Assuming no prior knowledge, the class covers the essentials of the critical path method and its adaptation to software projects. By modeling the project as a network you eliminate the bias and objectively calculate schedule and cost. You will understand the typical behavior of a project, how it is impacted by limiting resources and schedule, and what recurring techniques and approaches to leverage as you cope with constraints.

With these basics in place, you will proceed to see the IDesign Method approach for project design, which enables you to determine the best overall plan across architecture, schedule, cost and risk. The IDesign Method for project design converges on the best and even optimal solution for the project while eliminating gambling, death marches, wishful thinking, and expensive trial and errors. Next the class discusses additional project design techniques such as the project time-cost curve, schedule acceleration with network compression, and IDesign’s original risk quantifying techniques. Since there are several design solutions for every project, some more aggressive than others, you must objectively measure the risk of each option and evaluate the project design solutions in light of risk, as well as cost and duration.

But no project plan survives unscathed the first day of execution – priorities, resources, deadlines, estimations and features will change, and you must constantly adapt the plan for the new reality. The class will show you IDesign’s techniques for closing the loop by tracking both progress and effort across developers and services, how to contain the impact of changes, allowing you to constantly stay on schedule and on budget, and meet your commitments.

The class ends with a comprehensive case study and walks through its various permutations in determining the best plan that will keep the project on time all the time, at the best risk and cost available. Moreover, the case study not only demonstrates end-to-end flow of project design across iterations, but it also teaches the thought process and rationale behind the decisions, our practical approach for using tools, how to integrate and compensate for the tools’ shortcomings, and how to utilize the IDesign templates.

While most training classes merely stack modules, focusing on a single topic at a time, the Project Design Master Class uses a spiral, and each iteration gains more insight across multiple topics, providing the motivation and objectives for the next iteration, thus mimicking the natural learning process. Each such iteration incorporates hands-on labs to cement the concepts and practice the techniques. In the class you will also receive the IDesign’s original tools, metrics, rules of thumb, project design templates, and reference projects.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn and improve your project design skills with IDesign, and share our passion for excellence and project engineering.