-training, to support translation from class-room to use back@work™.

Certification & Accreditation

Of course we all, as individuals, want the personal recognition from achieving practitioner status in ‘professional exams’. At Logical Model we clearly separate the objectives of creating organisational capability from personal certification.

Aiming for the D4, PRINCE2 and PMP ‘practitioner’ exams is an intense exercise in individual knowledge gaining and is not aligned to building organisational capability.

Capability building requires shared understanding at each level and across the interfaces between levels. Organisational capability building adds value to businesses. Certification of individuals builds CVs/ Resumes; Capability building followed by individual exams can be of valuable – we offer both, preferably in that sequence.

Our Accreditations

We are the Dimension Four exam setting authority. We are accredited by APMG to administer PRINCE2 exams, we run PMP exam preparation classes and will publish 5th Ed materials timed to start prep in July 2013 ready for exams when release by PMI in Q3 or Q4 2013 – If you wish to acquire the PMP qualification before then you need PMBoK Guide 4th Edition materials

An Example

See the details of our **EVERYTHING** you could possible need PRINCE2 e-learning course that is supported and hosted by VTC .

An example of our Revision Support Tools for PRINCE2*. We also build Corporate Governance Tools for clients – use the Contact Us tab to request details & Examples.

*We like the iSpring tool for turning PowerPoint into flash and HTML5. As early adopters we are pushing training out of the classroom! But early-adopter means we also have to live with the odd quirk or two. When the animated materials have loaded click the blue triangle to move on step by step, but do wait for each animation to finish before clicking the triangle again or you’ll pause the show. This is more challenging when the blue triangle becomes invisible and disappears from the screen, but it is still active!