We are very pleased to announce the launch of a new qualification for those people who are working in an organisation that is using the UK Government Project Delivery Competency Framework OR the APM Competency Framework Levels 2 and 3, people who are currently at the practitioner level and want a new challenge, something that provides them with more than an electronic badge to wave around.

For more details, click here

We have created the qualification in collaboration with the Institute of Leadership and Management (https://www.i-l-m.com/) and it goes beyond existing commercial exams such as the APM, Peoplecert, Axelos etc and focuses on using your knowledge to improve the way your organisation delivers programmes and projects. The assessment is based on a vocational assignment to identify improvement opportunities, analyse and plan the implementation of an improved approach.

There are two big benefits:

The first big benefit for the individual is the opportunity to prove you can use the knowledge you have acquired through your previous training. Our materials will help cover any gaps in your existing knowledge as well.

The second big benefit is that the employer will have a problem area analysed and a plan to improve it prepared my a motivated member of staff.

So if you already have a pocket full of common qualifications and want to prove you can do the job, this is the course for you. The course is for anyone with an interest or involvement in a project will benefit from the course content.

The Stage 2 course is designed for people who have a sound knowledge of the practices and wish to develop a deeper and broader understanding, because:

You have been working in a programme or project environment and want to improve their contribution to their organisation.

You have a business management responsibility for the delivery of improved performance and benefits.

You are a business sponsor (or SRO) and wish to understand how to maintain control of their programme or project.

You have a role in a PMO (Portfolio, Programme or Project Office) and want a deeper understanding of their role and relationship with programmes and projects.

You are project managers with responsibility for delivering a capability and wish to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts to help them be successful.

You are interested in the potential of project management concepts and how you might help their organisation. Your organisation is using a competency framework (e.g. PDCF or APM) and you wish to prove you have reached the capable level.

During the pandemic we have been totally re-thinking our approach to how we integrate digital learning with the benefits of an engaging facilitator led training AND meet the needs of people at different levels of competence and learning styles.

We have split re-organised all our materials so that they meet different learning levels, namely:

• Stage 1 – Fundamentals: This contains the basic concepts and knowledge for newcomers wanting to learn more.
• Stage 2 – Practitioner: This takes the basic concepts into more depth and considers their application for people who are following a career in programme and project management.
• Stage 3 – Professional: This is our range of advanced materials considers application and techniques for those reaching the top of the profession.

The standard courses from exam organisations only tend to focus at Stage 1 and maybe a little bit of Stage 2.

While the world has been in lockdown, we have been busy doing the following:

• Adding 10 new qualifications to our portfolio recognised by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), and we have also added APM PMQ.
• Revamping over 350 eLearning modules to provide a better and more engaging interface and improving the accessibility of them in the process.
• Using our coaching experience to help you to think about how you can improve your own performance.
• Create tasks and activities for you to do or to think about relating to your own workplace.
• Creating over 100 new videos with subtitles to help with accessibility, over 50 hours of new learning and insights.
• Developing unique puzzles and interactive scenarios to help you think through real life challenges that you may face.
• Creating 50 brand new advanced modules for people reaching the top of the professional.

We are very pleased to announce the launch of a new qualification for those people who are working in an organisation that is using the UK Government Project Delivery Competency Framework OR the APM Competency Framework Levels 1 and 2.

We have created the qualification in collaboration with the Institute of Leadership and Management and goes beyond existing commercial products such as the APM PFQ, which doesn’t cover the full breadth of the competency requirements.

One of the benefits of this new course is it brings in the opportunities for application of ideas to your work place, and the actual assessment includes practical application of what you have learned.

Another benefit is that once you have completed the course, you will have also completed the syllabus for  the APM PFQ, so you can chose to sit the qualification as well !

This product will be of interest to anyone with an interest or involvement in a project will benefit from the course content. The stage 1 course is designed for people who need to have a basic knowledge across a range of project management concepts because:

• You have a role in a project team and need to actively contribute in some way.
• You have a business management responsibility for the delivery of a project and how to effectively influence the project.
• You have a sponsoring responsibility for a project and need to establish an understanding of the principles.
• You are starting out on a project management career and wish to establish a broad understanding.
• You are interested in the potential of project management concepts and how they might help your organisation.
• Your organisation is using a competency framework (e.g. PDCF or APM) and they wish to prove they have a level of basic understanding.

For more details – take a look here https://www.aspireeurope.com/programme-and-project-management-stage-1-fundamentals.php

We have now completed the upgrade to our Project Management Fundamentals eLearning course.

This course has undergone a major over haul over the last few months with the additions of videos and there are now 12 core modules covering:

1. Introduction
2. Lifecycles
3. Governance and Leadership
4. Benefits
5. Business Case and Finance
6. Controls and Quality
7. Risk and Issue Management
8. Planning
9. Requirements Management
10. Resource Management
11. Stakeholder and Communications
12. Commercial Management

For more details and to buy a copy go to our shop
https://shop.aspireeurope.com/products/project-management-fundamentals-course

If you are not sure if this course is right for you, when not have a look at some of the Intro videos

We are really pleased to have been accepted on to the Crown Commercial Services Learning and Development framework. We have invested hugely in our e-learning and digital learning solutions over the last 3 years, now they will all be available to public sector portfolio, programme and project professionals.

In October 2015 Team Aspire met Lucky and Fortunate, two participants of the Tag Rugby Trust (TRT) Uganda branch. At just 10 years old, we were inspired by Lucky’s ambition to create a bright future for herself. When presented with the opportunity to compete in Project Challenge, Team Aspire thought this was the perfect way to make a difference through the TRT.

Planning Stage

The plan proved more challenging than anticipated despite Team Aspire being PRINCE2®/AMPIC qualified. We realised our conscious incompetence when working on an actual project. It was challenging moving from colleagues to a performing team. On plan submission, we received a blow. An issue arose from the APM board – our project may have been out of scope due to not being “local” enough, there was concern expressed about the benefits in the feedback. This was resolved as the TRT is a deserving charity with Bristol Headquarters and we were allowed to proceed.

WORKSTREAM 1 – ELEARNING

Initially the intention had been to use our Project Fundamentals course as base materials. However, we were presented with a video from Uganda of the young leaders discussing project management. We realised that we had overestimated their literacy. Therefore a re-write was needed to match their ability and make the content suitable for the audience.

Talking About Project Management to the Ugandan Young Leaders – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg1kaE91pEM

WORKSTREAM 2 – RAISING AWARENESS

An important early task for us was setting up a Social Media campaign and completing daily updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Just Giving. This resulted in a social media following of over 250 people including international rugby players.

All Aspire employees added links to the sites in their signatures. We communicated with 3,000 clients & suppliers through regular blog and newsletter updates, supported by emails and calls explaining our challenge. This resulted in a client contacting Aspire offering technical support for the eLearning creation.

We met with a local journalist which resulted in our project being featured in three media publications (Gordano Living, The Mercury and North Somerset Times) to increase publicity. Upon reflection, we should have followed these publications with regular updates to raise further awareness and engagement from the community.

Fundraising

To maximise our collections, we spent time with the TRT sponsor to enable us to competently speak about the charity publicly. We were proud to attend two rugby matches to fundraise and raised £187.00. We sourced T-shirts, personalised buckets and charity ID tags to make us feel part of TRT. 

We contacted over 100 organisations for raffle prizes and donations and we received some encouraging support:

“Well done to all concerned, a worthy cause” – Julie Thomas, Wales Rugby Union representative

“What a superb project you are involved in” – Tim Wainwright, England Rugby Union Social Responsibility Manager

We undertook the following fundraising activities:

• Fitness Challenge
• 15,000 ft. sky dive
• Collection pots in local establishments
• A prize draw
• Cross channel swim (May)
• Coast–to–coast bike ride (July)

Summary

We achieved all objectives, delivered to success criteria, managed requirements and have a plan to realise the benefits. We raised £2,500 and had developed a roll-out plan to ensure this project made a significant impact to this fantastic charity and deserving recipients.

The project has provided us with many lessons and new project management skills that we can use throughout our careers. We have taken foundation qualifications, however the theory and reality have been very different. We undertook the work mostly in our own time.

We had reached the milestone set by the APM Challenge, but this was not the end. Fundraising continued and we supported the TRT with the eLearning rollout.

Day 1

After arriving safely in Cape Town and spending an evening meeting and greeting the other 40 project participants, day 1 began by splitting the individuals into 4 teams, the assigning of roles within these teams plus defining the scope of the project. With this structure in place, the afternoon involved a group presentation taking place at the site outlining the history of the local area and previous works of this charity.

Once this was completed, the groups split into their respective teams and started looking at their work packages.

Day 2

This was the day when Alice’s work truly began. Alice was assigned the role of Project support in team 4 and the day 2 schedule began with creating the product breakdown structure and then identifying and analysing the risks with her team. Cavity wall building began shortly after and took place for the rest of the afternoon. At the end of day 2, Alice produced the checkpoint report for the project manager and updated the issue register and lessons log accordingly.

Day 3

This day was taking up solely of working hard alongside the locals and delivering some of the work packages on Alice’s teams breakdown structure. The evening involved meeting local teachers from the school and discussing the positive impacts that these projects have had on the local children of the area over the last few years. A visual presentation and speech was given which was particularly moving for some of the project professionals.

Day 4

This day began with a continuation of the work package delivery, a major change issue occurred whilst the team was creating one of the products and it became clear that a new trench was going to have be created for completion of one of the schools buildings. Alice’s team escalated this issue to the project manager and the change request was granted. Work would continue on the delivery of this new product over the next two days, as project support Alice updated her teams schedule, registers, PBS and logs accordingly.

The afternoon of day 4 was spent at a local farm which provides jobs for parents of the local schools children, these local stakeholders were also responsible for growing the produce to feed the Global projects professionals lunches every day during their stay.

The day closed with a highlight report involving all the teams, the project was still very much within delivery tolerance despite set backs and the creation of new products for 2 of the teams.

Day 5

Day 5 saw a huge breakthrough in the work packages for all the teams as the construction really began to come together. However as the hottest day so far, everyone began to feel drained. The pressure was now on the team managers to keep up the momentum to complete the work with only two days of construction work left. All the foundations had been laid from the previous day and the team could now concentrate on building the walls up specified in the work package and catch up on time lost due to Day 4’s issues. During the evening, Alice and the volunteers had the opportunity to visit another successful project that the charity SASDI has been involved with. The teams visited a newly built boarding school which takes boys from the streets and provides them with education. The project has seen some tremendous and truly inspiration results as some boys have achieved great things such as becoming qualified lawyers and chefs.

Day 6

With just full four days of hard work, averaging ten hours per day, the final days of building began. At lunch everybody involved got together for a team photo in front of one of the completed work packages and recognised the impressive amount of work that had been achieved in such a short space of time. The volunteers were officially awarded certificates at a presentation ceremony for their hard work and speeches were made. The SASDI founder quoted, “if the volunteers were around when Rome was built, it really would have gone up in a day”.

Friday evening was filled with barbeques and bouncy castles! A celebration of the week’s achievement took place with hundreds of thank you’s to everyone involved alongside a party for the lovely children attending the school.

Day 7

On Saturday morning each team gave a presentation to all the volunteers, project manager, founders and Chairman of the SASDI organisation at the University of Cape Town, on work achieved in their specific packages and lessons learned during the week.

The afternoon involved a trip to Rodden Island- a special occasion and great day to visit as 27^th April is a South African public holiday, ‘Freedom Day’ to commemorate the first democratic elections held in 1994.

The final day in South Africa arrived and everybody was in agreement that it had arrived too quickly. The group had a scheduled morning visit up Table Mountain but there was a problem (or an issue in PRINCE2 terms) as it was too overcast and dangerous to climb to the top. The group consequently travelled to signal hill for some breathtaking views over the city of Cape Town.

The group spent the afternoon back at the hotel discussing highlights from the trip before departing for the airport. All the volunteers agreed the experience was a great way to practice the PRINCE2 processes and implement it into such a worthy cause. The building work has enabled 50 extra places for local disadvantaged children to attend the school.

Alice raised an impressive total of £639.83 in sponsorship which has gone directly to the Philippi children’s centre and towards building materials for the construction work. Alice and the team here at Aspire Europe would like to say a huge thank you to everybody who was generous enough to make a donation towards the cause.

The whole group raised a remarkable total of over £60,000 for this charity.