Think your Project Team could do a better job when offering ongoing education? You’re not alone—take a look at these common project management training mistakes that too many Project Teams make.
Limiting participation to only senior or only junior staff. Some organizations don’t value their lower-level employees enough to invest in their training, while others feel that money spent on continuing education for their senior staff is a waste. Both opinions are wrong, of course. Implementing a thoughtful, comprehensive training plan will benefit workers of every experience level.
Sending everyone to training at year end. Your team is too busy to put time into ongoing education, but no one wants to lose the dollars they’ve been allotted. The result is that employees are left scrambling at the end of the year to fit in their expected training sessions. Unfortunately, it’s usually difficult to find appropriate training opportunities with such little time and planning, resulting in money being spent inefficiently. Try putting together a roadmap at the beginning of the year to maximize productivity and provide employees with training tailored to their job.
“Borrowing” from the training budget for other activities. Too often the Project Team’s training budget becomes an emergency fund for other things (unexpected technology upgrades, poorly managed scope creep on a high-visibility project, etc.) and continuing education is left by the wayside. Avoid this scenario by viewing the training budget as sacrosanct—approved funds should be used for educational opportunities and nothing else.
Saving money by using internal experts as instructors. Your Project Team undoubtedly has a deep pool of expertise, but you’re limiting your team’s exposure to influential thought leaders and innovative thinking if you don’t encourage them to broaden their horizons through training. Don’t eliminate internal mentoring and teaching completely, but be sure to incorporate outside expertise and new perspectives regularly.
PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.
