The Professional Development InstituteTM
Harvard University Global System™
Harvard® Planner Group

Hands-On Workshop Applying Harvard University Global System™ Tools
Mastering Project-Management Skills, Techniques and Proven Practices

Learn to Lead Teams; Plan Projects and Control Progress:
Scope, Deliverables, Time, Resources, Risks, Costs, Earned Value and Change


Workshop Objectives

The objectives of this intensive workshop are to provide you with the competencies, best practices, proven techniques and tools to set realistic goals and deliverables, allocate scarce resources; estimate time and costs (budget, commitment and cash-flow); select review milestones based on risk and context rather than a chronological control frequency. You will hone your skills to integrate the plan and validate current performance with earned-value management (EVM). Thus, you can prudently predict the trend and firmly control progress by recognizing early warning signs of delays and cost overruns, exploring corrective actions, managing change and delivering excellent results (final deliverables’ quality, time, cost, net value, team commitment, client trust) or seeking a graceful exit, when it is in the client's best interest.

Why Is This Workshop Unique?

This workshop is practical by virtue of three unique features:
  1. The workshop leader, Alain Paul Martin, is a genuine innovator (US, Canadian and Japanese patents), an experienced educator and a leader of projects affecting millions of professionals. Before, during and after his years at Harvard and MIT, Alain has truly democratized project leadership, strategic planning, critical-path scheduling, scarce-resource allocation and advanced progress control. He is an esteemed authority in project leadership and risk management by The Project Management Institute (PMI), universities and large companies. His seminars have gained the recognition of clients in finance, aerospace, biotech, IT, R&D, mining, power generation and government (international trade, agriculture, defense, education, health, national security).
  2. You can say goodbye to the complex time-consuming techniques taught elsewhere and apply the Harvard University Global System™, a breakthrough in project management. After a 20-year research in complexity reduction and application in business and government, the Harvard® framework and instruments make solid project planning and rigorous progress control within the reach of everyone in the project team. Leading companies and defense agencies have applied the Harvard® framework, in projects varying from millions to over a billion in range, to schedule and visually allocate resources and track progress with more visibility and accuracy than ever; thus, delivering a superior value, frequently under inelastic deadlines, scarce resources and and tight budgets.
  3. You will receive the best available course materials (see below) and a unique certificate of completion specifying your proficiency in project management applying Harvard University Global System™ tools.

Who Should Attend

Project management is a team endeavor, the more competencies in the art and science of project management within a team, the higher the synergy and the competitive advantage for the organization. That is why the greatest project managers empower their team with the proven skills and best practices in project management. We, therefore garantee, that project leaders and every member of your project team, including functional managers, client representatives and executive assistants, can immensely benefit from this hands-on workshop.

Participants come from business, trade associations, foundations and governments. Candidates seeking the Project-Management Professional’s certification or already possess a PMP designation will discover new ways to improve their planning and progress-control performance. Guaranteed!

Workshop Outline (2 CEU)

1. Project-Scope Definition: Project Charter

  • Start with a clear mandate: Harvard® Project Scope
  • How to validate project objectives, priorities and risk-related assumptions
  • Performance and value management: Progress benchmarks and impact indicators and constraints
  • Teamwork

2. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

  • How to brainstorm the best deliverables with Harvard® Creativity Grid
  • Work Breakdown Structure: Exercise applying design principles

3. Who Is Doing What: Harvard® Responsibility-Accountability Chart

  • Richard Beckhard’s fundamental principles for allocating roles
  • Harvard® responsibility-charting teamwork: case study
  • Exercise: Role-conflict prevention; risk mitigation
  • Exercise: Building early warnings for delays and cost overruns
  • Accountability and liability issues for project leaders and team members

4. The Complete Risk-Management Cycle

  • Risk identification: How to detect neglected risks with Harvard® Continuous Risk-Management Framework
    • Stakeholder-related risks, value-chain risks, responsibility-accountability risks
    • Risk-intelligence repository: Vital for project portfolios
  • Qualitative and quantitative risk assessment
  • Risk-response strategies
    • Options: mitigation, acceptance, avoidance, sharing and transfer
    • Exercise on strategies to reduce risk to a manageable level
    • Defining residual risk and contingency plans
  • Risk communication

5. Scheduling, Budgeting and Resource Allocation

  • Select from 18 criteria for estimating and scheduling
  • Estimating: from PERT, CPM and Harvard® best practices
  • Baseline scheduling: Least-cost scenario; teamwork
  • How to allocate resource: Single and multiple projects
  • How to streamline and, if necessary, fast-track work
  • Risks of fast-tracking brain-intensive tasks
  • How to manage projects with inelastic deadlines
  • Exercise in budgeting, commitment and cash flow
  • Best earned-value milestones for progress control
  • Applications to pilot experiments and project portfolios

6. Implementation: 360° Tools and Best Practices

  • How to anticipate and control changes, costs, time and value
  • How to assess progress and risks at each milestone
  • New schedule and cost projections: 12 validity tests
  • Progress-control exercises and teamwork

7. Synthesis and Conclusion: Exemplary project leadership


Webinar Leader: Alain Paul Martin

Alain Paul Martin, Workshop Leader • Harvard-MIT Trained Leader: Meta-Innovation Scientist and Chief Architect, Harvard University Global System™ • Serial Innovator: Manufacturing, Aerospace and Social Innovations and New Organizations in the Private, Public and NGO Sectors • Team Coach: Discovery, Scaling and Delivery of Innovation Processes, Products, Services and Platforms • Educator: Exemplary Team & Technical Leadership, Innovation Ecosystems, Strategy, Managment of Change, Principled Negotiation & Project Management

Education: A Harvard-MIT multidisciplinary-trained leader and 2012 Harvard Fellow, Advanced Leadership, and entrepreneurship alumnus of Harvard Business School (1997-1999), Alain Paul Martin studied advanced technology in France with internships at Peugeot, ARD National TV Network (Berlin), the University of Ottawa (Particle Physics) and Carleton University's Hydrodynamics Lab. He subsequently graduated in Commerce (Quantitative Methods) from Concordia University in Montreal; and acquired skills in system thinking and change management (MIT Sloan School, Gestalt Institute of Cleveland), and mediation and advanced negotiation for lawyers, at Harvard Law School from which he is certified to teach negotiation in corporations.

Current Mission: Advance meta-innovation: Alain Paul Martin leads PDI , a catalyst in principled leadership and collaborative innovation, thanks to a diverse team of scientists, engineers, economists, assistants and clients. The team distills the knowledge and best practices of innovation science, leadership, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, decarburization and system thinking to spearhead innovations, that maximize user value, top and bottom-line results and SDG/ESG impacts.

Mr. Martin is the Chief Architect, Harvard University Global System™ (for which PDI is Harvard University's licensee). Alain led this System's design and a software version, used by Skanska (Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the U.K.) to manage projects ($1M to multi-billions). The present System includes the Harvard® Roadmap for Exemplary and Collaborative Innovation. This roadmap will serve as the outline and background document for the complete program. It facilitates the creation and scaling of competitive, ecologically sustainable and socially beneficial user-centered products.

Faculty Chair: Mr. Martin currently leads graduate courses and corporate webinars on exemplary team and technical leadership, the complete-innovation cycle and ecosystems, meta-innovation, and management of change and high-stake negotiations (bar certified), and stakeholders' empowerment and engagement (from issue incubation to fruition or graceful exit, including collective intelligence, strategic communication and strategic alliances) for scientists, engineers, policy makers, team leaders and graduate students, in English and French.

Prior to COVID19, he taught graduate M.Sc. courses; and delivered workshops at Bertelsmann, Boliden (Sweden), Cap-Gemini (Netherlands and U.K.), EON, Framingham University, The Engineering Advancement Association of Japan (ENAA), GE Jet Engines (U.S., France and Canada), Harvard University and the Ivy-League's Leadership Summit, MD Robotics, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University and OCP Group (Morocco), Ontario's Power Generation (Nuclear-Power Engineering), Teck (Applied Research & Technology), Textron Bell Helicopters, UN University (Tokyo), University of Quebec and governments (Canada, EU, U.S. and Latin America).

Track Record in Innovation and Management of Change

Alain Paul Martin is a meta-innovation scientist, with IT design, operations-research and management-science experience, a patent recipient (U.S, Canada and Japan), a serial social innovator, a manufacturing-innovation inventor at Peugeot and recipient of two aerospace awards from Bombardier-Canadair (now Airbus) for improving aircraft manufacturing (CAM).

Mr. Martin invented practical mechanisms to empower support staff; and bring synergy to innovation teamwork and master the finest details in project planning and progress control. The same mechanisms also permit international project teams to share and probe complex plans and progress reports, across language boundaries, both in small and large multi-billion dollar projects, including engineering and large-infrastructure programs.

In finance and banking, Desjardins' President John Harbour, praised Mr. Martin's role, as a 12-year main strategic advisor, in crafting “the vision and strategic direction of Desjardins”, a $75 billion financial institution, and “the world's 2nd strongest bank”, (Bloomberg's ranking at the time). In the general-insurance sector, Mr. Martin coached the executive team to turn Desjardins from a laggard into the industry's flagship through strategic innovations, leapfrogging Zurich and ING; and become “North-America's fastest-growing general insurer in 5 years”, quadrupling sales and raising profit tenfold (CEO's video in French at www.eharvard.org/2020/harbour.mp4).

In the public service, Mr. Martin co-founded the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with Dr. Brian Morrissey who led scientific research both at Fisheries & Oceans and Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada. He also teamed-up with Mr. John Harbour to reform the SAAQ, an agency saddled with a $489 million debt, fast-rising deaths and severe injuries, due to highway accidents. He coached the SAAQ strategic team whose decisions saved thousands of lives, in less than 5 years; reducing the death toll (-35%) and severe bodily-injury accidents (-43%), despite a 15% highway-traffic growth; while turning the $489 million debt into $20 million surplus. Mr. Harbour described Martin's 12-year contribution, to Desjardins and the SAAQ, in strategic thinking and innovation tools, in a video in French: www.eharvard.org/2020/harbour.mp4 (same as above hyperlink).

Mr. Martin advised two Canadian prime ministers on strategic policies. He also served as a non-partisan Executive Member of the Prime Minister's Committee on Government Reform. He led assignments (public-health, food security, bilateral trade, energy, mining and evaluation of passenger-inspection system and policies at airports), where complex risks and sensitive multi-stakeholder negotiations (regional, national and foreign governments, NGOs, corporate, union and First Nations' representatives and professional associations) were of paramount importance. He also advised the UNESCO's director general and authored “Overhauling the UNESCO and Strengthening Its Essence”. Early in his career, he directed infrastructural engineering projects in Africa (660km-highway engineering funded by the World Bank, 2800km microwave-communication infrastructure by CIDA).

During the 2019-2021 COVID pandemics, Mr. Martin chaired three international-foresight panels titled: “Incubating Antidotes to Exclusion, Disinformation and Inequality”, “Preparing for the New Pandemics: Lessons from Science and Policy” and “Sustainable Growth and Scaling through Innovation and Strategic Alliances”.

Alain Paul Martin has a deep commitment and an extensive experience in mentoring, training and coaching executive, administrative and presidential assistants and their leaders in Africa, Europe, Japan and North and Latin America, both the public and private sectors, NGOs and unions. He leads two intensive leadership workshops for executive and administrative assistants (description and video: www.eharvard.org/EA ). At the dawn of its inception, PDI led the world in inclusion and diversity, including gender equity by delivering the first graduate-level leadership-skills program for women. Fast forward 25 years, and armed with invaluable clients' experience in aerospace, banking, building and infrastructure, mining, defense and governments, PDI launched an ongoing initiative to make Harvard® tools accessible (without compromising value) to everyone in our clients' project teams. As a result, PDI led the world again by delivering Advanced Workshops to enable Executive and Administrative Assistants to excel in decision-making, leadership, procurement negotiations and fully participate in team innovation, and project management (strategy formulation, scheduling, scarce-resource allocation, budgeting and progress control). Empowering executive assistants, with skills of lasting value, is not only fair, humane and dignified; but it is among the best evidence-based business investments yielding immediate returns, as indicated in these international participant-testimonies on Youtube.

More details, including recognition, awards and praise by clients, leading Fortune 500 corporate executives and scholars, at www.eharvard.org/martin, and defense leaders at www.eharvard.org/intelligence .

For more on Alain's innovative work in finance & banking, energy & mining, education, the public service and civil society, please refer to : C.V. in PDF format and detailed C.V.


Practical Course Materials of Lasting Value

A total attention to quality is featured in the versatile course materials from the pre-readings, the exercises and case studies to the most practical toolkit and complexity-reduction Harvard® road maps. The following is a list of the course materials and practical instruments that facilitate learning and mastering project-management skills.
  1. The pre-readings from Alain Martin’s papers on project leadership, stakeholder’s analysis and key players’ dynamics, strategy formulation, brainstorming and creativity, authority and soft power, the fundamental drivers of excellent decisions, goal validity and responsibility charting.
  2. The main workbook covers the agenda and provides supplementary references
  3. Alain Paul Martin's book titled "Harnessing the Power of Intelligence", which includes several tools to analyze the stakeholders and identify project opportunities and risk early through the risk-incubation paradigm
  4. Exercises, teamwork and case studies on mission and goal validity, project scoping, responsibility charting, scheduling, resource allocation, budgeting and progress control.
  5. Harvard University Global System™ road maps and work-improvement templates:
    • Harvard® Complete Framework: Vision, Strategy, Policy and Project Management featuring both ongoing and sequential tasks that no manager can ignore
    • Harvard® Project Scope Definition to define the project value chain (objectives and linkage to client’s mission, deliverables, resources), the critical success factors (performance indicators) and the evaluation plan
    • Harvard® Negotiation Mandate: A template to prepare negotiations and manage deadlocks
    • Harvard® Principled-Negotiation Road Map for planning and running effective negotiations
    • Harvard® Creativity Template
    • Continuous Risk-Management Road Map and accompanying guide titled “Neglected Risks: Identification and Management Primer Applying Harvard University Global System™ Tools”
    • Harvard® Responsibility/Accountability Chart to clarify everyone’s role and obligations and prevent role conflicts
    • Harvard® Time-Management Road Map to help you plan your time.

Tuition Fees

Fees include books, hand-outs, road maps and other course materials of lasting value (see above), and a daily continental breakfast plus hot and soft drinks during the morning and afternoon pauses, but exclude hotel accommodation (if required).

Registration and Cancellation Procedures

To register, please contact us either by:
  • email at rsvp@eharvard.org. Specify your name, position, organization, phone number(s) and the webinar you wish to attend.
    or
  • call us toll free in the USA and Canada: 1-800-HARVARD; international: +1 819-772-7777. voicemail: 24/7.
Please pay in advance by credit card.

Cancellation Policy
 Participants registering as a group must send substitutes in lieu of canceling. For other clients, cancellations are accepted if made at least 10 working days prior to the course, and are subject to a $150 service charge per person. Full fees are payable by anyone who fails to attend or cancels less than 10 working days prior to the session. One substitution or transfer to a later course of the same duration is accepted.


Workshop Locations and Hotel Accomodation
Click here for detailed information about hotels.

Bring This Program to Your Organization

We deliver private versions of this program worldwide, online, at the client's site and in tailor-made hybrid variants, to business and governments, NGOs and bar associations and other societies. We would be delighted to work together with your team anywhere. Ask us for a proposal based on the number of participants, the seminar duration, and a selection of cutting-edge course materials and case studies, most applicable to your specific environment.

Our fees are reasonable. Sales and value-added taxes (HST and PST or VAT) are extra.

The client is responsible for the conference room and audio-visual materials.


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Toll-free: USA & Canada: 1-800-HARVARD (1-800-427-8273). +1-819-772-7777
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Contact : Sylvie Goffinet  +33 1 53 45 84 40. Métro Concorde.

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Participants’ Feedback

"Alain Paul Martin has a long and valued association with Teck Metals Ltd™; We believe that Alain's teachings go far beyond the typical project management focus on scope, schedule, cost, and, sometimes, quality. Alain delves into topics that project managers working with complex topics or program managers dealing with multiple complex and often inter-related projects need to know about and must become skilled at to be successful. These teachings are supported by tools that we and our teams use on a regular basis to move ideas and concepts into well-defined projects that can be managed with conventional project-management tools."

Rob Stephens, PhD
Director, Applied Research & Technology
Teck Metals Ltd.

"Alain delivered, over a 4-year period, “Advanced Project and Risk-Management” workshops to our nuclear project managers and executives at Ontario Power Generation (OPG) ... These sessions covered the complete project management cycle from project and risk incubation to stakeholder analysis and strategy formulation to operational planning including estimating, resource allocation, budgeting, earned-value planning and progress control. Including myself, the sessions were taken by approximately 200 OPG Project Managers, Sr. Engineers and Executives. Feedback from all sessions were excellent. Course materials and instruction exceeded all of the requirements established by OPG."

Mark Arnone
Vice-President, Nuclear Refurbishment
Ontario Power Generation (OPG)


"I found the course content, your presentation and the group-interaction discussions stimulating real-life cases very enlightening. The learning of a new material surprised me because I have 28 years of industrial experience and held a corporate position for 8 years... Your course, because of its thorough analysis of the issues, will be useful to researchers considering entrepreneurship."
Noel P. Mailvaganam
Principal Research Officer
National Research Council

"Companies like PDI... set the highest standards of quality in product and services. I am sure I speak for others at Boeing when I say it is good to have you as an ally."
Don Mallory
Boeing

"Alain Paul Martin is a true authority on the subject of risk, complexity reduction and the transfer of universal skills. At some of the “darkest hours” in leading complex projects and managing global risks, I turn to Alain’s methodologies clearly laid out in his seminal book Harnessing the Power of Intelligence, Counter-Intelligence & Surprise Events. It is like the Physician’s Desk Reference for strategists and practitioners alike.
Alain is a masterful public speaker and he captivated an audience of fellow HBS alumni and guests when I hosted him at the French Embassy in Washington. Alain receives my highest praise."
Dante A. Disparte
Founder and CEO at Risk Cooperative
Co-Author Global Risk Agility and Decision Making
President, Harvard Business School Club, Washington (DC)

"I enjoyed acquiring new ideas in strategy formulation, negotiation skills and leadership. The exercises and simulations gave a good hands-on practice."
Savi Sachdev
Director General, Space Systems
Canadian Space Agency

Note: Mr. Sachdev took Strategy, Negotiation, Leadership and 4 out of the 5-day Advanced Project-Management Workshop

"The tools and strategies provided by this course will be of practical use in all aspects of my work! Powerful tools delivered by a leading-edge instructor! Many thanks!"
Carl Finniss, Project Manager
Customs & Revenue Agency

"I found this to be a content-rich course with a real-world focus. It has changed the way I approach strategic thinking and has significantly added to my risk and negotiation tool chest."
Mark Maltais, Manager
Risk Assessment, CDIC

"Excellent value for a senior manager."
Col. Tom Lawson
Department of National Defence

"Alain Martin's real-life examples and experience add so much value to the learning experience that it made the learning material much easier to understand."
Michel Firlotte
IT Project Manager
Health Canada

"Project Management was the first seminar I took with Alain Martin. I have since participated in five workshops led by Alain who has, for over 10 years in two companies I have presided (Desjardins and SAAQ), delivered excellent in-house executive-development seminars applying Harvard University Global System™ tools in risk and project management, strategy formulation, principled-negotiation skills, management of change and exemplary leadership.
Our senior executives and their teams have acquired invaluable competitive skills and instruments for project leadership, planning, progress control and impact evaluation. I strongly recommend Alain's workshops. Because of their immediate relevance to the real world, Alain's in-house sessions were a resounding success."
John Harbour
President, Desjardins and SAAQ (ret'd)

"Very focused seminar on practical and innovative tools that are of great value and are uniquely delivered."
Wassim Labaki, President & Chief Engineer
Advanced Manufacturing Processes
Robotic Systems

"The most thought-provoking and insightful sessions on management issues I have seen in 25 years of military and public service experience."
Alan Stewart
Sr. Project Manager
Aircraft Certification, Transport Canada

"As a new supervisor, this workshop gave me more practical tools to achieve my mission."
Louis Dufresne
Supervisor, Technical Training
Bombardier Transportation

"Very interesting and fast paced! Not a dull moment."
Rick Leach
Team Leader, Financial Planning, EDC

"All managers should take this seminar. Everything we touched on will be great help to me."
Roger Provost, Ice Services Specialist
Weather and Environmental Prediction Services

"An extremely unique and valuable course with great new tools that can be broadly applied."
Derek Potts
Chief, NHQ Computing Facilities, CIC

"Excellent program; good use of examples. Alain uses his very diverse knowledge base to focus the principles of this risk and project-management seminar."
Dr. Keith Garel
Senior Project Manager
Nuclear Feeder Integrity Project
Ontario Power Generation

Workshop Leader's Endorsements

"Mr. Martin tirelessly invests his energy to leverage his successes and networks into solutions that have a direct, positive impact on the poor…
Mr. Martin’s management background and extensive experience in advising global leaders, alongside his motivation to eradicate poverty and its ill effects, qualify him to make a uniquely valuable contribution to addressing inequity on a societal level. With demonstrated skills in entrepreneurship, negotiation, and issue analysis, he is precisely the sort of thoughtful, versatile leader we need to advocate on behalf of the poor and underserved."
Prof. Paul E. Farmer, MD, PhD
Chair, Global Health & Social Medicine,
Harvard Medical School
Chief, Global Health Equity, Brigham and
Women’s Hospital
Co-founder, Partners In Health

"I was privileged to work with Alain Paul Martin at Harvard University, attend his lectures and provide technical support for his research on complexity reduction.
Alain cares deeply about the students he mentors, Harvard staff and his Advanced Leadership colleagues. He is passionate about social justice. His compassion for the less privileged is genuine. Candid to share his mistakes, he welcomes critical scrutiny of his work, listens, validates and acts on suggestions.
A model leader and educator with a touch of humility and captivating public speaker!"
Cochise Pearson, M.Ed.
President, Ivy Scholars Success
Senior Consultant, Harvard University


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