During the last two weekends of January, 2012, the 180th Pacific Coast Scout Group conducted two workshops on Project Management. The main learning objective was for participants to gain a good understanding of managing a project. Topics ranged from understanding the importance of project management, to going into greater details of the key stages of planning and executing a project.
Critical competencies that were presented were:
- Identifying and setting SMART objectives and deliverables
- Knowing the required steps to successfully opening and closing a project
- Establishing a functional timeline with appropriate milestones
The workshops ran for 4 hours and covered specific project management concepts such as a Work Breakdown Structure, facilitating a meeting, identifying risks, resource management, adjusting and trouble shooting, conducting effective meetings and the very important aspect of team communication.
The presenters were a mixture of Rovers who had conducted this workshop before and those who were presenting for the first time. Great emphasis was placed on keeping the workshop interactive and not just lecture based. The idea was not to just present information to attendees but to help them refine and build upon the knowledge that they already had about project management. Group discussions were held at regular intervals which enabled all participants to remain engaged throughout the workshop.
Now, everyone start managing your projects!