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Advanced Project Management Certificate Program (APM)

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Advanced Project Management (APM) is your on-demand, personalized certificate program for experienced project professionals and teams. Build upon previous project management learning and get ready for the challenges that senior practitioners face most—complexity, change leadership, and more. 

Practical Project Management

Caltech CTME’s instructors bring extensive, real-world project management experience into the classroom, enabling them to teach up-to-the-minute project management tools. Aspiring business leaders get hands-on opportunities to apply newly acquired project management tools and receive direct feedback from instructors.

The Case Study Approach

Caltech’s Center for Technology and Management Education relies on case studies and in-class exercises to reinforce key concepts of project management: business cases and charters; decision-making, conflict management, and team development; stakeholder communication; tracking IT costs, schedules, performances and risks. In addition, participants have opportunities to apply newly acquired tools to challenges in their current business environments. 


PMI

Caltech is a Premier Authorized Training Partner with the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Each course provides 16 PDUs towards your Project Management Professional (PMP®) and similar certificates, either for the initial application or sustainment.

We adapted APM over the past year to be even more unique than initially planned. We asked our past Caltech participants to identify the top ten skills they needed as senior project professionals and leaders. APM pivoted to an on-demand/hybrid-live format to support the work-from-home model over the last year. With that and the personalization to choose only the electives that you need, it's a precision-fit for your career.

Dr. Rick Hefner
Program Director
Caltech CTME
 

Course Descriptions and Registration

Project change is inevitable, be it changes in requirements, resources, schedule, or personnel. This course provides effective, proven techniques for dealing with project change. We discuss how to scope and evaluate the proposed value of the change, determine areas of the project impacted, and identifies costs and possible risks.

You will learn to:
  • Plan a project in a way that anticipates change
  • Scope and evaluate the proposed value of a change
  • Identifies costs and risks associated with a change
  • Communicate the risks of change to senior management
  • Incorporate needed changes in an efficient manner

August 7, 2023 release; completes September 3, 2023 Online (Course # 4130823)

David Shostak
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Learn to positively influence people at all levels in the organization. This hands-on workshop will increase your competence in the areas of communication, influence, and people problem-solving. The focus is on the real-life challenges you experience in the workplace.

In this 16-hour workshop, you will learn to:
  • Influence through trust, credibility, and respect... versus fear
  • Listen with empathy without giving up your position
  • Facilitate problem-solving in challenging situations
  • Exercise personal power to positively impact your team
  • Stay centered in conflicts to reduce tensions and set the stage for growth
  • Adopt and maintain new behaviors for personal change

August 21, 2023 release; completes September 17, 2023 Online (Course # 4140823)

Tim Boyd
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Projects fail due to various reasons, such as changing market conditions, reduced budgets and staff levels, high turnover, un-insightful metrics, and inability to manage stakeholders and scope. The course will help you recognize the signs of impending project failure and take effective actions to resolve problems, re-plan, and re-negotiate stakeholder expectations.

You will learn to:
  • Detect problems early using leading indicator metrics of project performance
  • Distinguish between situations requiring problem-solving, rescue, and recovery
  • Inform and enlist stakeholder to help
  • Elevate problems to senior management when appropriate

September 4, 2023 release; completes October 1, 2023 Online (Course # 4150923)

Nate Crews
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This course focuses on strategies and techniques using agile principles to managing project suppliers and supply chains, including general procurement, subcontracts, and vendors. You will examine the entire acquisition lifecycle, from the development of executable requirements, specifications, statements of work, and contractual terms and conditions through successful delivery and acceptance. You will learn to provide effective oversight and recognize and resolve supplier performance problems.

You will learn to:
  • Understand the operations and key processes of the supply chain
  • Develop executable requirements and recognize hidden dangers in specifications, statements of work and contractual terms and conditions
  • Perform effective source selections and negotiations
  • Manage suppliers for success and quality
  • Recognize early indicators of potential supplier performance problems
  • Avoid potential contractual/legal problems
  • Develop effective strategies for resolution of supplier performance problems
  • Achieve effective oversight and control of lower-tier suppliers

September 18, 2023 release; completes October 15, 2023 Online (Course # 4160923)

Steve McNamara
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In this workshop, you will learn techniques for motivating and persuading your professional colleagues and customers in presentations and status reports. The course emphasizes techniques and exercises to overcome anxiety, define message content, control your voice and physical presence, and energize your presentations.

You will learn to:
  • Identify the key parts of a memorable presentation
  • Identify the purpose of the presentation
  • Determine your audience’s perspective
  • Layout an approach and content for the presentation
  • Use presentation techniques that wow your audience
  • Use storytelling to enhance the richness of your presentations

October 2, 2023 release; completes October 29, 2023 Online (Course # 4171023)

David Shostak
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The success of any organization is reliant upon how leaders respond to the inevitability of change. Change management requires many skillsets: anticipating an organizational need, creating a vision, enabling, managing and sustaining the change. This course enables you to enhance your personal leadership style in a changing environment.

You will learn to:
  • Evaluate your personal mindset regarding change
  • Identify the impacts of change – personal, project, organizational
  • Identify organizational needs and translate them into impactful result
  • Select and implement strategies to overcome pockets of organizational resistance
  • Build buy-in across all levels of your organization

October 16, 2023 release; completes November 12, 2023 Online (Course # 4191023)

David Shostak
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This course demonstrates proven methodologies and techniques for successfully managing concurrent projects. Learn how to navigate complexity, eliminate bureaucracy, avoid over-committing, and set expectations in different role and scope situations. Focus on communicating with multiple supervisors and stakeholders with differing priorities and your own teams and delegates.

You will learn to:
  • Establish priorities among multiple projects (even working with multiple supervisors!)
  • Delegate appropriately while maintaining control and ensuring you stay on plan
  • Track multiple projects with minimal effort, focusing on critical actions
  • Communicate status and gain needed resources
  • Eliminate bureaucracy and use your time more efficiently

January 8, 2024 release; completes February 4, 2024 Online (Course # 4200124)

Tim Boyd
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A high percentage of new product failures results from an inability to manage the uncertainty associated with conceiving, designing, and developing innovative products. This course will discuss tools and methods designed for the new product development (NPD) environment, including concept exploration, business case identification, customer needs analysis and requirements development. Modern techniques such as agile development, lean thinking, and rapid prototyping are presented.

You will learn to:
  • Use key market research tools at each stage of the NPD process
  • Scope and scale your development process
  • Determine the validity of your project requirements
  • Select the appropriate lifecycle approach
  • Ask critical questions at each stage of the NPD process
  • Recognize and avoid common pitfalls

January 22, 2024 release; completes February 18, 2024 Online (Course # 4210124)

Michael Brenner
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Leading a complex project requires a new way of thinking—identifying key variables, anticipating future changes, predicting the results of possible actions. This course examines effective leadership principles and presents practical methods for decision-making, conflict management, communications, and team development. The focus is on identifying and enhancing your personal skillset based on systems thinking perspectives.

You will learn to:
  • Identify factors that make a project complex
  • Make effective decisions under uncertain conditions
  • Manage conflict without draining your energy
  • Apply systems thinking principles and tools to project management
  • Communicate decisions to your team and senior management

February 5, 2023 release; completes March 3, 2023 Online (Course # 4110224)

 

David Shostak
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Agile skills are in high demand and can be used in a wide range of projects and industries. This workshop teaches you how to apply Agile tools and techniques in your current project, regardless of your environment. This is a highly interactive course that leverages real-world examples from Scrum, Lean, Kanban, and other Agile methods. Participants will work in teams to experience and apply Agile to the course exercises.

You will learn to:
  • Apply Agile concepts such as Value-Driven Delivery and Stakeholder Engagement
  • Conduct a Daily Scrum meeting
  • Establish an Agile team environment that encourages high-performance
  • Effectively manage project scope, schedule, budget, and quality using Agile methods

February 19, 2023 release; completes March 17, 2023 Online (Course # 4120224)

Nate Crews
See full bio
 

Who should attend

While there are no prerequisites, participants should have at least five years of experience managing projects.

  • Managers
  • Project managers
  • Business analysts
  • Technical professionals
 

Fee: $1310 for each course. Payment is due (or credit card charged) on the Friday before the course's first day.

Hours and Credits: Participants will earn 16 Professional Development Units (PDUs) or 1.6 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for each two-day course attended. The PDUs may be applied by PMI Project Management Professionals (PMP®) towards their maintenance of certification under the PMI Continuing Certification Requirements Program.

Grading: These courses are based on a Pass/Fail grading system.

Instructors

Instructors: Tim Boyd; Michael Brenner; Nate Crews; Rick Hefner; Steve McNamara; David Shostak

PMP, PMI, and PMBOK are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

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