Simulation tool to learn Project Management
The following is also from the April 15-16 “Congrès du management de projet” organised by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Société Suisse de management de projet (SMP) in Lausanne. I would like to share with you my discovery of a very interesting tool to help people learn and improve their project management skills.
The tool is called “SIMULTRAIN” and is produced by STS. You can see a demo on their site but unfortunately, it does not really reflect the entire potential of the tool since it is not self-guided.
In any case, if you are thinking of providing project management training classes, you should think of incorporating this tool in your programme. Here is what the participants using this tool will be able to experiment with:
- Prepare a project plan taking into consideration resource capacity and availability
- Monitor the project costs, schedule and quality as well as their team motivation
- These indicators will be influenced by the decisions and actions taken during the project
- Each time the project manager makes a decision, a coach will provide his advice on it – was it a good, medium or bad decision? and why?
The scenarios are extremely realistic and you really get the feeling that you are managing a real project. Coupled with traditional project management training, this tool will bring much higher retention of concepts presented to the participants.
