Project Management for Engineering Managers Training Course

Course overview

Engineering managers are accountable for delivery across product roadmaps, platform work, reliability commitments, technical debt and cross-team dependencies—often without direct control over every contributor or decision. This course addresses the practical management problem of converting ambiguous engineering goals into an executable plan, while protecting technical quality, team capacity and stakeholder confidence. Participants learn how to manage delivery without reducing project management to status reporting or treating estimates as fixed promises.

The course covers project chartering, scope definition, work breakdown structures, estimation, dependency mapping, milestone planning, critical-path analysis, capacity planning, risk management, stakeholder communication and delivery governance. Participants practise selecting predictive, agile and hybrid approaches for engineering work; building schedules in Microsoft Project; managing work and flow in Jira Software; and using engineering metrics such as lead time, throughput, schedule variance and risk exposure to make defensible decisions. Particular attention is given to architecture dependencies, technical debt, release readiness, operational risk and change control.

Instruction combines facilitated analysis, worked planning examples, team workshops and a five-day engineering delivery case. Each participant develops an Engineering Project Delivery Pack: a project charter, scope baseline, work breakdown structure, dependency map, integrated milestone plan, RAID log, stakeholder communication plan and delivery dashboard. The final application session converts the pack into a plan for a live initiative, enabling managers to return with artefacts they can use in planning reviews, steering meetings and engineering leadership discussions.

Course objectives

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

• Create an engineering project charter that defines outcomes, constraints, decision rights and success measures
• Build a work breakdown structure and deliverable-based scope baseline for a software or engineering initiative
• Develop a dependency map that identifies architecture, team, vendor and release dependencies
• Construct a milestone schedule with critical-path logic, resource assumptions and contingency allowances
• Apply estimation methods including three-point estimating, story-point forecasting and capacity-based planning
• Maintain a RAID log with quantified risks, issue ownership, escalation triggers and mitigation actions
• Design stakeholder reporting using Jira flow data, milestone status, schedule variance and decision requests
• Produce an Engineering Project Delivery Pack for immediate use on a current workplace project

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Engineering Managers — who must translate technical roadmaps into reliable delivery commitments
• Software Development Managers — who coordinate multiple teams, releases and shared technical dependencies
• Technical Programme Managers — who need stronger planning and governance methods for engineering portfolios
• Platform and Infrastructure Managers — who balance reliability work, service commitments and planned change
• Engineering Team Leads — who are moving from sprint coordination into broader project ownership
• Technical Product Managers — who need to plan delivery jointly with engineering leads and manage trade-offs

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience leading, coordinating or contributing to engineering work such as software delivery, platform upgrades, infrastructure change, product releases or technical improvement initiatives. They should understand basic delivery terms including backlog, sprint, milestone, dependency, estimate and stakeholder, and be comfortable working with spreadsheets and web-based collaboration tools. Familiarity with Jira Software is useful but not essential; guided exercises introduce the features used in class. Participants do not need a PMP certification, formal project-management qualification, advanced Microsoft Project skills, coding expertise or prior knowledge of earned value management.

Training methodology

The instructor leads short, tool-focused sessions followed by planning workshops built around a multi-team engineering release case. Participants create a charter, decompose scope, estimate work, map service and architecture dependencies, sequence milestones and test schedule assumptions in Microsoft Project. Jira Software exercises use backlog, board and reporting data to examine flow and delivery status. Group reviews simulate an engineering steering meeting, requiring participants to defend trade-offs and escalation decisions. On day five, each participant adapts the methods and templates to a current workplace initiative.

Course outline

Day 1: Framing Engineering Delivery

• Engineering project types: product, platform, reliability and technical-debt initiatives
• Project charter components: outcomes, constraints, assumptions and decision rights
• Defining scope boundaries with in-scope, out-of-scope and acceptance criteria
• Deliverable-based work breakdown structures for engineering work
• Selecting predictive, agile and hybrid delivery approaches
• RACI matrices for engineering, product, security and operations stakeholders
• Project success measures beyond date and budget

Workshop: Participants create a project charter, scope statement and RACI matrix for a cross-team engineering release.

Day 2: Estimating, Sequencing and Planning

• Estimation uncertainty in software, infrastructure and integration work
• Three-point estimating and confidence ranges
• Story-point forecasting and historical throughput analysis
• Capacity planning using team availability, interrupts and planned leave
• Network diagrams and finish-to-start dependency logic
• Critical-path analysis and schedule float
• Microsoft Project tasks, links, milestones and baseline schedules

Workshop: Participants build a resource-aware milestone schedule in Microsoft Project and identify the critical path for the case project.

Day 3: Managing Dependencies, Risk and Change

• Architecture, API, data, environment and vendor dependency mapping
• Dependency ownership and integration readiness criteria
• RAID log design: risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies
• Qualitative risk scoring using probability and impact matrices
• Risk exposure, contingency reserves and trigger conditions
• Change control for scope, architecture and release-date requests
• Escalation paths and engineering decision logs

Workshop: Participants produce a dependency map and prioritised RAID log, then conduct a change-control review for a late integration request.

Day 4: Flow Control and Stakeholder Governance

• Jira Software backlog structure, epics, issues and releases
• Kanban boards, work-in-progress limits and blocked-work signals
• Lead time, cycle time, throughput and cumulative flow diagrams
• Milestone health, schedule variance and forecast-date reporting
• Release readiness criteria across quality, security and operations
• Stakeholder maps and communication cadences
• Steering committee updates focused on decisions and trade-offs

Workshop: Participants configure a delivery-status report from a Jira case dataset and present an executive escalation with options and a recommended decision.

Day 5: Integrated Delivery Leadership

• Balancing roadmap commitments, reliability work and technical debt
• Managing multi-team delivery cadences and integration checkpoints
• Confluence project spaces for decision records and delivery artefacts
• PMBOK Guide principles applied to engineering governance
• Project recovery actions for slipping milestones and overloaded teams
• Lessons learned and retrospective techniques for delivery improvement
• Ninety-day implementation planning for live engineering initiatives

Workshop: Participants assemble and peer-review their Engineering Project Delivery Pack, then create a 90-day application plan for a live workplace initiative.

Tools & standards covered

Jira Software, Microsoft Project, Confluence, 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