Seminars

• Two Day Session: Intelligent Disobedience - The Difference Between Good and Great Project Managers
• Two Day Session: Requirements Collection and Analysis
• One Day Session (5th): Business Case Development Workshop
• One Day Session (5th): Strategic Planning & Project Portfolios - The Missing Link
• One Day Session (6th): The Six Thinking Hats
• One Day Session (6th): Crucial Conversations - Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High

• Examine methods for proposing potentially unpopular directions or opinions
• Discuss approaches for successfully dealing with senior managers and other concerned parties
• Learn how to craft compelling arguments to garner business support
• Evaluate approaches for proposing process alternatives that "bend the rules" - leveraging common sense over common processes on an exception basis
• Find out how you can use intelligent disobedience to save the organization from itself!
• This course expands upon and GREATLY deepens the points made in the keynote presentation delivered to your attendees at the 2004 Professional Development Conference

• Requirements Lifecycle
• What happens before requirements gathering can begin
• Roles in the requirements lifecycle process
• Characteristics of requirements
• Categories: functional, non functional & global requirements
• Risks associated with requirements
• The requirements lifecycle
• Requirements Identification
• Requirements collection methods
• Facilitation skills
• Constraints, assumptions, dependencies
• Requirements Analysis
• Validation
• Documenting techniques

The ability to successfully initiate a project often relies on the development of a compelling business case. For many organizations, business cases are essential tools for strategic analysis and decision making, and for tangibly defining the expected costs and returns associated with a specific project.

Many project managers struggle with the process of developing an effective business case. This course provides a solid foundation for establishing an effective process for business cases. Participants develop a framework for the analysis necessary to fully define and convey the costs and benefits in a manner that customers can place confidence in and use to make effective decisions.

Interthink's Business Case Development workshop explores the concepts and tools underlying business case development, including the use of Return on Investment (ROI), Discounted Cash Flows (DCF), Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). The course makes extensive use of case studies, group exercises and real-world examples to illustrate the principles of developing business cases, and provides tools, techniques and templates that course participants can apply immediately.

Business Case Development will be of value to anyone responsible for preparing a business case, including project directors, project managers and team leaders, as well as executives, senior managers, strategic planners and analysts.

The benefits to participants of our Business Case Development workshop include:

• A solid understanding of the principles of business case development.
• A practical process and framework for developing the business case and conducting financial analyses.
• A clear understanding of business case tools and terminology, and their purpose, value and relevance.
• Hands-on exercises based upon actual projects that put the theory of project management into practice.
• Templates, tools and techniques that can be immediately adapted to your projects.

Strategic planning and project management in most companies represent two solitudes. Strategic plans are created and projects get managed, but the one rarely has anything to do with the other. The reality is that we are either running our business or changing our business, and if we're changing our business then we are managing projects. This workshop provides executives and senior project managers with a framework to develop realistic and workable strategic plans and be able to define, evaluate and select the projects that will best deliver an organizations strategic goals. Participants learn proven techniques and leading-edge practices by which organizations are now beginning to link strategy and execution.

Strategic Planning & Project Portfolios will be of value to anyone responsible for supporting the evaluation, prioritization and selection of projects and managing project portfolios, , including project directors, project managers and team leaders, as well as executives, senior managers, strategic planners and analysts.

The benefits to participants of our Strategic Planning & Project Portfolios workshop include:

• Understand the relationship between strategic planning, portfolio definition and project execution.
• Develop a concrete and practical process for business planning that concsiously integrates project identification and initiation.
• Establish means of prioritization and selection the ensure projects directly support attainment of corporate strategy.
• Be able to integrate priority, resource capacity, investment evaluation and organizational impact in objectively selecting projects.
• Verify attainment of the organization's strategic goals.

Shared Visions is certified in an internationally recognized thinking process called The Six Thinking Hats. This creative and innovative methodology was developed by Dr. Edward de Bono, a leading world thinker, who helps organizations think "out of the box". His leading edge and powerful methodology is being used with tremendous results to:

• Change the way people think and increase their receptivity to new paradigms
• Enhance communication and teamwork
• Solve problems faster
• Generate new breakthrough ideas on demand
• Engage in a six dimensional methodology to evaluate these ideas

Six Thinking Hats brings out creative energy and promotes the kind of innovative thinking that is vital to meeting challenges in an expanded or changing marketplace.

The application of Six Thinking Hats gets immediate results. It separates the different types of thinking - emotions from facts, positive from negative, critical from creative. People look at challenges from the same perspective at the same time. It builds on each other's ideas and encourages everyone to participate in a wide range of thinking while keeping egos and "turf" protection in check.

People are motivated, energized, focused, and are able to unleash the needed brainpower for resolving issues, challenges and finding new opportunities.

Business lives in conversation. Organizations across Canada are looking for new application-based tools to increase their business results. In doing so, they have identified a limitation within their organizations - the ability to hold crucial conversations. For the most part, organizations share the same root cause: perplexed employees who aren't quite sure how to bring up touchy, controversial, and complex issues and resolve them. As a result, when three key elements show up - strong emotions, differing opinions, or high stakes - key business results suffer.

Your organization is looking for improved business performance. To achieve this, quality problems, contentious or difficult situations, challenges to team cohesiveness need to be addressed rapidly. Crucial Conversations® training will provide the foundation for your organization to create business results.

This facilitated workshop leads participants to voice their ideas and concerns - early and often - and avoid, identify, and fix problems before they get out of hand. Within the workshop, the participants will discover that the twin enemies to sharing information are silence (people withhold valuable information) and violence (force their ideas on others).

Participants will learn how to voice their opinions, share information, get ideas out in the open, and maintain high levels of respect-all without causing resistance or resentment. Finally, the workshop focuses on the discovery of a model that truly helps individuals, teams, and organizations get unstuck and achieve breakthrough results.