Day 1: Strategic Project Nature and Investment Value

Defining Strategic Character

• Connect project with choice or transformation
• Estimate failure impacts on value/reputation
• Distinguish projects from merely large projects
• Assess portfolio through a strategic lens

Investment Case and Benefits

• Frame results justifying expenditure and change
• Define trackable financial and non-financial benefits
• Assign benefit owner and realization accountability
• Build a project benefit map

Boundaries of Success

• Define success beyond time and cost
• Balance value quality acceptance and exposure
• Clarify situations requiring investment reconsideration
• Prepare a project success card

Day 2: Governance Design and Sponsor Role

Appropriate Governance Architecture

• Define required decision and oversight levels
• Prevent duplicated committees and ambiguous roles
• Allocate decision rights by issue type
• Build governance diagram for strategic project

Effective Executive Sponsorship

• Distinguish sponsorship from detailed management
• Remove constraints beyond project manager authority
• Protect project from leadership priority conflict
• Simulate sponsor intervention in critical issue

Defining Decision Gates

• Define evidence to move between phases
• Reassess continued value before resource commitment
• Record approval conditions and commitments
• Design decision gate for major stage

Day 3: Steering Committee and Executive Resolution

Steering Committee Agenda

• Choose decision issues, not status updates
• Provide materials early enough for review
• Order discussion by exposure and value
• Redesign a weak steering meeting

Tradeoffs Under Constraints

• Compare scope time and funding options
• Estimate decision effects on intended benefits
• Make the cost of indecision explicit
• Simulate tradeoffs around a delayed milestone

Decision Documentation and Accountability

• Record decisions rationale and conditions
• Assign action to an explicit owner
• Set decision-review dates where needed
• Create a steering committee decision register

Day 4: Leadership, Escalation, and Benefit Realization

Managing Decision-Based Escalation

• Frame issue options and required consequence
• Choose the appropriate escalation level
• Prevent late or repetitive escalation
• Practice escalation to the project sponsor

Leading Key Stakeholders

• Build a coalition around project outcomes
• Address resistance driven by anticipated loss
• Adapt messages for high-influence stakeholders
• Role-play dialogue with an opposing executive

Establishing Benefit Tracking

• Measure indicators leading toward benefit realization
• Define transfer of accountability into operations
• Review project value as environment changes
• Prepare a benefit tracking register

Day 5: Strategic Project Leadership Simulation

Diagnosing Project Condition

• Gather progress risk and benefit indicators
• Identify delayed decisions affecting delivery
• Assess current sponsor and committee effectiveness
• Prepare an executive condition summary

Leadership Intervention Agenda

• Choose decisions restoring clarity of direction
• Define governance or resource changes
• Connect intervention with benefit or exposure
• Build leadership plan for critical phase

Committee and Sponsor Simulation

• Present project condition before executive committee
• Address objections involving value and resources
• Approve decisions with review conditions
• Extract applicable leadership practices

• Strategic project cases connected with investment decisions
• Governance sponsor and steering committee design
• Executive escalation and tradeoff simulations
• Leadership project connecting execution with benefits