Learn to manage Horticultural Projects
- Add Project Management to your Horticulture or Landscaping Skills
- Increase your earning potential
- Professional development course for consultants, designers, technicians, etc
- Self Paced, 100 hour study program that covers everything that is commonly covered by typical project management diplomas offered elsewhere
Project Managers are needed to oversee all types of horticultural projects; from land rehabilitation to landscaping, and setting up new enterprises, both production and amenity.
An ability to project Manage is an invaluable tool to horticultural managers. It is relevant to a diverse range of projects, including technical, human resources, marketing, and more.
This is a compressed version of a much longer course, so it is highly informative, and great value for money.
It was developed by highly qualified professionals, with years of experience in their respective fields.
WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSE
There are nine lessons as follows:
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Introduction
Understanding what project management is, and what its applications might be.
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Project Identification
Identification and defining projects which need management.
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Project Planning
Developing a strategy and framework for the plan.
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Project Implementation
Managers duties during implementation, developing a Preparation Control Chart,
Regulating implementation.
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Project Completion & Evaluation
Dangers in this stage, Steps in Project completion, Declaring a project sustainable,
Developing an evaluation method.
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Technical Project Management Skills
Preparing a proposal, budget control/management, steps in drawing up a
post project appraisal.
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Leadership Skills
Styles of leadership, leadership principles and methods.
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Improving Key Personnel Skills
Listening skills, Negotiation skills, Conflict management.
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Major Assignment
Developing full documentation for a project.
AIMS
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Explain what project management is, and what its applications might be.
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Identify and define projects which need management.
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Plan a project.
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Implement a project.
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Evaluate a project following completion.
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Describe technical skills required to manage projects.
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Demonstrate project leadership skills.
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Identify and solve common project problems.
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Consolidate all of the skills and information from throughout the past 8 lessons, and manage a project effectively.
WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
Project Management is a process.
It involves a number of interrelated activities which are required to achieve a specific goal or set of objectives. From this statement, and the previous descriptions, we can identify the following two key features of project management:
- It focuses on completing a project goal within a specific time period.
- It makes use of resources on a part time basis, requiring basic management skills.
- Project management involves the use of material resources (eg. equipment, stationery, computers, telephones etc), design and planning, and leadership/supervisory skills. Unlike general management though, project management is not an ongoing process. It has a temporary life span.
Projects can involve constructing something tangible such as a building or a landscape; or producing goods or services. Projects are not jobs that are ongoing without a foreseeable end.
Typical projects could be:
- Constructing a park or garden
- Building a Golf Course
- Developing a housing or industrial estate
- Constructing a lake or water resource
- Organising a festival or exhibition
- Developing a new manufactured product
- Creating and running a product launch for a new plant cultivar
- Establishing a new farm or farm enterprise
- Developing a new method of control for a pest or disease
- Breeding a new plant cultivar, with a specific desirable characteristic
'Project management can be applied to virtually any industry, from construction and mining to health, education or media.
All projects go through a series of standard phases or stages.
This course teaches you what those stages are and breaks down the management into managing each of those stages.
What Happens at the End?
Implementing a project successfully differs from ending the actual management process. Just because a project is at its end it does not mean that the business is benefiting from the program that was implemented. The end product may not meet the project’s initial aims and objective.
As an example: you are asked to launch a new variety of rose. If you simply organised distribution and left without checking whether it sold the new distribution system may be unworkable.
Therefore you may have delivered the process but you have not met the specific business need. If you do meet the business need, then the project is a success. However even this is not the end of an implementation process, or the end of a project. A project should have a mechanism in place that can improve or maintain quality - after implementation, to further benefit the business.
How then do you measure a project’s success?
You conduct a ‘Project Review’. A project review will enable you to:
- Evaluate whether the project solved the problem outlined in the project’s objectives i.e. met the projects objectives.
- Identifies areas that require more work (did not need the project’s objectives).
- Access and learn from past lessons for the current and also future projects.
- Ensure that further improvements can be made when needed to create further benefit for the business.
However projects should not only be reviewed upon completion; there are many reviews that can be conducted throughout the life of a project to help eliminate or minimise problems that may show up in the final review. For example reviews may occur at intervals throughout the project, perhaps at the end of each designated stage or phase this is known as a milestone/phase review.
Types of reviews conducted through the life of a project may include:
- Small project reviews.
- Periodic reviews (throughout the term of the project - not necessarily at the end of a stage/phase).
- Milestone/phase reviews (held at the end of each stage/phase of a project).
- Special event reviews – although most events that can occur should be on the risk register formulated earlier in the project’s life – sometimes unforeseen things do occur. These then require a process to help identify the event and to help capitalize on it or resolve it or to contain the risk.
- Cluster reviews (clusters are groups of stakeholders or players in a project e.g. the business, its suppliers, the training providers etc. it may also include more than one department within an organisation where a project’s benefits may overflow from one department to the other.
- Termination review (i.e. when a project is terminated, for whatever reason, before it failed). Provided it is done for the right reasons, this can be appropriate and the project still considered successful.
- Implementation review (conducted at the end of a project).
- Final project reports – this is not a review because all the review processes should by now be complete – the report is written around the review that have taken place outlining the findings and recommendations.
Why Horticulturists Need this Skill
This course develops your ability to manage a wide variety of different types of projects, with relevance to any sector of horticulture (even outside of horticulture)
Almost everything we do in society can be described as a project, from organising a party or constructing a building, to developing a new business or introducing a new social welfare project. Project management as a skill and field of study is essential for successful organisational management. As a formal management function, project management is found in government, industry, and almost all other organisations. Project Management may be called any of a number of other names such as: Program Management, Product Management, Construction Management, and so on.
Project management as a field of action can often be seen in self help schemes or outreach programs. Whatever the objectives, project management involves a number of phases and skills which are essential to a projects completion. To get a better understanding of this process, the term "project management" can be further broken into "project" and "management".
Duration: 100 Hours (Nominal Duration).
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