How to Measure Anything in Project Management Series

Description

This series, delivered via a combination of Asynchronous Training and Live Webinars gives the participants hands-on training in the use of Applied Information Economics (AIE) for Project Management. Through this training, consisting of 4 live sessions and 3 asynchronous training courses, you will learn the fundamental methods in quantitative decision making as it relates to project management.

It consists of a total of 15 hours of training delivered in 7 separate courses. The asynchronous training included with this series is designed to augment a manager’s ability to understand, use, and further develop quantitative models as they relate to project management. Participants will learn how to apply quantitative analysis which measurably improves on expert judgement even in the most complex situations and with limited data. By the end of this training, there will be no “intangible” you can’t measure and you will completely rethink what and how you measure things to support the biggest decisions you make..

Throughout this series you will learn about the fundamental flaws in many of the most widely adopted methods in Project Management and how to address those flaws with quantitative alternatives. This includes techniques to estimate and update probabilities, measure uncertain variables in your models (such as cancellation risk or supply chain issues), and leverage the power of Monte Carlo simulations to assess multiple possible outcomes. At the end of this series, you will have a ready-to-use Monte Carlo model and several Excel-based resources to improve your methods right away. This series of courses will train you to generate complex simulations, and display and report results using decision-driven dashboards which can be used to inform even the most complex Project Management decisions. The modules included are listed below.

Live Courses

Course #1: How to Measure Anything in Project Management 

In Course 1, you will learn how quantitative methods can be applied to tackle even the most difficult measurement problems in the field of project management. You will learn why everything in project management is, in fact, measurable. Additionally, you will learn how and why many of the most commonly used methods to evaluate essential factors like project risk are fundamentally broken and how to replace those methods with approaches that actually work.

Course #2: Introduction to Probabilistic Modeling Techniques in Project Management

In Course 2, you will be introduced to key analytical techniques to better measure and evaluate projects and project risk. These topics include how to define and reflect uncertainty in costs and benefits, how to use internal/external data to develop relevant reference classes, and how to apply fundamental statistical methods to quantify probabilities.

Course #3:  Crafting a Long-Term Project Evaluation and Forecasting Model

In Course 3, you will learn how to put together a probabilistic model for your project. You will be able to define phases, dependencies, and model uncertainty to generate a distribution of possible outcomes that adequately captures and models project risks such as cost and schedule overruns.

Course #4: Implementing and Planning for the Future

In Course 4, you’ll learn how to identify the key factors that should be displayed on decision-driven dashboards and how to use them to support automated decision-making—taking risk tolerance into account. The session wraps up with a Challenges, Solutions, and Next Steps (CSN) discussion to help you turn your learnings into actionable insights.

Asynchronous Training

Note: All asynchronous material is delivered via HDR’s Training Platform. Questions can be posted in the course forum as well as emailed to the instructor.

Calibrated Probability Assessments – Duration: Approx. 3-4 hours

Calibration is one of the most powerful and proven ways to improve decision-making. In this Calibration training, participants will learn how to assess subjective probabilities in a way that can be both measured and measurably improved. Each participant will see their ability to assess probabilities improve during a series of exercises where they are required to make estimates of uncertain quantities. Between exercises, they will learn additional techniques to continuously improve each estimate. By the end of the training, participants will see that their assigned probabilities reflect real uncertainty – that is, they are right 80% of the time they are 80% confident, 90% of the time they are 90% confident, and so on. This is a skill that will stick with those who learn it for a long time and will completely change how they think about estimations and probabilistic models.

Creating Simulations in Excel: Basic – Duration: Approx. 2 hours

What’s the chance that a project will lose money or be cancelled? What’s the most likely return on investment for a given investment? How likely is a particular risk or set of risks to happen – and how severe could their impacts be?

Running simulations has been shown to measurably improve estimates in uncertain decisions, but how can you run a simulation without complicated software requiring advanced training? This webinar teaches participants how to build a powerful tool – a Monte Carlo simulation that calculates thousands of scenarios – using only Microsoft Excel, with no additional training or software required. Not even coding in Visual Basic for Excel, user-defined functions or new Excel add-ons are needed. We only need native Excel using features that are already installed. Participants will learn how to use a powerful Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) developed by Doug Hubbard. This is a formula that fits in a single cell in Excel and can be used to generate thousands of random values in a way that fools many of the best statistical tests of randomness.

Creating Simulations in Excel: Intermediate – Duration: Approx. 2 hours

     Prerequisite course: Creating Simulations in Excel: Basic

Building on the methods covered in the Basic course, this course will cover more features of Excel’s what-if data tables for simulations and more probability distributions to cover more real-world types of situations. We will cover more ways to use the powerful HDR multi-dimensional PRNG and how they can be used to generate random time series. We will also show how we can use the same simulations for estimating the value of additional information.

Course Access: All asynchronous courses are completed at academy.hubbardresearch.com. Within 24 hours of registration each participant will receive an email with the access information to complete the self-paced online training.

Instructor Access: Once in the course, you can post questions in the forum or ask an instructor directly via email.

Live Webinar: See your order confirmation email for the date(s) chosen. Separate emails will be sent 1 week prior to each live session containing the Teams invite. Following any Live Webinar, each participant will have access to the recording. The presentation and/or spreadsheet can be found under the Course Downloads tab in the academy course.

Previous customer? Contact us to inquire about your personalized discount for previously purchased courses.

Would you prefer a private webinar limited to participants from your own organization?

We offer private webinar sessions for an organization with special discounted group rates. Contact us for more information and to schedule your next training session.