Hello and welcome to our Introduction module where we were set up the scene and kick-off our joined voyage through Project Management!

The reason why I love project management so much is that you are practicing both hard and soft skills that are not only for a profession but for life and for a daily use.

It is my pleasure to present to you the SPARK Method that finds a perfect balance between control and trust and between management and leadership, necessary for a great career start.

By this, we will answer to two main questions that every new and aspiring Project Manager has:

1. How to start with Project Management and how to communicate and cooperate effectively? And,

2. How to lead the team?

With the SPARK Method implemented, you can be confident that you will deliver great results and be seen as a respected leader by your team members.

We will help you to understand that Project Management is not too complex, that it is fun and that you can do it too!

Welcome to the Module S or “Strategy Module”!

As already stated, this module sets basis for the rest of the modules and prepares you to have a repetitive and standardized approach to each and every project you will lead!

In Module S we will learn how to:

1. Prepare every meeting with sense of purpose.

2. Prepare every meeting with clarity about outcome.

3. Be effective at every meeting.

4. Use e-mails effectively.

5. Set invitations and meeting agendas.

6. How to set and behave in an audio conferences.

7. How to behave while using screen sharing.

8. How to behave while using video conferences.

9. How to behave while having face-to-face meetings.

There is no such thing as a team, or a project, if we have no people with whom we can create it. The people we work with are actually our biggest strength, especially at the beginning of our Project Management career path.

The first thing we need to do is to:

1. analyze who our future colleagues are,

2. what their roles are and

3. how we will communicate with them.

The initial task for a project manager is to:

1. organize a meeting with stakeholders and then

2. to communicate decisions, project information and other details to them.

A template and a document that can assist us in executing this in a proper way is called a “Stakeholder Map”.

Let's cover this first topic in detail and learn how to use it straight away.

The meeting is a critical element inside our Project Management system. As such, we need to do whatever we can to make those meetings as productive and successful as possible.

Especially at the beginning of your Project Management career, you will need a lot of pieces of advice and experience from others. You will need others to help you with technical solutions, planning, communication strategy and many other things.

Effective meetings are the best way to address all these needs and to move forward quickly. It is in your best interest to plan meetings thoroughly and lead them effectively.

A good meeting is a great source of knowledge, a great source of information and it can help you with your planned activities immensely.

Let’s move to concrete basics on how to prepare a meeting, and cover some of the fundamental parameters that each sent invitation has to have.

Now, since we have learned how to organize a meeting, let's analyze the most efficient ways to lead a meeting and cooperate with our team members in an efficient and organized manner.

In today's environment, when the number of people who work from various locations is rising by the minute, we need technology to back us up with its own, invaluable support.

Of course, not everybody has the same means of organizing meetings, and there are numerous ways to get in touch with our team members.

We will start from basic means of cooperation and continue to more advanced and more technologically-demanding meeting methods. With that being said, let’s begin with audio conferences and analyze:

1. how we can be effective as well as

2. how we should avoid some common traps that people encounter while organizing audio conference meetings.

Screen sharing has a multitude of positive effects if used during a meeting. Understanding of the topic that we talk about all the while discussing it with the participants is immediately improved. The reason for this is quite simple; even if they do not hear us well or if they have missed a sentence said by us or any other participant, whatsoever, it is extremely easy to catch up and see what is being discussed on their own screen.

In addition, screen sharing makes it is much easier to hold people’s attention during such meetings. When team members are engaged both visually and via audio, the probability of them staying focused and following the discussion with interest is instantly higher.

Let’s focus to some very good practices that we can follow while we are sharing our screen.

Considering that we have already started to improve the quality and effectiveness of our meetings and that we have learned how to prepare meetings, organize audio conference, use screen sharing feature and how to create a good follow-up message, it is the right time to make the next step. To everything that we have learned so far, we will add one of the most effective meeting techniques for increasing comprehension of a certain topic.

We will speak about video conferences. Video conferences are the closest thing to face-to-face meetings.

Let us analyze just some of the benefits of using video conferences.

Up until this moment, we have spoken about different ways of meeting team members who are not in the same room as we are, or those who work from remote locations. As this is quite frequent nowadays, it only came as natural to cover such communication means initially. Needless to say, however, the best way to meet with another person is to actually have a close-up, face-to-face meeting. This is a perfect occasion to meet with a person or an entire team and have full and unrestricted communication and cooperation.

Whenever possible, we should try to meet with our team at the same place in one conference room so that we can discuss and plan the future endeavors in the most efficient manner.

To meet somebody in person is without a doubt the best form of a meeting.

During this type of meetings, information flow is at its fullest and relationship building is the strongest. In addition to everything we hear or read, we can additionally fairly easily read the body language of our conversation partner, as well as their emotions or intentions.

Previously, we have discussed the main methods of organizing meetings. This will be of great use for you once you start with actual project planning activities. In the next course module, module “P”, where we will plan our future work, schedule tasks on time, control costs of our project and so on, you will learn the proper way of talking to your team members in order to obtain all the necessary details.

However, before we move to the next course module, we've prepared for you a small bonus module.

This module will in short bullet points cover the best practices for communication between the team members via email and chat services. Email and chat are used so often in our daily lives that it makes it easy to forget that some additional attention is needed not to overuse those communication channels and still be effective.