New Class (Webinar) taught by Michael Linenberger: Small Project Management

May 7, 2014

Announcing the first new class material I have taught for years. It’s a live webinar about how to manage small background projects: The full name of the class is:

“Control Background Projects with The One-Minute Project Manager”

[UPDATE: Webinars sold out and are now available as a video class]

This is for those pesky background projects that a lot of us have, that we must manage along with our regular day-job duties. We can have two to ten of these projects running in the background at any one time. Because we try to fit them in with our regular duties, they tend to get insufficient attention and so bog down or lose direction. And then your boss is all over you for not making progress on them—you look bad. Sound familiar? Well, finally, here’s a solution.

Notice I am calling this The One-Minute Project Manager.  The reasons for this name are many:

• The management process is lightweight; a few minutes a week is all the management time you’ll need with some projects (in addition to any task work on the project, of course)
• It uses principles similar to (but different from) my One Minute To-Do List system and MYN system.
• It links with your One Minute To-Do List system (and MYN system), though training in or use of one of those systems is not a prerequisite.
• It doesn’t take long to learn or apply the principles.

I developed this material for managers at a large corporate client of mine a few years ago, and have since applied it to a large number of other clients with excellent results. I am finally bringing it out to the public. I have no books about this (and probably will not write one about it). So this webinar is it!

[UPDATE: Classes sold out and are now available as a video class]

Class Structure

This is a one-hour webinar. It’s a fast-paced demonstration of how to manage these types of projects using my new one-minute project management principles and using a variety of tools. This is different from my One-Minute To-Do List material—it goes beyond that and MYN—so even if you’ve studied that you’ll still want to study this.

Free Video Access

After the webinar, participants will get 30-day access to a video course version of the webinar so they can, if they wish, restudy it slowly, exercising the concepts on their own projects. Only webinar participants will get the recording—it’s not for sale. (Eventually, this might be a multi-part video class anyone can buy, but not for a while). The video set also includes some extra videos for Windows Outlook users (that are not in the live webinar).

Limited Offering

I am scheduling only four webinar events with a limited number of attendees per event. So if you want to learn this material, sign up now. (If there is overwhelming demand we’ll schedule a few more, but only if that happens). [Update: as of a few days before classes sold out yesterday, people were signing up at a rate of only about 1 per day, which is not overwhelming. We need about 20 minimum to hold  a another class. Send us an e-mail if interested and if we find enough interest right now we’ll schedule another session. Otherwise we may just switch over to selling a self-study video format so people do not need to wait so long between classes]

What you’ll Learn

You’ll learn how to manage small background projects. Specifically:

• How these small background projects are different from large projects and why you need different approaches to manage them.
• How the one-minute project management process links with your daily to-do list (of any kind).
• How to create a one-page project control panel for each project, which you will review and make decisions on once a week.
• How to use Microsoft OneNote as that control panel (OneNote is the primary tool demonstrated in this class); other tools will also be demonstrated like Outlook, Excel, Toodledo Outlines, Word doc, and more—it will be clear how to apply the principles in any tool.
• If you use Windows Outlook for tasks, and have access to Windows OneNote, you’ll learn how to link project tasks across the two so they automatically update.

Where this Material Comes from

The core of this class is my original material about project management; you won’t see it taught anywhere else. Before writing books on task and e-mail management, I was a Vice President at Accenture and while there I was managing large, multimillion-dollar projects for our clients. I also created and ran the Project Management Center of Excellence at the American Automobile Association (AAA). I know project management principles inside and out, and I know how to apply them across various sizes of projects. Picking the right tools for the right kind of project is key, and there is a huge gap in the toolsets: tools for small background projects really are not out there. You’ll see that this training fills that gap. After implementing this material, I suspect that for the first time you’ll feel like you have what you need to keep all your background projects under control and well managed.

[UPDATE: Classes sold out and are now available as a video class]

The dates/times for the webinar class are shown once you click the sign-up link above. There you can reserve and pay for your spot. You’ll receive an e-mail receipt and your private link to the webinar.

Conclusion

Again, this is the first major new material I have added to my public training material in years. It’s important new training. And these four webinars may be the only events where I teach it, so you might want to grab one of these classes. Click the link above to save your space (you can cancel with full refund at any time up to one hour before the webinar starts).

Michael Linenberger