Practical Project Management For Management Consultants

How to manage successfully a consulting project - a practical guide for Project Managers

What you'll learn
Manage Consulting Project with your eyes closed
Finish the project ahead of time and below the agreed budget
Create value for the customer that will help you sell new projects
Create finished products that can be reused on other projects
Prepare yourself efficiently for the project
Create a dream team
Become real efficient manager, working on totally different level
Requirements
Basic or intermediate Excel
Basic or intermediate Power Point
Basic knowledge of business
Description
What is the aim of this course?    Managing Consulting Projects is extremely difficult. You work in a hostile environment, long hours on difficult things. On top of that, the bill for your services for the customer is pretty high so he will want to squeeze out of you as much as possible. At the same time, his people may dislike you as you are an outsider that in their point of view pretends to know better.  Therefore, many Project Managers fail on deadlines or cannot deliver value for the customer. Luckily there is a way to do a consulting project on time, get your customer and his people happy with the result as well as get well paid for your work. This course will help you drastically improve your knowledge and skills in managing a consulting project. It is designed for project managers, especially those working in consulting. After finishing the course you will know:    How to prepare for the project to make your customer and your team happy as well as to finish the project much earlier than your competitors   How to create value for your customer   How to deliver the project within the budget and way ahead of deadlines   How to execute the project without having to work 7 days a week 15 hours a day   How to overdeliver and get buy-in from your customer   How to build a strong foundation for future projects   What tools to use   How to be efficient as a team    This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated in total 2 billion of additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 107 000 students including people working in EY, McKinsey, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses, tools that we use. To every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels as well as additional presentations, materials shown in the lectures so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modification, be applied by you or your team in your work.    Why have I decided to create this course?   As I said, I not only managed and delivered consulting projects, but I was also on the receiving end. What always surprises me is that despite all the knowledge there is on managing projects, consultants time and again fail miserably and deliver something the customer doesn’t want or need, usually after the deadlines.  At the same time, I could not help noticing that I on the other hand were done with my work way ahead of time. Therefore, I decided to describe my approach so it can be used by others that face the same challenges. Thanks to this course you will become a priceless member of your company and you will outperform other project managers. It will help you land a job not only with consulting firms but also private equities and businesses that need somebody to supervise projects (i.e. Project Management Officer).    To sum it up, I believe that if you want to be a top project manager you should implement my approach towards consulting projects. That is why, I highly recommend this course not only to project managers or consultants that have to manage projects but also managers and directors working in the business.    In what way will you benefit from this course?    The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tones of tips, tricks, hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you conduct the project. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will know:    How to train your team and turn it into an effective machine   How to prepare the project in order to deliver value to the customer within the budget and deadlines   How to execute the project to make your customer and your team happy   How to finish the project and at the same time build the foundations for new cooperation   You can also ask me any question either through the discussion mode or by messaging me directly.   How the course is organized?   The course is divided currently into 6 sections. Currently, you will find the following sections:   Introduction. We begin with a little intro to the course as well as some general info on projects.   Teaching Phase. In the second section, I will explain the importance of teaching and how to implement it in your team or company. If you want to do fast, efficiently good projects you have to have the right kind of people. You can say that preparation for the consulting project starts with proper teaching. In this section, I will discuss how through teaching get good business analysts.   Preparation Phase. Most consulting projects are done in a bad manner. A lot of things that should be done ahead of time are done during the project and this slows you down drastically and causes later on a lot of problems. If you prepare properly you can shorten the execution time,      create more value and earn more. In this section, I will show you how to prepare and what kind of tools to use.   Execution Phase - Technical Tips. In section 4 I will show you some technical tips you should follow to make sure that you deliver value to      the customers within the deadlines   Execution Phase – Tips regarding the relationships with the customer. In this section, we continue with tips on how to execute the project. This time around it will be more devoted to soft tips: how to treat people on the project to get great results.   Wrapping up the project. The way you finish the project is of utmost importance. In this section, I will show you how to finish the project to maximize the happiness of the customer with the results of the projects as well as to create opportunities for new projects.      You will be able also to download many additional resources   Excels with analyses shown in the course   Presentation of slides show in the course   Additional tools show in the course   Links to additional presentations and movies    Links to books worth reading At the end of my course, students will be able to…   Manage Consulting Project with your eyes closedFinish the project ahead of time and below the agreed budgetCreate value for the customer that will help you sell new projectsCreate finished products that can be reused on other projectsPrepare yourself efficiently for the projectCreate a dream teamBecome real efficient manager, working on a totally different level

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Lecture 2 About me

Lecture 3 What does it mean to manage well the project?

Lecture 4 How to deal with Blurry image

Lecture 5 How to reach additional resources

Lecture 6 How to find information and ask questions

Lecture 7 How to manage non-consulting projects

Section 2: Teaching Phase

Lecture 8 Introduction to Teaching phase

Lecture 9 Values

Lecture 10 Profile of an ideal team member

Lecture 11 Structure for cooperation

Lecture 12 Standardize everything

Lecture 13 Create templates

Lecture 14 Example of standards and templates for Excel analysis

Lecture 15 Power Point - how it should be used by business analyst

Lecture 16 Create modules

Lecture 17 Create universal structure of folders

Lecture 18 How to teach your team members

Lecture 19 End of Teaching Phase

Section 3: Preparation Phase

Lecture 20 Introduction to preparation phase

Lecture 21 Create Issue tree

Lecture 22 What is issue tree

Lecture 23 Issue tree – Examples Introduction

Lecture 24 Example of issue trees in Logistics

Lecture 25 Example of issue trees in Retail

Lecture 26 Issue tree example for a FMCG firm

Lecture 27 Create Presentation Template

Lecture 28 Phases of creating a management consulting presentation

Lecture 29 Presentation for reading vs audience

Lecture 30 Occasions for which you will create presentations in Management Consulting

Lecture 31 Structure of the presentation

Lecture 32 Create the messages

Lecture 33 Sketching of the presentation

Lecture 34 Creating the template

Lecture 35 Examples of presentations

Lecture 36 Conduct the market research - Introduction

Lecture 37 Send data request with formats

Lecture 38 Data request - example

Lecture 39 Define the team and roles

Lecture 40 Typical structure of a project

Lecture 41 Schedule meetings

Lecture 42 List of contacts

Section 4: Execution Phase - Technical Tips

Lecture 43 Introduction to Execution Phase

Lecture 44 Why manager should not work?

Lecture 45 How to manage your team?

Lecture 46 Tools that your team will need

Lecture 47 How to create a to-do list

Lecture 48 Deadlines

Lecture 49 Critical Chain

Lecture 50 Interim Meetings

Lecture 51 Create Excels that are ready for external user

Lecture 52 Example of properly done Excel

Lecture 53 Production process of the presentation

Lecture 54 Kanban for managing a project

Lecture 55 How to get a buy-in?

Lecture 56 Meetings with the customer

Lecture 57 How to overdeliver

Section 5: Execution Phase - Tips regarding the relationships with the customer

Lecture 58 Introduction to the soft tips

Lecture 59 Befriend everybody

Lecture 60 Give credit and don't steal ideas

Lecture 61 Downplay your estimation

Lecture 62 Show in good light employees of your customer and your team

Lecture 63 Concentrate on the problem not on the people

Lecture 64 Admit when you don't know something

Lecture 65 Other tips

Section 6: Wrapping up the project

Lecture 66 Introduction to wrapping up the project

Lecture 67 Train the customer to use your deliverables

Lecture 68 Transfer deliverables

Section 7: Other things worth checking

Lecture 69 How to define the scope of a consulting project

Lecture 70 How to manage a PMO

Lecture 71 How to manage your career?

Section 8: Conclusions

Lecture 72 Bonus Lecture

Project Managers,Management Consultants,Business Analysts,Other managers that have to supervise projects,Controllers