lateralworks provides training in Fast-Time-To-Market (FTTM) methods and tools. Standard seminars can be adapted to specific client needs. Prior to the development of training programs a needs assessment is conducted to determine participant skill levels, available time, and learning objectives which together will influence training content and delivery methods. Programs blend management concepts, application techniques, human behavior and human factors, methodologies, and software tools.

Training, on its own, is not sufficient to transfer the necessary skills to be effective with the FTTM System due to the complexity of the material and the skills necessary to drive fast cycle time development projects. The FTTM Seminar series is designed to solve this problem. It combines learning and “doing” using live projects. During the seminar, participants will plan or adapt their live project plans using their newly learned skills.

FTTM Seminar 1

Duration: 3 days

Audience: Program Managers, Technical Leads, Technical Executive Leadership

A comprehensive learning experience designed to teach, transfer and apply FTTM best practices to planning and executing projects using advanced planning and decision-making tools. Seminar topics include:

  • FTTM Planning Methodology and Best Practice concepts

  • The Critical Path Method (CPM), as it is used for schedule modeling and acceleration

  • How to use the basic functionality of fastProject and decisionAccelerator

  • How to convert an existing schedule into FTTM format/structure

  • How to use the Analyzer to diagnose and fix problems that prevent accurate critical paths

  • How to improve the quality of a schedule in order to use it to predict and accelerate

  • How to build a macro plan and implement incremental decomposition of micro tasks

  • How to structure a schedule that will enable better prediction of milestone completion, and hence be able to determine gaps from targets (gap analysis)

  • Techniques for team facilitation and engagement in strategic and tactical schedule acceleration

  • How to perform Critical Path Analysis and Schedule Peels using the Inspector

  • How to facilitate weekly Refresh Planning with the team, and use fastProject for near term schedule acceleration and analysis of the schedule to determine what “changed”, i.e. what caused a slip or pull-in and what actions should be taken to recover time or accelerate the schedule

  • Project baselines and how to use this information to understand task and project trending information

  • How to generate Lookahead reports, update task progress, pull-in the schedule, track and analyze trends, and execute low-overhead project reporting using live project data

  • How to structure complex decisions and accelerate consensus decision-making

Seminar components and sequencing:

  1. FTTM Webinar prior to 3-day onsite seminar. This is designed to introduce seminar participants to the best practices and concepts that will be covered in the seminar, and to provide enough knowledge to be able to start planning with fastProject. Pre-work will be assigned to participants that will be used during the Applied Learning component of the seminar. This will optimize and accelerate the learning and transfer experience during the onsite seminar.

  2. Onsite 3-day seminar.

  3. FTTM Tools Overview Lecture on FTTM Best Practices and the FTTM Scheduling system. This is designed for people who are not participating in the seminar, but who need to understand the FTTM planning system. This is typically attended by the executive leadership and functional managers.

  4. Included in the package is a single seat perpetual license of the FTTM Tools for each seminar participant.

FTTM Seminar 2

Duration: 3 days + Multi-Month Coaching

Audience: Program Managers, Technical Leads, Technical Executive Leadership

A comprehensive learning experience designed to teach, transfer and apply FTTM best practices to planning and executing projects using advanced planning and decision-making tools. Seminar topics include:

  • FTTM Planning Methodology and Best Practice concepts

  • The Critical Path Method (CPM), as it is used for schedule modeling and acceleration

  • How to use the basic functionality of fastProject and decisionAccelerator

  • How to convert an existing schedule into FTTM format/structure

  • How to use the Analyzer to diagnose and fix problems that prevent accurate critical paths

  • How to improve the quality of a schedule in order to use it to predict and accelerate

  • How to build a macro plan and implement incremental decomposition of micro tasks

  • How to structure a schedule that will enable better prediction of milestone completion, and hence be able to determine gaps from targets (gap analysis)

  • Techniques for team facilitation and engagement in strategic and tactical schedule acceleration

  • How to perform Critical Path Analysis and Schedule Peels using the Inspector

  • How to facilitate weekly Refresh Planning with the team, and use fastProject for near term schedule acceleration and analysis of the schedule to determine what “changed”, i.e. what caused a slip or pull-in and what actions should be taken to recover time or accelerate the schedule

  • Project baselines and how to use this information to understand task and project trending information

  • How to generate Lookahead reports, update task progress, pull-in the schedule, track and analyze trends, and execute low-overhead project reporting using live project data

  • How to structure complex decisions and accelerate consensus decision-making

Seminar components and sequencing:

  1. FTTM Webinar prior to 3-day onsite seminar. This is designed to introduce seminar participants to the best practices and concepts that will be covered in the seminar, and to provide enough knowledge to be able to start planning with fastProject. Pre-work will be assigned to participants that will be used during the Applied Learning component of the seminar. This will optimize and accelerate the learning and transfer experience during the onsite seminar.

  2. Onsite 3-day seminar.

  3. FTTM Tools Overview Lecture on FTTM Best Practices and the FTTM Scheduling system. This is designed for people who are not participating in the seminar, but who need to understand the FTTM planning system. This is typically attended by the executive leadership and functional managers.

  4. Included in the package is a single seat perpetual license of the FTTM Tools for each seminar participant.

  5. 2-months of after-seminar coaching to help teams initiate the Refresh Planning with their project teams (since this is typically the hardest part to implement), to advise on proper build-out of micro schedules (if necessary), and to coach and mentor the managers as they adapt and integrate the new planning system into their daily routines. This is a critical requirement for larger and more complex projects. For these larger programs, the 3-day Seminar is not sufficient on its own and typically requires additional support.

FTTM Seminar 3

Duration: 5 days + Multi-Month Coaching

Audience: Program Managers, Technical Leads, Technical Executive Leadership

A comprehensive learning experience designed to teach, transfer and apply FTTM best practices to planning and executing projects using advanced planning and decision-making tools.

Apply learning to live projects in order to accelerate the skills transfer and comprehension, enabling rapid integration of the new practices and behaviors into current projects.

Training alone is not sufficient to transfer the necessary skills to be effective with the FTTM Tools - this seminar is designed to solve the problem. During the seminar, participants will plan or adapt their live project plans using their newly learned skills. By adapting the methodology to the team’s project environment, the result is a more effective and efficient transfer of skills. Participants simultaneously learn and get their projects properly planned.

Follow-on support (post seminar), lateralworks consultants work with and mentor teams as they start-up the Refresh Planning process, which involves decomposing the near term schedule, weekly refreshes, reporting and setting a pattern of incremental acceleration through team engagement.

Seminar topics include:

  • FTTM Planning Methodology and Best Practice concepts

  • The Critical Path Method (CPM), as it is used for schedule modeling and acceleration

  • How to use the basic functionality of fastProject and decisionAccelerator

  • How to convert an existing schedule into FTTM format/structure

  • How to use the Analyzer to diagnose and fix problems that prevent accurate critical paths

  • How to improve the quality of a schedule in order to use it to predict and accelerate

  • How to build a macro plan and implement incremental decomposition of micro tasks

  • How to structure a schedule that will enable better prediction of milestone completion, and hence be able to determine gaps from targets (gap analysis)

  • Techniques for team facilitation and engagement in strategic and tactical schedule acceleration

  • How to perform Critical Path Analysis and Schedule Peels using the Inspector

  • How to facilitate weekly Refresh Planning with the team, and use fastProject for near term schedule acceleration and analysis of the schedule to determine what “changed”, i.e. what caused a slip or pull-in and what actions should be taken to recover time or accelerate the schedule

  • Project baselines and how to use this information to understand task and project trending information

  • How to generate Lookahead reports, update task progress, pull-in the schedule, track and analyze trends, and execute low-overhead project reporting using live project data

  • How to structure complex decisions and accelerate consensus decision-making in order to accelerate project schedule

Seminar components and sequencing:

  1. FTTM Webinar prior to on-site seminar. This is designed to introduce seminar participants to the best practices and concepts that will be covered in the seminar, and to provide enough knowledge to be able to start planning with fastProject. Pre-work will be assigned to participants that will be used during the Applied Learning component of the seminar. This will optimize and accelerate the learning and transfer experience during the onsite seminar.

  2. 3-day Seminar followed by 2-days of Applied Learning. During the 2-day Applied Learning module, live macro schedules will be either converted (where they exist) or developed from scratch with project team members.

  3. FTTM Tools Overview Lecture on FTTM Best Practices and the FTTM Scheduling system. This is designed for people who are not participating in the seminar, but who need to understand the FTTM planning system. This is typically attended by the executive leadership and functional managers.

  4. Included in the package is a single seat perpetual license of the FTTM Tools for each seminar participant.

  5. 2-months of after-seminar coaching to help teams initiate the Refresh Planning with their project teams (since this is typically the hardest part to implement), to advise on proper build-out of micro schedules (if necessary), and to coach and mentor the managers as they adapt and integrate the new planning system into their daily routines. This is a critical requirement for larger and more complex projects. For these larger programs, the 5-day Seminar is not sufficient on its own and typically requires additional support. The extended coaching program is available to help clients structure “good schedules” and implement the Refresh Planning Process in order to change behavior on the team, such that the process “sticks.” On the other hand, our management consulting services are designed to solve the right-project/time problem and to help clients accelerate projects and deliver them on time or early.

Best Practices Workshop

 

Duration: 2 days

Audience: Program Managers, Technical Leads, Technical Executive Leadership

A workshop designed to expose participants to each of the best practices developed by lateralworks through ongoing research into the factors that drive the right product to be delivered to customers at the right time.

The workshop is preceded by a self-assessment survey where a wider audience (including workshop participants) is asked to rate their own awareness and effectiveness in implementing each of the best practices in their own environment. The survey results are compared to (i.e. benchmarked against) highly effective teams in fast development environments.

During the workshop the survey results are used as the basis of discussion, where small groups develop their own understanding of how each best practice is used (or not used) in their environment and then develop tactics to adapt and implement the practice more effectively given their organization’s readiness and skill level.

The workshop outcomes are general understanding of the best practices, an assessment of about how well your own organization is applying the practices (or not), and specific action plans to improve the organization’s effectiveness in adopting and applying the best practices.

Host Practices Workshop

 

Duration 1 day

Audience: Executive Leadership

A workshop designed to expose participants to the “host” best practices developed by lateralworks through ongoing research into the factors that drive the right product to be delivered to customers at the right time. Host refers to the organization that supports development teams as they move through the functional silos of the company during the development process. The host can either provision teams or interrupt them. Fast teams usually exist within fast organizations. This workshop focuses on the host practices that drive n=n fast project performance.

The workshop is preceded by a self-assessment survey where a wider audience (including workshop participants) is asked to rate their own awareness and effectiveness in implementing the Host best practices in their own environment. The survey results are compared to (i.e. benchmarked against) highly effective teams in fast development environments.

During the workshop the survey results are used as the basis of discussion, where small groups develop their own understanding of how the Host best practices are used (or not used) in their environment and then develop tactics to adapt and implement the practice more effectively given their organization’s readiness and skill level.

The workshop outcomes are general understanding of the best practices, an assessment of about how well your own organization is applying the practices (or not), and specific action plans to improve the organization’s effectiveness in adopting and applying Host best practices.