Managing Programmes Through Life
A series of Workshops for Industry

Purpose of this Educational Programme

Doubling and trebling of the cost and delivery time of major programmes has become so common that it is tolerated or even accepted as the norm! Many of those involved on such programmes cite size, complexity or number of unknowns as key contributors to steep escalation of costs and delivery times. However, close examination shows that the real contributing factors are not size, complexity or number of unknowns, but the widespread discontinuities between systems, information, processes, business practices and people (e.g. culture).

This educational programme aims to:

  1. Put the spotlight on the above mentioned discontinuities to identify how they arise; why they arise; and how, the problems they create can, if not promptly addressed, can escalate to much bigger problems.

  2. Introduce a new Business Engineering Approach that puts the emphasis on ‘value creation’ and ‘value adding’ rather than on the ‘technology or process driven’ approach of today.

  3. Show how can the value, and therefore return on investment, be maximised

  4. Show how an integration information infrastructure can help support and drive all business activities

Who is the programme for?

This Educational Programme is aimed at:

  • CEO’s and CFO’s - to help them consistently plan for better return on investment

  • Programme Managers - to help them effectively manage the execution of programmes and complete them within time and budget, through the creation of a  better decision support infrastructure

  • Operations and Support Managers: to help them effectively manage operations and support activities and to enable them to identify and remove non-value added activities

  • Implementation, Operation and Support Personnel: to help them identify potential problems and report them promptly to reduce the chance of such problems escalating to bigger ones

Format

The five modules can be delivered separately as a series of workshops/courses to be attended by individuals or groups of individuals from different companies. Alternatively it can be tailored as a package for a specific company.

Contact

Dr Kais Al-Timimi
Datamation Limited
95 High Street,
Girton,
Cambridge, CB3 0QQ
email: kais@datamation.co.uk 
Tel: +44 1223 572 579
United Kingdom
 
Workshop 1: Managing Projects Through Life – The Business Issues

Outline of Programme Content

  • Examines why projects, particularly major projects, often run over time and over budget, citing examples of recent “catastrophic” failures

  • Illustrates how small problems, if not addressed promptly or objectively, can grow into major and far more costly issues

  • Considers methods of identifying the root causes of problems that add delays and costs to projects and strategies of how to remove them

  • Outlines how a coherent and integrated view of processes, resources and people can help manage projects more effectively and deliver better returns.

Workshop 2: Managing Projects Through Life – Enabling Technologies

Outline of Programme Content

  • Describes current data management solutions, highlighting their true capabilities and shortcomings.  Whilst specific vendor deliverables will be discussed, this is not an exercise in comparing and contrasting application packages

  • Examines why interoperability between major IT systems is such a major issue and why current solution offerings are failing to offer a satisfactory solution

  • Investigates why data longevity and future proofing is a major issue and what is being done today to address the problems of managing long-lifecycle projects such as in Aerospace, Shipbuilding, Process and Infrastructure industries?

Workshop 3: Managing Projects Through Life – The Information Infrastructure

Outline of Programme Content

  • Describes the architecture of an effective Information Infrastructure addressing the complete lifecycle and all aspects of operations (true PLM)

  • Examines how this can solve Interoperability and Data Longevity problems

  • Discusses the characteristics of a Decision Support System that can help drive activity and deliver the business objectives

Workshop 4: Managing Projects Through Life – The Business Engineering Methodologies

Outline of Programme Content

  • Describes the Business Engineering Principles and Methodologies that help deliver the maximum value from business operations

  • Addressing the complete lifecycle of an investment, its conception, planning, execution and change, plus its interaction with the environment that surrounds it

  • This includes description of:

    • How interactions between project stakeholders can be made more seamless and effective

    • The use of “Value” as well as resource accounting methods of assessing success and/or the need for change

    • The need for integration and configuration of activities, business circumstances and capabilities as well as the “product”

    • How to maximise the value derived from project resources (both internal and external)

  • Examining it from the roles of both “sellers” and “customers”.

Workshop 5: Managing Projects Through Life – Solving Real Life Problems

Outline of Programme Content

  • This is an interactive workshop where attendees propose a few project scenarios.  Key issues raised by these project scenarios are then discussed in the light of what has been learnt in the past four seminars

  • The other four are pre-requisites

  • The output of this two-day session is a short report on the projects illustrating possible directions and actions