Mindavation > We Deliver

We Deliver

We Deliver


Governing projects – the roles, responsibilities, decision making processes and standard guidance given to those leading the required change and their teams is what drives our critical governance success. Making the right decisions at the right time with the right amount of process and due diligence is needed to ensure proper and enough oversight and quality assurance is in place, without creating more red tape is imperative to successful project go…

Read More

Advisory

Agile has been around since the 1950s with the TJ Watson research centre leveraging iteration development. Organisations worldwide have rediscovered Agile as a delivery mechanisum in achieving outcomes using a time boxed framework. With the advent of the agile manifesto in 2001 there is now a plethora of new role titles and ways of performing project delivery in an agile terminology based approach. Mindavation retains an agnostic approach to agile, as we focus on the core principles that are most commonly forgotten about and form part of the agile manifesto. Every tool has a purpose in the toolkit and we do not profess that agile is the only tool you use. Speak to a Mindavator to ensure that you not only deliver your oganisation requirements but also create a culture, mindset and skills leveraging all forms of project delivery approaches.

A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide) is the globally recognized standard for the practice of business analysis. BABOK Guide reflects the collective knowledge of the business analysis community and presents the most widely accepted business analysis practices. Mindavation has been selected by LinkedIn to share the foundations and knolwedge areas of BABOK and you can watch Haydn deliver these online courses through Linkedin Learning. Mindavation’s extensive experience in all things Business Analaysis can be translated into building your skills and capabilities and pragmatically applying principles and practices of BABOK.

Proper analysis of a business problem or opportunity is key to achieving the better outcome you are seeking. Unfortunately this is not an easy process. Communication, language and even cultural differences create barriers that can’t be solved with just proper modelling skills. Of course the ability to derive use cases, data models, activity flows and the other business analysis tools is paramount, but Mindavation likes to take it a step further. Making sure that elicitation of requirements is about truly understanding and collaborating, taking multiple views, ensuring that models lead you to the organisations expected outcomes. Making sure that solutions meet implicit expectations as well as formal stakeholder requirements. If you need help with business analysis for a project, or for your organisation, we can help. Mindavation provides formal training courses and coaching for business analysts and we can do the job for you as well.

Not many organisations have made someone accountable for determining how the organisation most effectively can achieve its current and future objectives. The result is that – over time – different parts of an organisation find they struggle with sharing information and connecting systems and that it takes too long to adjust to changing business drivers and goals. They also find their operational budgets are increasingly burdened with the ongoing maintenance of disparate and duplicated systems, approaches and capabilities. The promise of Enterprise Architecture is to reduce operational budgets and increase organisational agility at the same time. It achieves this by ensuring all decisions about projects and policies steer toward a future state architecture designed to achieve target business outcomes and capitalise on relevant business disruptions. To be successful the key skill of an Enterprise Architect is to communicate and influence. Mindavation can show you how to bring EA out of the (IT) ivory tower into the forefront of tuning the business operating model for success.

Good decision making does not happen automatically. It requires well defined and balanced structures. Everyone in an organisation needs to understand how decisions are being made, what information is required, who is responsible for providing that information, who is responsible for making the decision, how decisions are communicated. Governance models only work when there is clear policy and leadership driving adherence and non compliance has well defined consequences. Developing and implementing governance frameworks is all about aligning human behaviour with desired outcomes at corporate, departmental, portfolio, program, project or operational level. Mindavation has been involved in designing and implementing governance models in many organisations and is happy to assist with yours.

There are many tools to stimulate the creative mind to innovate, like scenario planning, brainstorming, lateral thinking, attribute listing, trend analysis, SWOT analysis, etc. Equally important is to have a structured approach for the lifecycle of products or services, from visioning, ideation, concept development, prototyping, product development, launch, to continuous improvement. Mindavation can assist with both; facilitating the creative process to think outside the box and make sure that innovation becomes ingrained in the day to day operations of your organisation.

Good leaders have many trades in common and the good news is that most can be learned. How well can you communicate your vision and how effective are you in developing productive relationships? Mindavation can help with developing your leadership skills, by training, coaching and mentoring services with a focus on being authentic, emotionally intelligent and self managed. This is not a one day task, but a long term investment in self development and personal effectiveness. Part of the package is increasing your competence in communication, negotiation, presentation and facilitation and give you more tools for conflict handling, influencing and dealing with difficult people and situations.

The Project Management body of Knolwedge (PMBOK) has been a guiding framework for organisations world wide to structure and understand the processes and the tools and techniques required to deliver organisational change through effective project change management. Mindavation has been a global registered education provider leveraging PMBOK since 1999. All of our senior consultants are certified project managment professionals (PMP) and have extensive delivery and implementation experience leveraging the PMBOK framework.

PMBOK is a registered mark of The Project Management Institute, Inc.

Projects are unique undertakings with a defined start and end date, scope and resources, planned to accomplish a singular goal. Many organisations struggle with this as they are process oriented and lack the structures and discipline to manage projects effectively. Mindavation helps with the basic knowledge to set this up. We help drive your project initiatives, from inception to implementation, creating the organisational awareness and capabilities required to continue a project approach to getting work done.

As many organisations acquire the capability maturity to govern and mange projects effectively, they come to the realisation that obtaining strategic benefits requires another set of capabilities. We call this program management, where over a longer period of time we coordinate and control multiple projects and initiatives to achieve strategic outcomes. Managing benefits and risk, stakeholders and change are all at a different level of size and complexity compared to in a project. Mindavators have led the initiation of programs, developing the business case, the planning of resourcing, procurement, engagement, governance, compliance and benefits realisation for many major programs of work and can bring the experience to do this well for your organisation.

If Projects and Programs are running well, the next challenge is to ensure investments are made that best support the organisation’s strategic objectives. Programs and Projects are usually the main carriers of capital expenditure and as such Portfolio Management is the key control for future performance. Mindavation uses the Val-IT (Cobit) framework to create clarity in portfolio management governance and focuses on leadership driving transparency in all investment decisions across the organisation and supporting the subsequent reduction of sovereignty for individual managers, as there will be less bandwidth to initiate pet projects, continue projects without the required benefits or approving projects that do not meet agreed criteria for opportunity, risk and organisational constraints.

Delivery

Ensuring you are producing the results that are required to meet the needs of stakeholders incorporates the four major indicators of quality—function, outputs, performance, and reliability. These are needed in all your project planning. Mindavation walks you through the considerations for making sure your project quality is spot on and discover how to plan for quality, perform testing, and take into account special needs for your projects.

Frameworks are a great way to standardise the language and common practices in a professional domain like project management. At Mindavation we understand that the framework will bring you to level one and we provide all the consulting and accredited training to get you there quickly. However we also know that the fun starts at level 2 where a framework hits your reality. This is where human behaviour and organisational dynamics come into play. This is where the size and nature of an organisation determine its ability to adopt change and ultimately how a framework will be implemented. But this is also where a adopting a framework can achieve positive and lasting benefits and its value can reach far beyond having a common language to define a profession. Some of the frameworks that Mindavation can help you with are PMBOK, PRINCE2, MSP, SAFe, VAl-IT and ITIL. We help clients matching their existing practices and materials with industry frameworks to get up to speed quickly with proven and familiar artifacts, yet making sure everyones information needs are met across the lifecycle stages of the framework.

Today’s fast-moving projects generate a lot of email, phone calls, voicemail, and documentation. Let Mindavation share the secrets of managing project communication through a solid communication strategy that will help your team maximize buy-in, prioritise stakeholder input, and deliver project results with less hassle. We can help you discover how to use a communication plan to develop two-way communication goals, run meetings, organize feedback, and create clear reports.

Project Professionals need to focus on project estimations and managing the actual charges against those estimates. Costs for one of the three major constraints project managers must handle. Getting it wrong, can cause you to fail to provide the promised value to your business. If not, cause your project to be scrapped all together. Mindavation can assist with the fundamentals of building your project budget, using traditional project management products. Such as your work breakdown structure and your project schedule. Mindavation can walk you through the various stages of project estimates and various estimation techniques you can deploy to build your budget and provide the hints and tips for managing the variety of costs that you need to manage while delivering the products of your project.

It takes people to perform the work required for projects. Although these people on your project team probably have line managers back in their departments, you also need to manage these people and their roles on the project. Identify and acquring the rights skills, mindsets and roles you need to perform the project work, is essentail to delivering your outcomes. They may come from within your organisation or from outside sources. Let Mindavation work with you to identify, assess the right resources and help build the tools to assist in tracking people’s performance, providing feedback to improve, resolve issues and manage conflicts.

Project integration ensures all processes in a project run smoothly, and results in a properly synchronized series of deliverables such as the project charter, project plan, and preliminary project scope statement. Managing all these will help you plan the integration needs, communicate with staff and stakeholders, and integrate the project into an organisational portfolio. Mindavation can show you the way on how to ensure your scope, risk, and change approaches are in sync; recognising warning signs when integration goes awry; and help plan the simultaneous integration of multiple projects and customer deliverables.

Having clear goals does not automatically warrant great outcomes. Breaking down the end goal, strategic outcomes or mission, into clear outcome streams with intermediate outcomes, like capabilities to be created and all the underpinning initiatives and assumptions, helps to get all stakeholders on the same page. Mindavation’s Outcomes mapping workshops deliver real value fast, as we bring the right people together to make sure nothing gets missed and all dependencies, assumptions and risks are put on the table. The fun of mapping the outcomes together is creating a joint understanding of what is required and why it is important. This is a great change management tool as nothing shows a strategy better than having your agreed organisation specific value roadmap on one sheet of paper.

The more complex a project is, the more likely it is that you’ll need help from outside vendors and partners. Enter project procurement, the processes of planning, managing, and executing purchases of goods and services for your organisation. Mindavation will guide you through the project procurement process, helping you understand if procurement is right for your project, exploring common procurement approaches, and explaining the different procurement contract types, including fixed price, cost plus, and time and materials. Mindavation can help with planning your procurements wisely with payment scheduling options, and discover methods for reducing risk. Then assist your review of market-testing techniques for soliciting potential vendors and partners, and examine solicitation agreements such as the request for information (RFI), the request for proposal (RFP), and the request forquotation (RFQ).

Without risk, there can be no reward. But if not managed properly, risk reduces your ability to achieve your project’s goals, if not derailing it altogether. Mindavation knows how to support you how to anticipate, assess, and manage project risk—whether your project is large or small. Mindavation can help discover how to gauge your stakeholders’ tolerance for risk, assemble a risk plan, build a risk register, and maintain project continuity as risks crop up.

Project Scope describes the boundaries of a project, that is, what’s included in the project and, just as important, what isn’t included. Scope Management is what you do to ensure that your project includes all the work required to complete the project, no more, no less. The first step is putting together a Scope Management Plan. Basically, you document how you’re going to define, validate, and control Project Scope.

SCRUM wants you to fail. With that in mind, the basics of the SCRUM framework are designed to encourage that fast feedback loop. The Scrum framework is not prescriptive. Mindavation generally refer to it as guardrails, like the ones you see on the highway. Those guardrails don’t tell you exactly where to drive in the lane, but they keep you within the boundaries that will result in a successful road trip. Scrum leverages the Agile principles as the guideposts and Mindavation can help tailor a framework of activities executed on a regular, short schedule, so that your projects/sprints will be set up for success.

Creating healthy partnerships with your stakeholders and building win-win environments are required for acheivinng orgainsation outcomes. Being involved in some many industries and project deliveries, Mindavation can share how you too can manage stakeholders with savvy communication strategies that increase engagement in your projects. Analyzing stakeholders, mapping power structures, keeping open lines of communication, and use interpersonal skills to connect is the starting foundation we can help you build in effetcive staholder engagement and management.

Time management is what you do to ensure that you complete your project on time. The first step in time management is putting together a schedule management plan, which documents how you’re going to develop, manage, execute, and control the project schedule. The rest is easy right.? Depending on the needs of your project, this plan can be formal and detailed, informal and high level, or anywhere in between. Do not take time managament for granted and ask Mindavation on how they manage the delivery of time, as one of the many key ingerdients to project outcome success.

Training

Use cases are a highly effective tool for gathering requirements for software development. There is confusion in the application of use cases, and their most effective usage. Our course demystifies use cases by translating their theory into practice. It helps participants learn the required concepts in business terms and by putting those concepts into direct application. Add to your requirements-gathering repertoire and set the stage for later translation of requirements into software-friendly formats. The course covers the fundamentals and reinforces them with several in-depth workshops using a comprehensive case study. Leave the course with the confidence to gather requirements utilizing use case scenarios and activity diagrams. Participants will gain new skills and confidence so that they can gather more complete and thorough requirements.

Status is something we do, not something we are anyone with whom you interact, be it your boss, your customer, your co-worker or a vendor, the dynamics of the interaction impact your business. Learning how to recognize, understand and harness dynamics will open your eyes to a new and advantageous under-the-surface mode of communication. Experiencing and exploring proven improvisational techniques and principles, participants will discover how to optimize their relationships to generate desired results.

Project Management is a very complex profession, but can be simplified when broken down into logical and practical components. Mindavation applies fundamental project management techniques and demonstrates how they can be used to manage any project successfully. Get your projects off to a great start by providing pivotal training to your project management professionals. In addition, this course is for the managers who need to understand when and how agile principles can be applied to projects in their organisations. Attendees will learn techniques to understand how agile projects are different and the best techniques to manage them effectively. Discuss the best ways to avoid the common pitfalls of agile projects. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Attendees will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures and will return to their professional environment prepared to manage a project from cradle to grave.

Why are “presentation skills” part of leadership? Simply put – when you present you are representing people, an organisation, ideas, or initiatives. In a nutshell, that is something leaders do- they/we communicate and bring people together and make a difference. Rarely, if ever, will you present just for the sake of presenting. Presentations are meant to educate, inspire, impact, engage, encourage or get people on board with something. If not, it’s not a presentation. Your tone of voice, subject matter, awareness of the room, knowledge of audience, preparation, and so much more, impact your ability to give effective and memorable presentations. In a world of nearly 9 billion people, standing out and being remembered can give you an edge over the competition.

Use Cases provide a structured, industry-standard way of eliciting and documenting functional requirements. The process enhances communication between business analysts and business customers, and lays the foundation for user interface design and test case development. They also provide insights into data requirements, and help clients articulate their needs in ways other requirements activities cannot.
This course provides the right blend of knowledge and skills for people to understand and model Use Cases effectively. Attendees will learn where Use Cases are most effective, a step-by-step method for creating them, and numerous guidelines and tips to enhance creating them. Participants also receive a comprehensive Use Case template that can be readily used back in the office.

When you’re trying to grapple with user demands and market changes, it can be difficult to mentally zoom out and assess your organization’s operations. Business process modeling helps you see the big picture by allowing you to translate your business processes into easily understood pictures. In this course, instructor Haydn Thomas walks you through the most widely used business process modeling diagrams—context, functional flow, cross-functional flow, and flowchart—and explains the purpose of each one. As Haydn touches on each modeling technique, he shares its unique features, explains how to use that technique to create a diagram, and points out how to avoid common pitfalls. He pulls it all together by comparing process diagrams to help you determine which diagram you should use to document your organization’s business process.

An examination of requirements gathering, verification, and documentation processes to ensure your project starts off on the right foot. Students will learn to discern between needs, characteristics and solution elements as well as techniques for managing the scope of the project throughout the project life cycle.

A strategic project you’re working on is going to require that people change the way they do their work, or who they work with, or what they care about, or how they’re performance is measured, or….. you get the picture! Organizations reach their goals through projects; projects require that people change. BUT – as a wise man once told me, “The only person who really likes change is a wet baby – and even they usually kick and scream throughout the change process!”

Ethical behavior starts at the top. If leadership sets a good example, the rest of the organization will follow. Yet while most managers try to run ethical organizations, the headlines are rife with stories of corporate corruption. In this course, Bob McGannon helps you understand what business ethics is and why it is critical to the success of your business (especially in the era of social media). He also describes some of the behaviors and expectations you can put in place at your company today to promote ethical behavior from top to bottom.
Bob also discusses ethics in relationship to specific business scenarios: working with suppliers and vendors, organizational decision making, and doing business internationally. He addresses how to handle business ethics violations and provides a checklist of items for staff to evaluate if something is ethical.

Most project issues develop over time – but issues are typically created in the early stages of the project. Effective risk identification with mitigation strategies will substantially increase project success and reduce issues. Attendees will receive training on applicable methods, techniques, and checklists specific to risk identification, risk analysis and risk mitigation.
2-3 projects from the client environment will be selected to apply risk management techniques to client specific projects. At the end of the workshop participants will have documented information on identified risks, analysis on those risks, and created a risk response plan for the high ranking risks. In addition, an overall risk management plan for each project will be drafted. Clients need to provide one laptop for every 5 participants.

This course is designed for experienced project managers who are responsible for recovering out of control projects. Learn techniques to recover existing projects and to understand the early warning signs that a project is heading in the wrong direction. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Attendees will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures. All Mindavation instructors are PMI® certified and each have over 10 years of project management experience in multiple industries

Project Management is a very complex profession, but can be simplified when broken down into logical and practical components. Mindavation applies fundamental project management techniques and demonstrates how they can be used to manage any project successfully. Get your projects off to a great start by providing pivotal training to your project management professionals. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Attendees will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures and will return to their professional environment prepared to manage a project from cradle to grave. All of PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge areas are covered. Mindavation instructors have over 10 years of project management experience in multiple industries. Learn from the best!

PMI is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

 

An overview of project management that includes all ten PMI® knowledge areas. Emphasis is provided on the team members’ role throughout the project management lifecycle. Each topic is discussed briefly to ensure the team member is exposed to project management concepts necessary to manage a project from project initiation to project closeout.

An overview of project management that includes all ten PMI® knowledge areas. Emphasis is provided on the team members’ role throughout the project management lifecycle. Each topic is discussed briefly to ensure the team member is exposed to project management concepts necessary to manage a project from project initiation to project closeout.

This course will provide the manager with the capability to effectively manage their project management resources and facilitate the integration of project management processes into their department/function. This course will also enhance the manager’s capability to handle project sponsorship issues and provide tools for reviewing project effectiveness.

In an increasingly fast moving and complex world, swift and prudent decision making as it relates to projects and programs is critical for success. Project governance – the roles, responsibilities, decision making processes and standard guidance given to project managers and their teams is at the heart of this critical governance role. Project sponsors, as the leaders of this project governance process, must be aware of their responsibilities and be willing to dedicate time to the sponsorship process. This workshop ensures that governance efforts are efficient, effective and allows the executive sponsor to support their projects without being burdened by them.
This is NOT a standard course – instead it is a workshop designed to work with management to structure, plan and install a governance and sponsorship process tailored to the individual needs and culture of each client. Using industry best practices, Mindavation consultants will facilitate and create appropriate governance processes that are pragmatic and accompanied by a transition & implementation plan. Existing company culture, policies, procedures and controls will be considered to ensure a holistic approach to governance applied.

A deeper examination of the controlling processes and techniques required to successfully manage larger or more complex projects. Emphasis is on detailed planning for areas of concern and exception management as an approach to controlling projects during the execution phase.

Communication management is one of the essential functions that can dramatically affect the outcome of a project. Project managers must create and effectively use a communication plan that performs two principle functions: collect the right data and disseminate appropriate information in a timely manner. To do this effectively project teams are under an obligation to identify the appropriate audiences, develop appropriate communication media, establish a communication schedule, and manage the flow of information in and out of the project team.
This two-day course focuses on the tools and techniques that project teams can use to build an effective communication plan. Attendees will have the opportunity to experience how to conduct an effective stakeholder assessment, identify audiences of the project, design and implement a communication strategy, and prepare more effective project reports for their stakeholders.

In an increasingly complex world, program management (the managing of multiple related projects in an optimal way) is a vital skill and a significant and non-trivial growth step for project managers to make. Program management involves a much greater involvement with senior leaders, numerous conflicting objectives, and tension between day to day business management issues and overall program deliverables. Working through these, and other significant issues, requires experience, sound standard processes, and more importantly, pragmatic ‘how-to’s’ to make your program successful.
This course takes the theory of what to do when you are managing a program, sifts through the ‘nice-to-haves’, and provides recommendations for what is really needed to be successful, including the types of tools that are needed to bring a program’s deliverables to fruition.
This course will help you understand the common traps a program manager can face when dealing with this greater role within the organization and how to avoid them. Programs succeed when they are well conceived and sponsored, have the proper governance and control tools, and most importantly, are organized with the target business (versus technology) in mind. This course focuses on the fastest ways to get these accomplished, as often program managers are assigned to programs that are well and truly in progress. This class is designed for the new program manager and the experienced program manager that wants to validate their techniques and expand the approaches they can use to manage their programs.

Systems and process integration projects are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Integration projects, however, are the most difficult and are laden with traps to snag the unwary project manager. Attendees will learn tips and processes that come from years of experience that will prepare them to avoid the failures that plague integration projects. Techniques taught in the course are reinforced with thorough ‘real-life’ case studies and a hands-on exercise that is interwoven throughout the course.

This is a course designed to prepare technology managers for successful implementation of ITIL processes and standards within the organization.
ITIL provides a framework for managing the technology resource and providing ‘best in class’, integrated services to internal and external customers. Before engaging in this implementation endeavor, managers need to develop reasonable goals, ensure the implementation steps are beneficial for the organization, and use a well thought out implementation plan. This class is designed to assist the manager to decide what pieces of ITIL to implement and what sequence is prudent for implementation. The critical elements to develop a successful implementation plan are discussed as a significant part of this course. Additionally, the course will provide crucial information relevant to preparing for an ISO20000 audit of ITIL processes and their use in your environment.

Facilitation means ‘to make easier’. In other words the facilitator’s real job is to make it easier for a group to accomplish its goals and objectives. Skilled facilitation helps facilitators and teams to recognize and effectively deal with problems, generate ideas, create project deliverables, improve processes or simply, to be more productive in less time with better results. This course teaches participants ‘best in class’ skills to enable effective group performance. Participants are engaged and learn through dialogue, feedback, videotaping and group activities.
It has been said that meetings are “where minutes are taken and hours are lost.” No organization today can afford to lose time and the associated costs. The appropriate application of these key facilitation techniques ensures groups maximize meeting time while maintaining and enhancing effective relationships. Key skills for recognizing and overcoming the dysfunctions of team interactions are also a key part of this course.

Facilitation means ‘to make easier’. In other words the facilitator’s real job is to make it easier for a group to accomplish its goals and objectives. Skilled facilitation helps facilitators and teams to recognize and effectively deal with problems, generate ideas, create project deliverables, improve processes or simply, to be more productive in less time with better results. This course teaches participants ‘best in class’ skills to enable effective group performance. Participants are engaged and learn through dialogue, feedback, videotaping and group activities.
How do we establish enough influence over key stakeholders to get our work done when we have no ‘real’ authority over them? We know what needs to be done and we know how to do it, yet we cannot get our boss, our colleagues, and yes, even the people who report to us, to do ‘the right thing.’ Some days it feels like we are just banging our head against the wall. The result…a whopping headache!

This course presents best practice methods and techniques for software testing to obtain thorough and effective testing results. Various levels and types of testing are covered. Techniques to efficiently test software deliverables throughout the project lifecycle are discussed and reinforced. This course focuses on the management of the software testing lifecycle by establishing a test strategy that is appropriate for a given project size, complexity and technical architecture.

This is an advanced leadership course designed to prepare project managers for successful interactions with senior management and to effectively manage politically charged projects. The workshop describes communication styles, personal risk assessment approaches and helps attendees prepare for the challenging discussions that need to be held to successfully deliver complex initiatives involving multiple senior stakeholders. Included in the course is a discussion of Intelligent Disobedience; the ability to successfully counter the directions of management. This requires the project manager to challenge, pushback and make suggestions to management that defend the project integrity against the expectations of your key stakeholders.
The application of standard leadership techniques is compared and contrasted with ‘courageous’ approaches, along with the circumstances under which courageous approaches are necessary. The course will assist the attendees with understanding and formulating the ‘difficult conversations’ that need to take place in order to say “no” to senior leaders, thus assisting the project manager to support their businesses with the greatest degree of integrity. Exercises that provide attendees the means to practice the formulation of these conversations are a pivotal part of this stimulating and highly interactive course.

This course introduces people to the principles and processes of logical data modelling, which is to translate business data requirements into a graphical representation. It teaches people how to analyze business requirements that should be incorporated into a logical data model, how to create the components of a logical data model, how to diagram/explain them, and how to normalize data and handle complex relationships. In short, participants will learn proven, practical skills for analyzing and modelling data requirements, and make them ready to be transformed into a relational database.

Project management, for many people, is the ‘accidental profession’. Becoming adept at project management however is far from accidental. The skillful project manager has learned from repeated experiences to predict project issues and prevent them before they even occur, or before they adversely impact their organization.
This course focuses on how to design a ‘responsive’ project by predicting where the problem areas may be hiding. Also how to communicate with peers, team members, and senior leaders in a manner that meets their needs, challenges their thought processes, while using precious time effectively. This class is designed to expand the ‘insight’ of intermediate to experienced project managers to enable them to become more effective.

This course will provide the manager with techniques to effectively capture and analyze projected costs and benefits from their project efforts. The examination of both one-time and ongoing costs, as well as the integration of extensive checklists and analysis tools makes this course useful for the project manager who is looking to justify a new project or validate an in-process project effort.

The internal consultant role is becoming essential in today’s workplace. All types of organizations and business units recognize the value of analyzing business problems and translating them into the right solutions as a key to getting the right work done. Whether that work is done through projects or ad hoc requests, certain core skills are needed to be effective and to begin operating more as consultants and less like reactionary problem-solvers. Among those skills is the ability to understand and analyze business problems, break down a problem into manageable pieces, then recommend and ‘sell’ solutions that will adequately solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.
This course provides industry-standard, practical skills that anyone performing an internal consultant role needs. Participants will learn effective methods to ask good questions, objectively analyze issues, and gather supporting data to understand business problems and improvement areas. To avoid ‘jumping to solutions’ this course presents approaches to think critically and understand root causes of problems. And, since acceptance and understanding by business colleagues of findings and recommendations is critical, our course helps people to learn simple and effective ways to document and present their work.
Many practical and engaging exercises help students walk through the concepts presented and afford ample practice with the techniques learned.

This course is designed for experienced project managers who want to take their skills to the next level. Managing large, complex and multiple projects strains the project manager in many ways. Weaknesses in your project management skills can quickly bring a complex project to its knees. Learn from instructors who have experienced first-hand the challenge (and rewards!) of complex project management and how to successfully implement large/multiple projects. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Students will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures. Instructors for this course have over 10 years project management experience in multiple industries.

This course is designed for experienced project managers who want to take their skills to the next level. Managing large, complex and multiple IT projects strains the project manager in many ways. Weaknesses in your project management skills can quickly bring a complex project to its knees. Learn from instructors who have experienced firsthand the challenge (and rewards!) of complex project management and how to successfully implement large/multiple projects. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging IT based case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Students will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures. Instructors for this course have over 10 years project management experience in multiple industries.

To harness the work done in organizations, and to increase productivity, it is essential to understand how to model and improve business processes. This course explores the need for modelling business processes; the essential steps to process modelling and policy creation and the critical success factors for making the effort successful. It provides a pragmatic and efficient approach for collecting, understanding and modelling business processes in order to improve and/or automate them.  Furthermore, it provides valuable business rule, process and procedure interlocking approaches to help ensure that your modelling is comprehensive without being burdensome.

This course is an examination of the role of the business analyst and how the role fits into the development lifecycle. Areas of study include software development lifecycles, business requirements gathering techniques, documentation and verification processes to ensure your project starts off on the right foot. In addition, the analyst’s enduring and pervasive responsibilities –from business case development to testing the final product, will be explored. Students will learn to discern between needs, characteristics and solution elements as well as techniques for managing the scope of the project throughout the project life cycle.

This course is an examination of the role of the business analyst and how the role fits into the development lifecycle. Areas of study include software development lifecycles, business requirements gathering techniques, documentation and verification processes to ensure your project starts off on the right foot. In addition, the analyst’s enduring and pervasive responsibilities –from business case development to testing the final product, will be explored. Students will learn to discern between needs, characteristics and solution elements as well as techniques for managing the scope of the project throughout the project life cycle.

This two-day workshop will provide the skills needed to gather and document user stories in an agile project. Attendees will learn and apply through hands-on activities how to identify stakeholders; define the project’s vision, model user roles and personas, write user stories and tests, identify appropriate requirements gathering techniques and utilize user stories to plan releases and iterations.

This course is designed for managers who need to understand when and how agile principles can be applied to projects in their organisation. Attendees will learn techniques to understand how agile projects are different and the best techniques to manage them effectively and successfully. The course will also address the best ways to avoid the common pitfalls of agile projects.
The course will covers the elements of the agile project lifecycle and how managing an agile project is different than managing traditional projects. Attendees will also be exposed to the measurement and control processes inherent to agile project management.
Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Students will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures. Mindavation instructors for this course are PMI® certified, each have more than 10 years of project management experience in multiple industries and have directly managed agile projects successfully.

This course is designed for project managers who are responsible for managing agile projects. Learn techniques to understand how agile projects are different and the best techniques to manage them effectively and successfully. The course will cover best practice project management techniques for a typical agile project lifecycle. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Students will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures.
Mindavation instructors for this course are PMI® certified, each have over 10 years of project management experience in multiple industries, and have directly managed agile projects successfully.

This course is designed for project managers who are responsible for managing agile projects. Learn techniques to understand how agile projects are different and the best techniques to manage them effectively and successfully. Understand how to avoid the common pitfalls of agile projects. The course will cover best practice project management techniques for a typical agile project lifecycle. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Students will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures. Mindavation instructors for this course are PMI® certified, each have over 10 years of project management experience in multiple industries, and have directly managed agile projects successfully.

This course is designed for project managers who are responsible for managing agile projects. Learn techniques to understand how agile projects are different and the best techniques to manage them effectively and successfully. Understand how to avoid the common pitfalls of agile projects. The course will cover best practice project management techniques for a typical agile project lifecycle. Mindavation courses are highly interactive with challenging case studies and lectures filled with real life work scenarios. Students will team together to apply techniques learned from the lectures. Mindavation instructors for this course are PMI® certified, each have over 10 years of project management experience in multiple industries, and have directly managed agile projects successfully.

This course extends participants knowledge of data modelling by exploring advanced concepts such as sub-types, recursive and network relationships, denormalization and when to apply it, and other considerations for transforming a logical model into a physical design. It picks up where our introductory course on Data Modelling leaves off. It assumes participants have grasped or have experience with the fundamental concepts of data modelling and builds on them. Depending on the level of experience and knowledge of the participants, this course can be reduced to a 1-day class (by eliminating the sub-types/super-types and recursive relationships sections of the course).

Healthcare projects have their own unique set of needs and challenges, including privacy concerns and regulatory constraints. Learn how to effectively manage these challenges on healthcare projects large and small in this course with project management expert Bob McGannon. Bob goes over specific approaches to setting project goals, scheduling tasks, managing stakeholders, and mitigating the risks and challenges that are common to the medical field. Then he proposes some specific challenges to bring the concepts to life and offers solutions so you can compare your approach with his recommendations.

A strategic project you’re working on is going to require that people change the way they do their work, or who they work with, or what they care about, or how their performance is measured, or… you get the picture! Organisations reach their goals through projects; projects require that people change. BUT – as a wise old man once told me, “The only person who really likes change is a wet baby – and even they usually kick and scream throughout the change process!

Enquire...

How can we help your organisation?