Advanced Seminar
Applying Harvard University Global System™ Tools

Advanced Project Management and
Continuous Risk Management Workshop
People Skills, Best Practices and Practical Techniques

Ottawa-Gatineau Campus (Canada)
September 8-12,  December 1-5, 2008
Located near the scenic Gatineau Park,
our campus is 15-minute drive from downtown Ottawa
and about an hour direct flight from LaGuardia Airport, New York.


Boston
October 6-10, 2008

IMPORTANT
The content of this advanced workshop is identical to what the seminar leader has taught graduates students and engineers preparing the M.Sc. Project Management. Selected excerpts were delivered at various seminars and conferences sponsored by the Project Management Institute (PMI) throughout the world.

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        Government Project Management  & Continuous Risk Management
•   In-house Seminars Delivered in Your Organization
        in the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, China and Japan

•   Workshop objectives
•   Workshop outline
•    Why is this program unique?
•   Workshop benefits
•   Seminar organization
•   Continuous Risk Management Framework
•   Hand-outs, road maps & course material of exceptional value
•   Program leader
•   Who should attend?
•   Feedback from participants
•   Course materials
•   Locations & tuition fees
•   How to register

In order to make a successful transition to project management and meet our clients’ goals, we must address not only the creative and technical demands of a project, but also manage geographically-dispersed teams and various stakeholders, under increasingly tight budgets, scarce resources and inelastic deadlines. We must also deliver high quality and anticipate and mitigate a plethora of risks.

This is an unparalleled opportunity to strengthen your ability to be a leading force for change in your organization. You will acquire the most current tools for identifying, assessing and mitigating risks, as well as planning and controlling small and large projects, regardless of their complexity.

During the first four days, you will participate in the seminar Strategy, Risk, Principled Negotiation & Leadership. The fifth day is a hands-on practice session on risk, estimating, scheduling, budgeting, scarce resource allocation, and progress control using PDI and Harvard-University-Global-System^™ tools.

The focus of the complete seminar is on mastering the creative skills needed to:

• select projects;
• validate project scope including goals, deliverables and legitimate constraints;
• apply principled-negotiation skills to secure a clear mandate and negotiate with stakeholders;
• anticipate, assess and continually manage risks including resistance to change and environmental, health, safety and governance risks;
• allocate scarce resources applying cutting-edge heuristics;
• build and motivate high-performing teams;
• assign responsibility;
• control quality and complete the project ahead of time and within budget.

In addition, you will learn to control change, recognize early warning signs of delays and cost overruns and take corrective action promptly. The program features real-life case studies, and individual consultations and teamwork.

This workshop is practical by virtue of three unique features:

1. You will apply the Harvard University Global System^™. This project- and risk-management framework comprises unique instruments to help you validate intelligence and concurrently manage powerful stakeholders, scarce resources, constant changes in deliverables, tight budgets, inelastic deadlines and related risks.


2. The workshop leader, A. P. Martin, has taught strategy and risk to graduate students and led project management seminars throughout the world including several international conferences of the Project Management Institute (PMI). His Advanced Risk Management Workshop has gained the recognition of clients in finance, defense, information technology (IT), aerospace, mining, governments and power generation, both nuclear and hydro. An alumnus of Concordia University and Harvard Business School where he studied entrepreneuship, Mr. Martin also has extensive training in principle-based negotiation and mediation from Harvard Law School.


3. You will receive the best available course materials.

The purpose of this hands-on workshop is to provide you with the practical skills, knowledge, tools and best practices to manage high-risk projects in a turbulent environment of rapid change, regardless of complexity and size, and without the benefit of hierarchical authority. You will specifically learn to validate project scope including goals and deliverables, negotiate a clear mandate, estimate and manage time, cost and quality, anticipate and mitigate risk, assign responsibility, prevent role conflicts, control progress and take prompt corrective action, speed-up delivery, streamline the project-management process and cut-down on the project leader’s workload through proactive planning, prudent and gradual delegation, selective control, and continuous risk management. Several Harvard University and PDI real-life case studies address team-building issues and the limitations related to tight budgets, inelastic deadlines and resistance to change. They will help you harness the resources and synergistic capabilities of allies and potential stakeholders.

At the end of this hands-on workshop, you will be able to:

• Clearly define the role of each member of your team;
• Build mechanisms to avoid role conflict that impairs performance.

• Practice with new instruments such as Factional Analysis, Power Scales and Psychometrics to understand the players'
  • perceptions, positions, goals, and underlying interests;
• Identify, assess, and mitigate stakeholder-related risks;
• Gain the skills for building a balanced portfolio of mission-critical objectives;
• Define the deliverables of a complex project and its value to the client and end users.

• Identify the critical success factors for each project;
• Assess the interest and degrees of freedom of each party before contemplating a strategy;
• Apply new business intelligence tools to uncover unusual risks and opportunities;
• Seek innovative ways to maximize the value to your client and partners;
• Recognize early warning signals for delays, cost overruns and deficiencies in quality and performance;
• Scan for project risk and formulate the best strategies and contingency plans to manage it;
• Predict change and establish mechanisms to control it.

• Value and seek trust-building ingredients that are essential to the creation of lasting agreements;
• Identify the various tactics used by coercive and strident negotiators;
• Develop constructive ways to prevent and manage hostility and deadlocks;
• Practice principle-based negotiations under increasingly complex situations, and with demanding negotiators who may need assistance vis-à-vis their own constituencies;
• Detect how to call for a recess or a graceful exit when the face-to-face atmosphere is neither adding substantive nor relational value;
• Build valuable allies based on common interests and synergies;
• Act with integrity and never forget the common good and the needs of all constituencies, be they present at the negotiation table or not.

• Develop a sound work-breakdown structure;
• Allocate scarce resources across multiple projects taking into account capability, technology, risks, cost, floats, personal needs and strategic leverage on other assignments;
• Estimate time and schedule work while taking into account time-related risks including downtime, delays, holidays and surprise events;
• Budget under uncertainty and explore different scenarios for commitment and cash flow to fit client financial goals;
• Integrate the project plan by linking schedules, resources and costs to quality and work progress;
• Prepare earned-value charts that integrate work accomplishment;
• Evaluate actual progress against projections, re-assess risks, and take corrective action;
• Exercise proper and selective control over the project destiny with an appropriate balance between soft- and hard-control measures.

The seminar is in three parts. Part I (1.5 days) focuses on project selection and definition, stakeholders' analysis, and continuous risk identification and assesment. Each client is unique, and before planning and mobilizing scarce resources, it is vital to scan for intelligence and master the context of your project environment and stakeholders, i.e. those with the power to support, make or break a project decision. You will learn how to get on the right track by validating the project’s scope including tangible and intangible goals, overcoming constraints, negotiating a clear mandate and formulating a solid project strategy and action plan.

Part II (2 days) addresses the secrets of leadership and principled negotiation without the benefit of authority. The hands-on negotiation sessions provide the skills to understand the players, and build durable bridges based on mutual interests. The focus is on the creative ways and business acumen to secure lasting value that is superior to what can be gained by court, mediation, compromise, splitting the difference or other means. This part also addresses risk management, talent retention and ally building. The goal is to turn every team member into an effective agent of positive change.

Implementation is where the rubber hits the road in project management. Part III (1.5 days) focuses on the tools, best practices and risks of implementation. It integrates the triple requirements of cost, time and value (benefits). It offers a wealth of insights into what works and what doesn’t. This section also considers how to overcome major obstacles to progress. You will also practice with powerful tools for scheduling, resource allocation, progress control, and related risks. The content is applicable regardless of the software products used (MS Project, Primavera, Artemis).

The program features current real-life case studies from business and governments.

1. Introduction: Practical Framework, Proven Tools
    and Management Road Maps

• Instruments to visualize the complete management cycle: Harvard University Global System^™ as a complement to PMI Body of Knowledge
• Intelligent and continuous risk management
• Four practical and essential instruments for a clear mandate

• Pre-issue incubation intelligence: Detecting embryonic signals below management radar to anticipate issues (threats, risks and opportunities) and future projects early
• How to validate and interpret intelligence: from mapping perceptions and context to extracting facts, identifying the full spectrum of stakeholders, their genuine interests and hidden agendas, if any
• Four tests to discard goals and projects with questionable value
• How to balance multi-purpose multi-tasking portfolios: Key thresholds to differentiate pilot experiments, projects, operations, and strategic and operational policies
• Project-scope and change-definition tool: Project Charter
• The progress/performance section: A balanced scorecard linking all project elements
• How to define and validate priority and urgency

      A. How to Identify, Assess and Characterize Hidden Risks,
           Blind Spots and Gray Areas

• Value-chain risks
• Risk incubators and pre-project tipping-point risks
• Anticipating stakeholder-related risks (SRR): Visualization of complex relationships integrating SRI Business Intelligence VALS (Psychographics), Martin's Factional Analysis and three power-asymetric dimensions to assess the capability and readiness for change
• Responsibility-accountability risks
• Execution, transition and commissioning risks
• Hygea Case study: Value-chain and stakeholder risks

• Risk tolerance: The precautionary principle
• Risk response: Progress tracking and control
• Crafting solid plans to deal with residual risks
• Risk communication from threat identification to mitigation and impact evaluation
• Complex Case study: Instrument to manage transition risk (Wakefield)

• How to invent a wide range of counterintuitive options with Harvard^® Strategy Grid: Free and guided out-of-the-box brainstorming
• From strategy to work plan: Demonstration and practice
• How to translate strategy into tactics and clear deliverables
• How to build lasting alliances for high commitment
• Ten acid tests of an effective strategy for projects, policies and daily operations
• How to get team synergy in strategy formulation

• Proven ways to empower talent and build allies
• New tools for deciphering vested interests and perceptions
• How to extract value from psychographics
• How to get high performance with limited authority and restraints on rewards
• Proven ways to empower talent and build allies

• How to assign the responsibility of each team member
  • Harvard^® Responsibility Chart
• Workshop demonstration and group exercise
• How to prevent hidden vetoes and costly delays
• How to reduce usual delays in getting approvals
• How to get results as a project leader without the benefit of hierarchical authority
• How to build collaborative and charismatic power
• Sources, applications and limits of personal power
• Understanding accountability practices and risks for team leaders
  • Individual accountability
  • Professional accountability
  • Managerial accountability
  • Collective accountability
• Group exercise integrating responsibility, accountability, power and authority into a managerial balance sheet

• Personal blind-spot awareness: Roger-Fisher wrestling exercise
• Interest-based negotiation:
  Preparation checklist and detailed road map for flawless negotiations
• Principled Negotiation Framework
• Differentiating between each party's position and vested interests
• How to move from positional bargaining to joint problem solving
• Negotiation-Mandate Tool (Harvard University Global System^™):
  Demo and practice
• Structuring surprise-free ethical deals: Critical success factors
• Identify creative options and crafting mutual-gain opportunities
  • Harvard^® Strategy Grid
• Ground rules for inventing options without commitment
• Case Study: Teamwork on inventing counter-intuitive options
• Differentiating substantive from people issues
• Crafting the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)

• Bidding, auctioning, counter-offers and last-minute demands
• Proven tips to deal with objections, framing, escalation, soft money and other tactics
• How and when to make necessary concessions in a strategic way
• Revelations from the pattern of concessions
• Practical tips for buying or selling homes and capital goods

• The time to secure future success is never too early
• Strategic negotiations: Why being on time is too late? Tips to gain early-bird gains; clues to connect the dots
• BATNA exercise: Job interview
• How to build the trust and forge lasting agreements
• How to avoid discord on your side of the table
• Subtle elements that can make or break deals

• Harvard case: High-stake negotiations between and within six groups comprising federal and state/provincial government jurisdictions, environmentalists, labor unions and companies on opposite sides
• Dealing with conflicting groups and fleeting coalitions risks: Harborco
• How to read people signals, validate your perceptions and anticipate tactics
• Real-life video Case: Behind the scene of a major negotiation

• Practical template for conflict diagnosis
• Managing conflict and hostility
• How to ethically deal with harsh 'negotiators' who resort to systematic obstruction

• Ten steps to reach a viable deal and avoid deadlock or flawed closure

13. Project Execution Plan:
      Scheduling, Budgeting, Resource Allocation, Earned Value

• Tips to develop a sound work-breakdown structure
• Best practices for estimating time and cost
  • Optimum team-size theory; range estimating
  • Criteria for sound scheduling and fast-tracking
  • How to identify the critical stages and milestones
  • How to manage projects with inelastic deadlines
• Schedule acceleration: How to avoid common risks
• Exercise: Estimating and mitigating completion risk
• How to allocate scarce resources and budget accurately across multiple projects
  • Real-life cases
• Frequency of control: Important earned-value tips; S-curve exercise
• Planning and control integration: Demo and practice

14. Implementation and Progress Control: Tools and Practice Exercises
      A 360° Balanced-Scorecard Perspective

• How to anticipate and control change and downtime
• How to predict and hitch-hike on surprise events
• Work progress: How to assess project status, earned value and risks from a 360° perspective
• Schedule & cost: How to validate new projections
• Project commissioning and phase-out issues

15. Project Execution Case Studies: Boeing-Hygea

• Scheduling tasks with complex relationships
• Allocating scarce resources on an inelastic time line
• Determining the means to guarantee delivery on time
• Controlling and making earned-value progress visible to clients
• Corrective action to halt delays and cost overruns
• Validating time and cost projections: Early warnings

16. Exemplary Team Leaders
      with Competence, Integrity, Commitment and Courage

• The characteristics of high-performing team leaders
• Leadership practical competencies: Knowledge and skills
• Exemplary-leadership values and attitudes for high commitment
• Governing principles for ethics and conscience issues
• Practical ways to use power ethically
• Leadership courage: Taking responsible opportunity and conscience risks with careful management
• How to manage, negotiate and lead without confrontation, coercion or manipulation
• Four exemplary project leaders selected from both the business and non-profit sectors
• Kendal: Repeating near miracles with shoe-string budgets in the toughest risk-plagued social-enterprise projects
• Mulally: the young engineer and long admired team builder who led  “killer” projects that propelled Boeing to global aerospace leader
• Strong: The project “conductor” who, without a college degree, excels in working behind the scene, in complex international geopolitical assignments with inelastic deadlines
• Wakefield: The project champion who turns fence-sitters and staunch competitive foes into allies from Alcan, Spar and Lockheed-Martin to Silicon Valley companies and a Russian satellite-launch consortium

17. Synthesis, Conclusion and 90-Day Action Plan

This program is led by A. P. Martin who pioneered the concept of Proactive Thinking, invented the Harvard^® Planner, developed HUGS (Harvard University Global System) and created the powerful method used by Boeing, GE and governments to schedule projects under inelastic deadlines. Governments, financial institutions, nuclear power companies and the aerospace and high-tech industries have also applied Mr. Martin’s framework on risk management.

Mr. Martin is President of PDI and a former Faculty Member of the Graduate Business School of the University of Quebec where he taught Strategy, Risk and Management of Change in the Project Management Master’s Degree Program. Prior to presiding over PDI, Mr. Martin worked for leading aerospace and petrochemical corporations. He has also managed a variety of international projects including telecommunications, airport security, R&D, mergers & acquisitions and the strategic turnaround of a national financial institution.

Mr. Martin is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School where he studied entrepreneurship. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Concordia University. His training background includes eBusiness and management of change at MIT, people skills at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, and principle-based negotiation and mediation at the Harvard Law School.

A patent holder and a recipient of innovation awards from a subsidiary of General Dynamics, Mr. Martin has been recognized by the Project Management Institute for "his outstanding contribution to the state-of-the-art of project management". Mr. Martin has served as executive member of the non-partisan Committee of The Prime Minister of Canada on Federal Government Reform. He is an executive of Harvard university Club and the President of Harvard Business School Club in the National Capital Region.

Project managers, contractors, project steering-committee chairs, team leaders, functional executives, procurement managers, client representatices, faculty members, PhD students and senior professionals who play a key role on a project team. Previous participants have come from major financial institutions, multinational corporations (pharmaceuticals, biotech, aerospace, petrochemicals, electrical utilities, construction, telecommunication carrier and manufacturers), research & development organizations, small and medium-size businesses, governments (federal, state and municipal decision makers from nearly every continent), international institutions (Red Cross, World Bank, APEO, ICAO), defense (NATO, NORAD, U.S. DOD, Canada's DND, U.K. MOD and other European counterparts), and social enterprises (health care, education, foundations, NGOs). Their projects have varied from a few thousand to multi-billion dollars in budget.

As a participant, you will receive cutting-edge practical course materials, most of which are not available elsewhere. These include:

• A. P. Martin's latest book: Harnessing the Power of intelligence, which includes several tools to analyze the stakeholders, and identify project opportunities and risk early and before they on the radar of competitors,
• A. P. Martin's book: A 2004 advanced essay on risk management
• Alan Wakefield's 2004 essay on the multipartite negotiations "that led to the implementation of the first widespread curbside recycling program in the world. This model captured the public’s imagination and rapidly spread across North America and into parts of Europe, significantly increasing the recycling of consumer waste."
• A comprehensive workbook with extensive chapters on the topics discussed in the class;
• The Complete Harvard Road Map on strategy featuring both ongoing and sequential tasks that no manager can ignore;
• A step-by-step Risk Management Road Map
• A step-by-step Time Management Road Map to plan your year, month, week and day;
• A Professional Template to formulate strategy and manage resistance to change;
• Martin's Change Management Template used to define projects and manage complex change
• A Practical Responsibility-Charting Tool to clarify your various roles in all projects and assignments;
• An advanced Harvard case study on multi-issue multi-partite negotiation
• Boeing case study (scheduling, budgeting and progress evaluation)
• The latest Harvard^® Planner

• Duration: 5 days Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for both business and government participants
• Value in Continuing Education Units: 3.75 CEU
• Locations:
  • Canada: PDI Conference Center in Ottawa-Gatineau National Capital area. Free parking. Note: Our Ottawa-Gatineau campus is located about an hour direct flight from LaGuardia Airport (New York). Directions available at www.executive.org/directions
  • Call us for U.S. locations in Cambridge (MA) and New York (NY).
• Tuition Fees:
  • Fees include books, hand-outs, road maps and other course materials of exceptional value (see above), a daily continental breakfast, a light luncheon plus hot and soft drinks twice a day.
  • Regular fees: $2195, Government: $2120. Add taxes for non tax-exempted participants
  • Group fees for 3 or more delegates: $2045 per participant. Add taxes for non tax-exempted participants

For overnight accommodation, several hotels are located within 10 to 20-minute drive including Hilton, Ramada Inn, Westin, Fairmont Chateau Laurier, Marriott, Sheraton, Delta, Holiday Inn, Days Inn, Best Western, Cartier Place Suite Hotel, Lord Elgin Hotel, and Minto Place Suite Hotel. Click here for detailed information about hotels.

How to Register: Please register by phone or fax and pay in advance by cheque or credit card.
Send your cheque payable to: The Professional Development Institute PDI Inc.
Fees include books, hand-outs, road maps and other course materials of exceptional value (see above), a daily continental breakfast, light luncheon plus hot and soft drinks during the morning and afternoon pauses, but exclude hotel accommodation (if required).

Cancellation Policy: Participants registering as a group must send substitutes in lieu of cancelling.
For other clients, cancellations are accepted if made at least 10 working days prior to the course, and are subject to a $100 service charge per person. Full fees are payable by anyone who fails to attend or cancels less than 10 working days prior to the session. One substitution or transfer to a later course of the same duration is allowed.

The dress code is business casual at your discretion. Trust your judgment. When unsure, err on the side of caution. If overdressed, you can remove a tie or a jacket and roll up your sleeves. Members of the Canadian Forces and the U.S. defense community can, at their discretion, either dress casually or keep the uniform.

You will be reminded the first day to dress the way you feel most comfortable for a photo session the next morning.

Although every effort will be made to ensure a pleasant learning environment including a suitable temperature, we recommend you bring a sweater or a jacket to the classroom as individual comfort zones differ and sudden variations in the weather can temporarily affect air conditioning.

Also please kindly refrain from using strong fragrances during the session in order to accommodate your fellow participants who suffer from asthma.