Managing Digital Projects

This new course will stimulate learning on the most modern and exciting methods of managing the development of digital products. It will provide you with the skills you need to manage digital products that are using the very latest technologies in a climate of constant change.

Managing digital publishing projects is very different from traditional print publishing. Digital publishing allows for continuous change in response to feedback using tools such as Agile methods.

In two training days, this course intends to ensure that you:

• understand the difference between managing print and digital projects
• deliver fit-for-purpose digital projects within required time scales and budget (even if specifications and budgets change)
• manage complex projects (focussing on iterative project management techniques and Agile methodology) involving input from several organisations and multiple stakeholders
• select suppliers and put together teams that can deliver digital projects.

Learning to manage digital projects, however, is a never-ending challenge. Project managers must continue to reflect on their process and to incorporate feedback. They must seek to identify the strategies that work and improve on them. They must also find alternatives to strategies that don't work. This reflection and assessment is extremely difficult to do on your own.

For that reason we offer students of this course a further one day follow-up session in the form of a coaching workshop. We encourage students to bring real-world problems that they are experiencing with project management to this session.

By doing this delegates can:

• share their experiences in attempting to introduce new project management methods
• receive encouragement and coaching, and acknowledgement that they are on the right track
• identify what is working, and identify what isn't working that needs to change
• map out lasting strategies for continued assessment and improvement of their project management skills into the future.

Programme:

• Day one
  • Exploring the differences between print and digital projects
  • Creativity, quality, innovation, value - what are we striving for in digital projects?
  • Case study: The Guardian and guardian.co.uk
  • Customer expectations in the world of ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘permanent beta’
  • Differing approaches to project management
  • Waterfall projects and big design
  • Iterative projects and incremental Design
  • What approach delivers the best results for digital projects?
  • Project management tools used for digital projects
  • Developing project specifications in terms of stories
  • Prioritisation and re-prioritisation throughout a project
  • Demonstrating, testing and reflecting - how do you know when you’ve finished? How can you make sure you do it better next time?

• Day two
  • Negotiation techniques
  • How to get the best deal no matter how difficult the situation
  • Estimation techniques
  • What can estimation do to help you? What can’t it do?
  • What to do when your estimates are badly wrong
  • Risk Management
  • Things should get less - not more - risky as time goes by, make sure that they do
  • Getting buy-in
  • How to persuade your management, your customers and your team that you know what you’re doing
  • Building a team
  • Choosing suppliers

Anyone who is involved in the management and delivery of digital projects will benefit from this course, especially those who come from a traditional print background, including: editors and commissioners, web managers, project managers and publishers.

Your tutor for this course will be Mark Stringer. Mark has been working as a software developer and project manager for the past fifteen years. He first worked on web projects whilst working at the pioneering internet publishing company Chadwyck-Healy in 1997. He has also worked at organisations such as IBM, Xerox, Cambridge University and the Bafta award-winning web development company Soda Creative.

Certificate of Attendance.

Please visit our website for information on discounts and funding.