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Social Media Networks provide effective tools for Project Managers
“Did you know that we provide some of the best PRINCE2 training courses in the UK? Don’t forget to ask your provider about class sizes before booking. We pride ourselves on quality, we’ll never pack you in! “
As a Project manager you need to keep in touch with messages from clients, stakeholders, developers and team members, arranging meetings, keeping up with project updates. This takes a lot of time, in fact you could say that this makes up most of your job. There are emails to check and send, phone calls to make, meetings to attend, information and reports to chase.
Having done all the above, you then need to update your project plan, communicate the updates to senior managers and stakeholders, creating reports, communicate the progress of the project. Knowing the importance of personal relations, you probably wish you had more time to talk face to face with important clients, but your time gets eaten away with endless e-mails, phone calls and meetings. Not only that, you will need to keep on top of being able to locate and distribute the latest updates of documents for yourself and for your team.
This will not only eat up your time, all the emails and updates need to be read by your team members and it will subsequently eat up their time too. If they are unsure about whether they have the latest updates they must contact you directly, probably by email again to make sure they are up to date with project changes and deadlines. They may lose emails or miss them in the ocean of updates. This will keep you even busier as you may feel the need to check receipt of messages. Read the rest of "Using Social Media for Project Management"
Posted by Andy Trainer in News, PRINCE2, Project Management, Social Media on October 24th, 2011| 2 Comments »
How can you differentiate providers of PRINCE2 Training Courses?
Small PRINCE2 Class Sizes Guaranteed
PRINCE2 is the most widely used Project Management methodology in the UK – so there are a lot of training companies offering PRINCE2 Foundation and PRINCE2 Practitioner courses.
On the face of it, all PRINCE2 courses are the same product. After all, to provide PRINCE2 training you have to use the syllabus set by APMG, and have your PRINCE2 course materials assessed by them.
So – the only difference in PRINCE2 courses is price, right…?
WRONG!
We had a call recently from someone who wanted to book PRINCE2 Practitioner Conversion because they had failed their exam with another provider. They told us that the course had been very rushed, and we were shocked to hear that there had been 20 delegates on the course. Twenty Delegates!!! With one trainer…!
For an intensive course with exams like PRINCE2, 20 is a HUGE group (well, it’s a huge group for ANY course!).
We could put 20 people in a training room and charge £500 a head – but we won’t.
Not now – not ever.
There are PRINCE2 training providers out there who proudly claim that they “will not be beaten on price”.
At Silicon Beach we are proud to say that we will not be beaten on PRINCE2 Training quality.
Our courses are not the cheapest available – but for the quality of PRINCE2 training and customer service we provide our PRINCE2 courses represent excellent value for money.
Quality not Quantity: What sets our PRINCE2 Training Courses Apart?
Group size – Maximum 12
You won’t ever find more than 12 delegates on our PRINCE2 courses. There will always be questions you want to ask about how PRINCE2 applies to real projects – not just to help you pass the PRINCE2 Practitioner exam, but also to help you apply what you have learned when you return to work.
If you train with a provider that books 20 people on a course, you’ve got almost no hope of getting a thorough or useful response.
PRINCE2 Trainers who are Experienced Project Managers
All PRINCE2 trainers have to be accredited by APMG. But just being accredited doesn’t make a great trainer.
We only use trainers with real world PRINCE2 project management experience. This is important for two reasons:
First – the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam is about applying the PRINCE2 methodology to scenarios. A trainer who has real experience is in a much better position to explain the rationale to you than someone who’s just learned the theory well enough to be accredited.
Second – whilst passing the exam is important – just passing the exam doesn’t make you a great project manager. PRINCE2 is a toolkit, which is adjusted for each project. Because our trainers have years of hard-earned experience, they can provide advice on doing just that, which means the training is more valuable when you get back to the office on Monday.
Posted by Andy Trainer in News, PRINCE2, Project Management on August 5th, 2011| No Comments »
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”
Silicon Beach Training now offer accredited Agile Project Management training, including the Agile Project Management Foundation course and Agile Project Management Practitioner course.
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.
Read the rest of "What is Agile Project Management?"
Posted by Alistair Wylie in Agile Project Management, Business Skills, ITIL, MSP, MSP Training, News, PRINCE2, Project Management on May 11th, 2011| 2 Comments »
No Sound on YouTube Video on Mac - image by heather buckley
Just a very quick post as this has been driving me mad since I got my new Power Mac using OSX. I had sound on the computer for most things but no sound on YouTube and some Flash animation.
Having a look around for the answer, as usual I was presented with lots of complicated fixes. I chose the simplest and it worked straight away with out having to download anything dubious!
Q: How do I get sound on Youtube on my Mac?
A: delete the – /Library/Preferences/Macromedia folder
Simples ;)
If you are looking for PRINCE2 training, ITIL training, ISTQB training or MSP Training why not call and book a course in Brighton, Sussex. It’s the place to be! Take a look at our full range of training courses, UK.
No sound on Mac reset sound options
No Sound on Mac Update
Some people may find that after installing Mac OS X 10.5.6 update your Mac may appear to have lost it’s sound. For some reason the update sets the sound output to “Headphones” instead of “Internal speakers”. You will need to set it back to “Internal speakers” to get the sound back.
Posted by Heather Buckley in New Free Resources on March 2nd, 2011| 4 Comments »
The Phoenix Chip
The University of Michigan has developed an amazing new computer prototype. The microcomputers were presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.
..
The Phoenix Chip
This is the first complete millimeter-scale computing system and can hold up to a week’s worth of data (what ever a weeks worth is!). Its called the Phoenix chip and was designed to monitor eye pressure in glaucoma patients, although there are infinite uses for such a device. What’s so special about this chip is it’s power saving capacity – microscopic chips are not new but the battery size needed to power them is problematic. The battery for this chip in integrated into the unit itself and uses 30,000 times less power in sleep mode and 10 times less in active mode than similar chips now on the market.
Silicon Beach Training provide a great range of programming training, project management training including PRINCE2 training, ITIL training and MSP training
Posted by Heather Buckley in News, Programming on February 24th, 2011| 1 Comment »
Microsoft Project is the definitive tool for project managers. However using it in a shared environment can often lead to difficulties – particularly when you’ve got lots of projects that use the same resources. This is where resource pools can be invaluable – and they’re not that hard to set up!
To learn more about Resource Pools, and plenty more besides in MS Project, why not attend one of our public 2-day MS Project Training courses here in Brighton, Sussex? For general project management skills we also run a 1-day Introduction to Project Management training course, and we are also an Accredited Training Organisation for PRINCE2 Training.
How to use Resource Pools in Microsoft Project 2010
Creating the same set of resources in each project is unnecessary duplication. You can create a resource pool, entering the resources only once and saving time and storage space. The resources reside in one file and other projects can link into this pool, thus creating project sharer files. If information is changed in the pool, all sharer files will be updated. Also when the pool is changed from a sharer file, the resource pool is updated.
Creating a Resource Pool in MS Project 2010
Follow the following simple steps to create a resource pool in Project 2010
Don’t worry about the start/end date, or entering any tasks
Read the rest of "Microsoft Project 2010 – How to Use Resource Pools"
Posted by Andy Trainer in New Free Resources, News, Project Management on February 9th, 2011| 5 Comments »
In an effort to reduce the deficit, the UK Treasury has suspended and/or cancelled projects that they deemed not to reflect the Coalition Government’s new priorities. In June 2010 the government cancelled or froze £10.5bn worth of projects that had been announced in the dying days of the Labour government.
Silicon Beach Training offer PRINCE2 Training, MSP Training and Project Management Training in Brighton, Sussex.
Such cuts should mean less training, however, more emphasis is to be put on the continuing use of the PRojects IN Controlled Environments or PRINCE2. PRINCE2 project management method is a process-driven project management method, developed by Office of Government Commerce (OGC). So although the government plans to cut project spending it seems they will approach this by increasing their investment in Prince2 Training to ensure there are fewer cost overruns in future.
Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) is a structured yet flexible framework more recently developed for the Public Sector by OCR. Currently where so-called controlled environments such as information and communications technology are involved or complex business systems then the use of PRINCE2 methodology is mandatory for programme and project management in the Public Sector.
Read the rest of "Cuts in Government spending may be good for PRINCE2 training and MSP training"
Posted by Heather Buckley in MSP Training, News, PRINCE2, Project Management on January 31st, 2011| 2 Comments »
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.
Here at Silicon Beach we run regular Management Training and Project Management training courses, as well as accredited PRINCE2 Training and MSP Training courses here at our training centre in Brighton, Sussex and demand is still strong, even through the recession.
But why are project managers so highly valued?
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).
Read the rest of "Why Project Managers are so Valuable"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Management & Leadership, MSP, MSP Training, News, Personal Development, PRINCE2, Project Management on January 19th, 2011| 1 Comment »
