Practical PMP - PMBOK With MS Project, Does Make a Difference

Last month, I conducted a workshop for Practical PMP - PMBOK with MS Project. This time, it was for a determinedly result driven corporate team from Schenck Process Ltd. Schenck has multiple offices in India and they in fact, flew in participants from all across to participate in the workshop - from Calcutta, Delhi, Bangalore and of course the main office at Ranchi, a lively city in eastern India.

The expectations were very clear from Day 1. 

1. Understand the principles of modern Project Management 
2. Thoroughly understand the MS Project tool
3. Apply the MS Project tool with PMBOK principles, to achieve Management results
4. Have the Complete Plan ready (and also the needed reports/charts), reflecting on the day to day project management activities at their Schenck Process India!

It was different in the aspect that they also wanted to have the MS Project plan be ready for their Project Management Group, i.e., as Schenck develops to manage various projects from Ranchi. The team was used to follow SAP before for project management and they had no clue on how to used it with MS Project. SAP is a heavy software and needs a lot of intricacies to be maintained. And at the end of fourth day (Day 4) - hold your breath - the team did the above mentioned fourth item live: they created the complete plan needed in Schenck, with very little help from me. 

The team was a mixture of experience and varied - from very young professionals to professionals having years of experience. When we started, the team informed that they have some understanding on the management principles as someone earlier had taught them, but they have really forgotten.

I started with the Confuciusian principle, which echoes even today. 

"What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand."

As they would be doing/applying PMBOK with MS Project, they would not only understand, but will not forget also. And, I was not disappointed. In fact, very young professionals, were able to create project plan and relate it to the management principles of PMBOK. 

In the end, as a matter of fact, one of the very young team members, created the entire project plan along with the help of the team present and also created multiple reports that will be used in the next project management group meeting. 

Practical PMP - PMBOK with MS Project (July, 2013)

Nothing gives more satisfaction than the team working on a learning of 4 days with deep passion, energy and believing they learned which they truly can apply in the real world with the help of a tool. And here,  the team completely learned MS Project from Level - 0, learned to move away from SAP, apply MS Project principles with PMBOK and finally created the plan, which will be used by them, real-time!

As noted in my earlier post, Practical PMP - Applying PMBOK principles with MS Project Tool, in today's world practical applicability of the principle is that really matters. Management can not be learned by reading only theories and principles, but also getting you hands dirty, failing along the way while applying the tool (it is really different when you try with MS Project), and again standing up to truly realize the value of PMBOK principles. 

And thanks to the Schenck India senior management team in facilitating the 4 day event.