Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) the best practice guidance for programme management has been updated and officially released today on 30 August 2011.
There are many valuable additions to the manual that will make things clearer not only for MSP Practitioners , but also for people who are new to programme management. Our trainers are updating our MSP training courses to reflect these changes and these will be ready for our MSP Foundation and MSP Practitioner courses starting on 10 October
We’ve written previously about the MSP 2011 Updates – but below you’ll find a useful summary of the updates to the MSP Manual.
Incidentally – delegates attending our MSP Training courses will receive a copy of the MSP Manual included in their course fees.
If you are an existing MSP Practitioner and would like to buy the new manual – follow the Amazon link below:
The Benefits Management chapter now fits better with the others and includes practical advice on techniques and categorisation.
Risk & Issue Management
The revised Risk & Issue chapter relates more directly to the programme environment, and change control has been added to a new supporting cycle.
Quality & Assurance Management
The Quality & Assurance Management chapter now includes a significant new section on Assurance, with an emphasis on people development.
The Transformational Flow processes is now related to the Governance Theme and there is guidance and advise on practical ways to apply the guidance. They have included greater clarification of the roles and responsibilities of the Business Change Management team.
You can find out even more about the update from the official MSP update overview brochure.
Silicon Beach Training now offers the increasingly popular range of Agile Project Management training courses – but what is Agile Project Management, and why is it such a big deal all of a sudden?
In March 2011 the government unveiled it’s new ICT Strategy which identified a number of problems (or challenges using their words!) with the method in which IT projects and programmes were managed and delivered, causing them to fail. The first of these challenges being:
“projects tend to be too big, leading to greater risk and complexity, and limiting the range of suppliers who can compete”
For example, if a project to implement a large IT system is deemed to take 5 years to complete, it is very likely that, in those five years circumstances (e.g. technology, customer and business requirements, even governments!) will have changed, rendering the final solution based on the original specification unfit for purpose.
A number of strategies were identified to address these challenges, one of which is “by the application of lean and agile methodologies that will reduce waste, be more responsive to changing requirements and reduce the risk of project failure”.
Agile methodologies have been used in software development for some years, but are now being applied in project management as they offer a flexible process that can change according to customer or organisational needs.
How does Agile Project Management differ from traditional project management methodologies?
Traditionally a project manager may direct the project team using a ‘command and control’ style, actively directing their team towards the work that must be completed. Agile project management uses a different technique. At the beginning of an Agile project a high level plan will be created by the project manager, which is based around basic requirements and a high level vision of the solution. From there on the final project is created iteratively and incrementally, with each increment building on the previous increments. Agile Project management also differs in the way that team members create the plans for each increment, rather than the project manager themselves.
There’s no avoiding the fact that Project Managers are everywhere these days! Project Management is one of the most in-demand skills, and this applies across all types of organisations and across both public and private sectors.
Any manager requires knowledge of their subject matter. A finance manager needs to know their numbers, an HR manager needs to know Human Resources, and so on.
The difference with Project Managers is that they have to be an expert general manager who is highly focused to achieve results across a range of disciplines with a defined scope and accepted quality level.
A really good Project Manager needs to be a jack-of-all-trades who knows enough about every stage of the process to get their project to completion. They are responsible for delivering on-time, to budget. They therefore have to have great people skills, and also excellent personal organisation and Time Management skills. They have to be contactable by any member of their project team – and with modern telecommunications technology that can be at any time, in any place – day or night (I know project managers who work internationally who frequently get calls throughout their evenings from overseas as well as all day in their own time-zone).
MSP stands for Managing Successful Programmes and it represents proven programme management and good practice in successfully delivering transformational change.
MSP defines a programme as a temporary, flexible organisation created to co-ordinate, direct and oversee the implementation of a set of related projects and activities in order to deliver outcomes and benefits related to the organisations strategic objectives.
Next MSP Foundation Training courses in Brighton are running on -
4 – 6 April 2011
13 – 15 June 2011
And the next MSP Practitioner Training courses in Brighton are running on -
Our new MSP Courses in Brighton, Sussex, are available from July this year. MSP stands for Managing Successful Programmes, and provides a flexible methodology for Programme Managers. The MSP Training courses available are MSP Foundation Training and MSP Practitioner Training.
To answer some of the common questions we get asked about MSP, we put our Lead MSP Trainer on the spot in this 3 minute MSP Q & A video…
For those of you who can’t access this MSP video or have no sound on your computer – a full transcript will be avaialble shortly in our MSP Resources section.
PRINCE2 is great for Project Managers running single projects – but Programme Managers who look after portfolios of multiple projects require a different methodology, and that’s where MSP comes in.
MSP stands for Managing Successful Programmes and provides a flexible and proven toolkit of Programme Management principles that can be adapted for any businesses’ requirements.
The courses we are offering (and our first available dates) are:
There’s no avoiding the fact that Project Managers are everywhere these days! Project Management is one of the most in-demand skills, and this applies across all types of organisations and across both public and private sectors.
We have just updated our 
