Foundations of Project Management I (2 days)

This session is being offered in collaboration with the MITACS Step program. Mitacs Step offers a holistic, inter-disciplinary approach to professional skills development. The workshops that are offered provide practical tools in business, communications, and project management through experiential learning from industry professionals in an interactive environment, arming graduate students and postdoctoral fellows for success within or beyond academia.

PLEASE NOTE:

This is a two-day workshop (Wed Nov 19 & Thurs Nov 20, 2014) and participants must commit to attending both days to register.

Learn to plan and work with others to get things done! We encourage you to take this opportunity to experience firsthand the power of effective project management! From academia to industry to your personal life, these skills will help you succeed.

All postdoctoral fellows are invited to attend this two-day Project Management Workshop. You will learn to fine-tune your ability to organize and complete your work and research.
 

Learning Outcomes:

Learning teams of approximately five people each will be formed at the beginning of this session and will work together throughout the session.  This will enable the participants to enhance their learning from each other, to experience the development of a strong team, and to develop a model of the culture that they will want to create in their projects.

Day 1:

• Forming new teams and learning from team members past experience
• Principles of project management and team building
• Understanding self and others using the Strength Deployment Inventory, a self-scoring questionnaire that identifies, motivations, personal strengths in relating, causes of stress or conflict and each individual’s typical response to conflict
• Creating a team agreement on practices and processes that will enhance their work together

Day 2:

• Techniques and tools to increase team effectiveness at decision making
• Project planning concepts
• Using Critical Path Method (CPM) to schedule project activities
• Collaborative project planning - teams will follow an interactive agenda to develop plans for selected projects
• Risk assessment on the projects planned
• Review and discussion of learning

Instructor: Jim Brosseau. Jim has worked in the high-technology sector since 1980, in a variety of roles and responsibilities. He has held successively more responsible positions in military and defence contracting, commercial software development, and training and consulting. He has worked in the QA role, and has acted as team lead, project manager, and director. Jim has been involved with the BCIT Bachelor of Technology program, mentored students at SFU Surrey and the Vancouver Board of Trade's Leaders of Tomorrow program, acts as a mentor in the New Ventures BC competition, and has been on the Business Advisory Board of the Advanced Systems Institute of BC.

Registration:

Registration is required, please register online. Please note that registration for this event is limited and interested registrants will be confirmed on a first-come first-served basis with preference given to more senior postdocs. Sucessfully registered postdocs will receive a confirmation email from the PDFO within one week prior to the workshop.

** Please note that this session is FULL. While the registration link will continue to work, your information is being collected in order to be placed on the waitlist. Our office will email you if and only if a space becomes available to you. **