Project Coordination Skills for Project Coordinators Training Course

Course overview

Project coordinators are often responsible for the work that keeps a project moving but is easiest to overlook: maintaining plans, chasing actions, preparing status reports, controlling document versions, organising meetings, and escalating issues before deadlines or budgets are affected. When these activities are handled inconsistently, project managers receive unreliable information, stakeholders lose confidence, and teams spend time resolving avoidable confusion. This course develops the disciplined coordination practices that turn project administration into dependable project control.

Participants learn to establish a practical project coordination framework from initiation through closeout. They build and maintain work breakdown structures, schedules, RAID logs, action registers, stakeholder communications plans, meeting cadences, document-control systems, and status dashboards. The course also covers baseline management, progress collection, variance reporting, change-request routing, dependency tracking, and escalation. Participants practise converting updates from technical teams, suppliers, and business stakeholders into clear decisions and concise reports for project managers and sponsors.

Delivery combines instructor-led demonstrations with realistic coordination scenarios, including a multi-workstream project case. Participants use Microsoft Project, Excel, Microsoft Teams, and PMBOK-aligned templates to create a coordinated project control pack. They leave with a tailored set of reusable templates: a project schedule, RAID log, action tracker, communications matrix, status report, meeting agenda, and document register, together with an application plan for using them in their current project environment.

The course is designed for practising project coordinators and administrators who already support projects and need stronger control, reporting, and stakeholder-management capability. It is equally valuable for professionals moving into a dedicated coordination role or supporting a programme management office.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Create a work breakdown structure and milestone schedule in Microsoft Project
• Maintain a RAID log with defined owners, due dates, impact ratings, and escalation triggers
• Build an action and decision register that links meeting commitments to project deliverables
• Collect progress updates and produce a concise RAG status report with schedule and risk commentary
• Apply document-control conventions including version numbering, approval status, and repository permissions
• Track dependencies and identify schedule impacts using predecessor relationships and critical-path logic
• Prepare change-request records that capture scope, cost, schedule, risk, and approval implications
• Facilitate project meetings using agendas, minutes, action follow-up, and stakeholder-specific communications

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Project Coordinators — who need reliable methods for controlling plans, actions, risks, and project information
• Project Administrators — who want to progress from administrative support to structured project control
• Assistant Project Managers — who support delivery managers and need stronger reporting and governance skills
• PMO Analysts — who maintain project data, templates, and reporting standards across a portfolio
• Workstream Coordinators — who coordinate dependencies, updates, and decisions across specialist teams
• Project Support Officers — who prepare meetings, documentation, and status information for project leadership

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience supporting a project, workstream, programme, or operational change initiative and be familiar with basic project terms such as scope, milestone, task, stakeholder, risk, issue, and action. They should be comfortable using spreadsheets, shared file repositories, and calendar or meeting tools. Basic awareness of a project lifecycle is helpful, but formal project-management certification is not required. The course teaches the coordination application of schedules, logs, reports, and governance controls; it does not assume advanced Microsoft Project expertise, earned value knowledge, budgeting authority, or responsibility for leading an entire project.

Training methodology

The five days use a single project case that develops from initiation to closeout. The instructor demonstrates each coordination control, then participants configure it using supplied templates and realistic stakeholder updates. Exercises include schedule maintenance in Microsoft Project, Excel-based RAID analysis, meeting simulations, change-control reviews, and dashboard writing. Small groups compare escalation decisions and reporting choices before receiving structured feedback. On the final day, each participant assembles a project control pack and completes an application plan identifying the first templates, routines, and stakeholders they will use at work.

Course outline

Day 1: Establishing the project coordination foundation

• Project coordinator accountabilities across the project lifecycle
• Project charter review and requirement traceability
• Work breakdown structure development and work-package definition
• Milestone planning and deliverable acceptance criteria
• RACI matrix construction for project roles and approvals
• Stakeholder mapping using influence and interest analysis
• Project initiation checklist and coordination calendar design

Workshop: Participants analyse a project charter and produce a work breakdown structure, RACI matrix, stakeholder map, and coordination calendar for the case project.

Day 2: Planning, scheduling, and dependency control

• Microsoft Project task entry, durations, and milestone configuration
• Predecessor relationships and dependency types
• Critical-path logic and schedule-impact identification
• Resource assignments and workload visibility
• Schedule baselines and controlled plan updates
• Progress collection rules and percentage-complete conventions
• Look-ahead planning and rolling-wave schedule maintenance

Workshop: Participants build a baseline schedule in Microsoft Project, enter dependencies and progress updates, then identify the activities driving a milestone delay.

Day 3: Risks, issues, actions, and change control

• RAID log structure and data-quality standards
• Risk probability-impact scoring and response ownership
• Issue triage, escalation thresholds, and decision deadlines
• Action register design with accountable owners and due-date discipline
• Assumption and dependency logging methods
• Change-request impact assessment for scope, time, cost, and risk
• Change-control workflow and approval-record management

Workshop: Participants review a set of project updates and produce a prioritised RAID log, action register, and completed change-request impact assessment.

Day 4: Reporting, meetings, and information management

• RAG status criteria and evidence-based health reporting
• Executive status report structure and exception commentary
• Excel dashboard design using milestone, risk, and action data
• Meeting agendas aligned to decisions, risks, and dependencies
• Minutes writing that separates decisions, actions, and discussion
• Document register fields, version control, and approval status
• Microsoft Teams channels, file governance, and communication protocols

Workshop: Participants convert raw workstream updates into an executive status report, dashboard, meeting agenda, minutes, and controlled document register.

Day 5: Integrated project control and workplace application

• Integrating schedule, RAID, action, change, and document controls
• Project governance cadence and reporting calendar
• Escalation conversations with project managers and sponsors
• Quality checks for project data and report consistency
• Closeout coordination, lessons learned, and archive preparation
• PMBOK Guide alignment for coordination artefacts
• Personal 30-day implementation planning

Workshop: Participants assemble and present a complete project control pack for the case project, then create a 30-day plan for applying the tools in their own role.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Teams, PMBOK Guide

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions