AIPMO’s specialist courses are for professionals working in PMOs, projects, programs and portfolios. The specialist courses have been developed in conjunction with AIPMO’s ‘PMO and Services Capabilities’ initiative which has identified over 300 PMO services. The specialist courses are not just for PMO professionals (to help them build a PMO service capability), but also for professionals working in or associated with projects, programs and portfolios.
Specialist Courses
Specialist Courses Across PPP & PMO's
Referring to the figure above, AIPMO’s specialist courses are developed from the domains of project, program, portfolio and PMO management where the competencies required to achieve successful outcomes are designed within these courses.
- For PMO professionals, the specialist courses enable build the competencies to offer specific PMO services so are modelled around a typical PMO Services catalogue, therefor making it easier to develop services.
- For project professionals, these specialist courses provide them the competencies to address specific knowledge gaps. Project, program and portfolio capabilities can be provided within the respective teams and/or by service providers such as a PMO.
Referring to the figure above, PMOs in general can offer any number of PMO services where the potential number of services can be in the hundreds. However, it is unlikely any single PMO will offer more than hundred services and is more likely to be in the range of 20 to 70 services.
A PMO service will addresses one or more project capability gaps within an organization. However, some project teams may decide to address the gap themselves and therefore attend the relevant specialist courses.
AIPMO offers the PMO/PM specialist accreditation with five specialist levels – IPMO- S1 to IPMO-S5 where S5 is the highest level. It was developed this way because the needs of organizations and professionals vary so much that there is no one approach to selecting a standard set of courses. Instead AIPMO is looking at supporting professionals develop their own life journey in terms of competency needs and accreditation courses hence apply the points system to AIPMO approved specialist courses.
Each specialist course has a number of contact hours and are accredited to the delegate on passing each course exam. Contact hours are accumulated and once the delegate’s specialist certification threshold is met, the delegate will receive automatically the next level AIPMO specialist certification.
To achieve IPMO-S1 (Specialist level 1), 50 contact hours must be achieved. Then for each IPMO-S2 an additional 50 contacts hours are needed and so on.
How the Specialist Certification Level works
The IPMO specialist courses available are:
Purpose
To help PMOs and senior management involved in organizational change to create value by supporting projects, programs and portfolios using agile methods
Learning outcomes:
| 0: Know why Organizational agility is important and how it impacts organizational performance |
| 1. Understand the importance of PMOs supporting PPP using agile method, the challenges, and how PMOs can add value |
| 2. Understand what exactly is an agile environment, the principles and how to align them with your PMO principles to lead and support |
| 3. Learn how a PMO can add value using a framework approach to building and designing PMO services for an organization using agile methods across projects, programs and portfolios |
| 4. Identify and assess the various roles a PMO can have in organization using agile methods and how it can use those roles to support and advise efficiently and effectively |
| 5. Analyze PMO principles and assess how to define them for an agile environment |
| 6. Learn and apply Agile techniques |
| 7. Understand how the AIPMO Lifecycle framework incorporates both Agile and Agility concepts |
| 8. Develop your own Agile Maturity model using a foundation of existing models |
| 9. Understand the impact of new technologies such as AI on Agile project management |
Who should attend:
| Project and program management professionals |
| PMO managers and team members who are involved in using agile methods |
| Consultants involved in supporting PPP and PMOs using both traditional and agile method |
| Subject matter experts and those responsible to lead organizational change |
Modules
| Module 1 | Organizational agility |
| Module 2 | Value management – driver for the Agile mindset |
| Module 3 | Defining PMO and Agile |
| Module 4 | Basic Scrum Sprint and ceremonies |
| Module 5 | Agile techniques and approaches |
| Module 6 | The Agile PMO and PMO for Agile teams |
| Module 7 | Agile maturity models |
| Module 8 | Futures: AI, robotics, automation and their impact on Agile projects |
| Module 9 | Discussion module for open forum |
| Module 10 | Retrospectives |
Exam: 1 hours – 50 questions
Contact Hours: 16
Purpose:
Detail the importance of methodologies on PPP and their contribution to success
What are the main stream methodologies and their strengths and weaknesses
How to select, built, maintain and tailor methodologies to achieve PPP and PMO success
Learning outcomes:
0. Know the difference between the methodologies from the major project management associations
1. Know how to select and tailor the most applicable methodology for your organization
2. Impact of governance practices on a methodology and success
3. Why PMOs need to have a purpose built methodology and not a project methodology
4. How to support Agile, traditional and hybrid methodologies
5. How to measure maturity in a PMO and PPP and the relationship to methodologies
6. What does being a methodology custodian really mean
7. Understand the different types of maturity models and the latest research in this field
Who should attend:
- Those responsible to define and implement methodologies in the organization
- Consultants involved in projects/programs/portfolio methodolgies
- Project managers, portfolio, program and PMO managers
- Anyone interested and impacted by methodologies
Modules:
| Module 1 | Introduction to methodologies |
| Module 2 | Project management methodologies |
| Module 3 | Program management methodologies |
| Module 4 | Portfolio management methodologies |
| Module 5 | PMO management methodologies |
| Module 6 | Importance of integrating methodologies PPP |
| Module 7 | How to select a methodology |
| Module 8 | Importance of tailoring a methodology to your environment |
| Module 9 | Why a project methodology is not suitable for a PMO |
| Module 10 | Tailoring a methodology |
| Module 11 | Working in an environment with Agile and traditional methodologies |
| Module 12 | PMOs the custodian of all methodologies |
| Module 13 | Integrating the PMO management methodology into PPP |
| Module 14 | PPP and PMO maturity models |
Exam: 1 hour – 50 questions
Contact Hours: 16
Purpose:
To help project, program, portfolio and PMO managers understand, define and implement governance principles and practices
Who should attend
- Project and program management professionals
- Senior management, IT managers, portfolio, program and PMO managers/directors and PMO core team members
- Consultants involved in projects/programs and organizational change
- Those responsible to define and implement governance practices in the organization
Learning Outcomes:
| 1. Understand the importance of governance for PMOs and across projects, programs and portfolios |
| 2. Explain the importance of different governance theories, models and concepts to build a solid foundation |
| 3. Learn the key differences between management and governance including the role of PMOs in defining governance for PPP |
| 4. Identify the organizational enablers for organizational governance for different levels of the organization |
| 5. Assess the impact of governance on project, program and portfolio success |
| 6. Analyze the governance practices in your organization and how to establish your governance practice through a structured methodology |
| 8. Know where your organization is positioned on governing its project enterprise |
| 9. Be one step closer to gaining your next AIPMO specialist level accreditation |
Modules
| Module 0 | AIPMO and course introduction |
| Module 1 | Introduction to governance for PMOs and PPP |
| Module 2 | Governance concepts, theories and models |
| Module 3 | Governance and management |
| Module 4 | PPP and PMO governance and impact on success |
| Module 5 | Governance, governmentality and ethics |
| Module 6 | Governing the project enterprise: OPM |
| Module 7 | Establishing governance practices in projects and PMOs |
| Module 8 | Governing the project enterprise: OPM self-assessment |
Contact Hours: 16
Exam: 1 hour – 50 questions
| Project success rates especially for complex projects are very low and this is for project teams who are working in a physical or hybrid environments. Covid 19 is one of potentially several triggers that may require projects and/or PMOs to migrate to 100% virtual environments. If you are lucky you have worked with the project team and build trust and respect before your team have been virtualized. Other teams may not have this luxury, so individuals are placed into a team to meet collective deadlines. Some of the team members may be from suppliers, therefore introducing an added complexity of agency issues. This course provides a path to successfully prepare, migrate and run your project and PMO environment virtually. The course references project and PMO success factors throughout the course as you apply AIPMO’s migration framework to a virtual environment for projects and the PMOs. You will look at how to redesign the way projects are run to minimize the risk of failure due to the challenges of working virtually. The role the PMO is covered throughout the course. Topics such as methodologies, capabilities, techniques and online tools are covered. Soft factors such as leadership and culture are discussed which have a major impact on success. Governance, management and performance topics are also covered which are applied within a case study to migrate both a PMO and project environment to a virtual environment. |
Who should attend:
- PMO, project, program and portfolio managers
- Team members of projects and PMOs
- Functional managers
- Anyone involved in project and operational teams
Learning Outcomes:
| Understand projects and PMOs in the context of organizational strategy |
| Know and apply project and PMO success factors in a virtual environment |
| Know how to design, prepare and move projects and PMOs into a virtual environment |
| Know which tools, techniques should be used to manage projects, programs and PMO virtually |
| Apply appropriate leadership styles conducing to forming a inability virtual project culture |
| Know how to manage PMO and project teams virtually |
| Develop your own governance practices for virtual environments |
| Hints and tips from experts who are living in virtual project and PMO environments |
| Be one step closer to gaining your next AIPMO specialist level accreditation |
Modules:
| Module 0 | Introduction |
| Module 1 | Overview of projects and PMOs and AIPMO’s strategic lifecycle framework |
| Module 2 | Projects and PMOs’ success factors and maturity, in a virtual world |
| Module 3 | Design/redesign projects and PMO to work virtually (AIPMO’s migration framework) |
| Module 4 | Project and PMO management methodologies optimized for a virtual environment |
| Module 5 | Capability, capacity, skills, techniques and tools for virtual PMO’s and projects |
| Module 6 | Leadership, management and culture considerations for virtual environments |
| Module 7 | Managing virtual project/PMO teams and PMO/project performance |
| Module 8 | PMO & PM governance in virtual world |
| Module 9 | Case study to migrate a PMO and project environment to a virtual environment – using AIPMO migration framework |
Exam: 1 hour – 50 questions
Contact Hours: 16
| About | The Change Management specialist certification course will help you develop the skills necessary to play an active and effective role within and across organizations that are going through varying degrees of change. Managing organizational change is critical to implementing every type of initiative which in turn helps the organization meet its strategic objectives. Sounds easy? Its not. Organizational change initiatives fail at an alarming rate due to the underestimation of the stakeholders (actual and perceived) impact of change. The course gives you a 360 degree view of change management from the drivers of change, the theory behind change management, investigation of change success factors, change models include techniques and tools, closing with a case study. The hands-on workshop will help participants understand the challenges working in virtual, physical and mixed environments to develop the skills necessary to define and execute an active and effective role within and across organizations that are going through change. | ||
| Who should attend: | Project and program management professionals | ||
| Consultants (involved in projects and/or organizational change) | |||
| PMO/IT managers and team members, portfolio managers and senior management | |||
| Operations staff involved in change projects | |||
| Those responsible to lead and manage people through change at work | |||
| Learning outcomes: | 1. Recognize the drivers of change and challenges relating to change management in complex virtual and hybrid environments | ||
| 2. Profile the behavior individuals, teams and organizations exhibit during change | |||
| 3. Assess the change readiness of the organization and analyze how to reduce the resistance to change | |||
| 4. What roles PMOs at different levels can play to lead and manage change across projects, programs and portfolios | |||
| 5. How PMOs can help identify, select, adapt and implement the diagnostic techniques and tools for change management | |||
| 6. Analyze the impact of change and how to communicate it at different levels/areas of the organization | |||
| 7. Know the main change models and tailor one to your own environment | |||
| 7. Learn to build an AIPMO PMO change management service including the capabilities to run this service across projects and programs | |||
| 8. Critique an organization’s change readiness by understanding change success factors and applying proven techniques and approaches | |||
| 9. Assess leadership styles and their impact on change | |||
| 10 Discuss the importance of communication, trust and culture in the change management process; | |||
| 11. Understand the different components of a communication strategy, and why these use a blend of communication methods | |||
| 12. Develop skills that help employees cope throughout periods of change; | |||
Modules:
| Module 0 | Introduction |
| Module 1 | The Drivers of Change |
| Module 2 | Theory and Practice of Change Management |
| Module 3 | Success Factors Common to Successful Change Management |
| Module 4 | Change Management Models e.g., Kotter’s, Lewin’s, McKinsey 7s, Leavitt’s diamond |
| Module 5 | Change Factors 1: Communication, Accountability and Innovation |
| Module 6 | Change Factors 2: Leadership and Management |
| Module 7 | Change – Techniques, Tools and Processes |
| Module 8 | Supporting Employees Through Organizational Change |
| Module 9 | Change Management Case study – selecting tailoring applying a change model and creating an AIPMO compliant PMO Change Service |
| Module 10 | Exam – 1 Hour – 50 questions |
Contact Hours: 16
Exam: 1 hour 50 questions