Predictable Projects – Delivering the Right Results at the Right Time
Niels Malotaux, Project Coach

Background
Many projects deliver late and over budget. The only way to do something about this is to change our way of working.  If we don’t change, the result will not magically improve.
Because being on time with better results seems so difficult, people think the solution must be complicated.  It is actually quite simple, though counter-intuitive, which is why it doesn’t happen overnight.
In today’s competitive environment, it is often not enough just to run a project on time. We must accomplish ever more in less time. This calls for constantly optimising the way we run projects, beyond what we can learn from basic project management courses, which provide general guidelines on how to set up and run projects, and beyond what we normally learn from actually running projects. Theory is good, but not all theory works as expected in real practice. In this workshop we will present methods that have been proven in practice to make projects deliver more successfully in a significantly shorter time.  Time and budget limits are not exceeded any more. There is no reason to settle for less.
Once project managers learn to predict accurately when they will have done what, and deliver as predicted, Program/Portfolio/Resource management can start managing instead of gaming.
This evolutionary approach produces continuous improvement and innovation of the systems developed (the result); the way the systems are developed (the project); and how we organise all this (the process).  Elements of this approach are: solving the discipline problem, exploiting our intuition mechanism, continuously balancing priorities, keeping focus, and preventing stakeholder’s complaints. We’ll integrate Planning, Requirements Management, Design, and Risk Management into Result Management.

Benefits of Attending:
You will find out, through exercises, how good your own estimation abilities are; what your level of defect injection is; and that we are full of assumptions about requirements.  Find out how psychological factors can make people do the wrong things, which can have potentially adverse effects on project results. Understanding these factors is the first step in doing something about them.
You’ll do exercises to plan your work in the coming week: what you are going to do, what you are not going to do and why. So it is worth coming prepared: what do you think you have to do in the next week and why do you have to do this?
You will learn how to effectively deal with the risks of being late in your daily work, by using methods you can start applying immediately, with clear results straight away. Next week you’ll already be more relaxed at work and producing more as well. Unbelievable? That’s what many people thought until they did it.
At the end of the workshop, Niels will ask you, “Can you afford not to use these techniques?”  You will know the answer.
Workshop Content:

1. How to calculate the cost of one day of delay
2. Human behaviour that can lead us astray
3. How to determine what the right result is
4. How to determine what the right time is
5. How to be on time without stress
6. Which methods for getting projects on time are usually applied and how they are counter-productive and cause unnecessary delays
7. Which methods are not so often applied and how they can save a lot of time and deliver better results
8. How these techniques help us to predict the performance of our own work
9. How these techniques help us to predict the performance of outsourced work
10. The task of the manager to make this work
11. Examples from practice
12. How to plan your own week using the techniques shown

Testimonials
Development Group Leader:
“I have taken many project management courses in my life. They all skipped issues like discipline, focus, permanent application of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, creating stakeholder value in short cycles, and consciously generating feedback. All problems Niels addresses are mentioned in books that seek solutions in numerous kinds of formal control mechanisms, which do not address the issues at the root of the problems. Niels does, and succeeds too.”
R&D Manager:
“Schedule accuracy for this product platform was 50% better than the program average (as measured by program schedule overrun) over the last five years, and this product was the fastest time-to-market, with the highest quality at introduction, of any platform in our group in more than ten years.”
Developer:
“I have never before absorbed so much information in such a short time. Normally such talks drain my energy. This time however, I felt energised!”
Conference Attendee:
“This is practical stuff we can start using immediately. I’ve heard many presentations, but this one was absolutely the best.”
Targeted Participants

1. Higher management, responsible for the results of their organisation
2. R&D managers, responsible for the results of their department
3. Project managers, responsible for the results of their project
4. Project team members, responsible for the results of their work
5. Quality management, responsible for optimising the quality of the results
6. Testers and auditors, responsible for measuring the quality of the results

Prerequisites

1. Ascertain what absolutely has to be accomplished in the coming weeks in your own work and why this is so important. Bring a list.
2. Estimate how many real working hours you have available in the coming weeks for this work. Bring a list.

If you are really serious about delivering the best possible results in the shortest possible time, this workshop will empower you to realise your ambition!
The Presenter:
Niels Malotaux
Niels Malotaux is an independent Project Coach and an expert in optimising project performance.  He has 35 years experience in designing electronic and software systems at Delft University;  in the Dutch Army;  and at Philips Electronics. He also has 20 years experience of leading his own systems design company.  Since 1998, he has devoted his expertise to helping projects to deliver Quality On Time: delivering what the customer needs, when they need it, to enable the customer success. To this effect, Niels developed an approach for teaching Evolutionary Project Management (Evo) Methods, Requirements Engineering, and Review and Inspection Techniques.  Since 2001, he has taught and coached over 100 projects in over 25 organisations in the Netherlands, Belgium, China, Germany, Ireland, India, Israel, Japan, Romania, South Africa and the US. This led to a wealth of experience in which approaches work better and which work less well in practice.