Junior project managers, business managers and mid-size IT departments: 2 days (14 hours), in-house, in Bordeaux or remote
Steering an IT project end to end: from framing to production rollout
At a glance
- Duration
- 2 jours (14 heures)
- Format
- On site and remote
- Group size
- 12 participants maximum
- Level
- Beginner
- Audience
- Junior project managers, or recently promoted ones with no formal steering background
- Prerequisites
- No project steering background required: the session starts at framing.
- Methods
- Short talks, never longer than twenty minutes, each followed by a workshop that puts them to the test.
- Assessment
- Beforehand: a positioning questionnaire (steering experience, current projects, difficulties encountered) that sets the weighting between modules.
- Lead time
- Scheduled during framing, to suit your availability
- Pricing
- On a quote basis, depending on format, duration and number of participants. The first call is free.
- Accessibility and disability
- See the dedicated section
An IT project almost never derails all at once: it slips. A dependency missed at framing, a decision pushed from one committee to the next, a cutover prepared three days before go-live. These two days hand the full mechanics to people who steer projects without ever having been trained for it: framing a scope you can defend, building a schedule that holds, making risks visible before they cost anything, running committees that actually decide, and shipping without production becoming the next problem. The session runs on a real project of yours: every workshop produces a document the team takes away and uses.
Learning objectives
- Write a usable framing note: what is in and out of scope, verifiable objectives, stakeholders, assumptions and sticking points.
- Build a milestone schedule and a workload plan consistent with the committed budget.
- Identify, rate and assign risks and dependencies in a register that is actually kept up to date.
- Select three to five steering metrics and assemble them into a one-page dashboard management can read.
- Prepare, run and close a steering committee, producing a written record of decisions.
- Spot a trajectory gap from the available signals and formulate the corresponding trade-off.
- Draw up a rollout and cutover checklist with go / no-go criteria written in advance.
- Organise the monitoring period that follows a cutover, then run project closure and the retrospective.
Programme
01Why projects slip, and exactly when
1 hour- The four moments a project comes off track: rushed framing, unidentified dependency, deferred decision, improvised cutover.
- Telling a delay, a budget overrun and a scope change apart: three problems, three treatments.
- What a project manager actually answers for, and what they do not.
- Rapid mapping of the projects participants bring: where each one stands, what its sticking point is.
02Framing: scope, objectives, stakeholders
2 hours- Writing a project objective you can verify, as opposed to an intention.
- Setting scope through what it excludes as much as through what it includes.
- Identifying stakeholders and who will have to own what: decision-maker, contributor, merely informed.
- Listing the assumptions and the regulatory or technical constraints that bound the project.
- Workshop: writing the framing note for the project brought in, then peer review across sub-groups.
03Sizing and scheduling: milestones, workload, budget
2 hours- Breaking a project into deliverable batches rather than decorative phases.
- Estimating effort when nobody has the number: ranges, analogy, expert judgement.
- Placing milestones that serve decisions, not reassurance.
- Connecting schedule and budget: what one month of delay really costs.
- Workshop: building the milestone schedule and workload plan for the project brought in.
04Risks, dependencies and external parties
2 hours- Keeping a risk register that is useful: likelihood, impact, named owner, review date.
- Separating a risk still open from a problem that has already happened, and handling each in its own place.
- Steering a dependency you do not control: contractor, external partner, another department.
- Preparing a fallback plan before you need one.
- Workshop: risk register for the project brought in, rated and assigned by name.
05Day-to-day steering: metrics and dashboard
2 hours- Choosing three to five metrics management can read in thirty seconds.
- Tracking progress without adding a meeting: what your management tool already gives you.
- Catching a trajectory gap early: the weak signals that precede an announced delay.
- Reporting bad news without diluting it.
- Workshop: assembling a one-page steering dashboard for the project brought in.
06Governance: preparing, running, recording
2 hours- Telling steering committee, progress review and team stand-up apart: who decides what, and how often.
- Preparing a committee so that it produces a decision: agenda, costed options, a recommendation you own.
- Taking back control of a committee drifting into a round of updates.
- Writing a record of decisions that holds, and carrying it from one committee to the next.
- Role play: each sub-group runs a steering committee on a difficult trade-off while the others hold stakeholder roles.
07Acceptance testing, rollout and cutover
1 h 30- Building an acceptance test plan from the framing note, not from whatever was delivered.
- Organising business acceptance: who tests, on which data set, against which acceptance criterion.
- Deciding on a rollout: go / no-go criteria written before the meeting that decides.
- Preparing the cutover and its rollback plan.
- Workshop: rollout checklist for the project brought in.
08RUN, incidents and closure
1 hour- Organising the heightened monitoring period that follows a cutover.
- Qualifying a production incident and knowing the threshold at which it escalates to the committee.
- Handing over to operations teams: what they must have received before you leave.
- Closing out: budget review, retrospective, what is reusable on the next project.
09Final role play and assessment of learning
30 minutes- Each sub-group presents the steering pack built over the two days.
- Validation quiz, corrected and discussed in the room.
- Individual action plan: three practices to apply within the following two weeks.
Who it is for
- Junior project managers, or recently promoted ones with no formal steering background
- Business managers running a digital project without steering expertise
- IT departments in small and mid-size companies looking to standardise their project practices
- Bordeaux consultancies bringing junior consultants up to speed before an assignment
- Teams taking over a project already under way and having to restore its trajectory
What participants take away
- The framing note for their own project, written and reviewed during the session.
- A milestone schedule and workload plan consistent with the committed budget.
- A risk and dependency register, rated and assigned by name.
- A one-page steering dashboard, readable by management.
- A rollout and cutover checklist, with its go / no-go criteria.
- Blank templates for all of these documents, reusable on the projects that follow.
- An individual action plan of three practices to apply within two weeks.
- The full session material.
Prerequisites
- No project steering background required: the session starts at framing.
- No technical background required: the content does not assume you can code.
- Being involved in a current or upcoming project, in any capacity.
- Bringing a real company project: it is the material for every workshop, and it is chosen with you during the preparatory call.
Teaching methods
- Short talks, never longer than twenty minutes, each followed by a workshop that puts them to the test.
- Work on a real company project, chosen during the preparatory call, rather than on a textbook case.
- Sub-groups of three to four participants, with peer review of what each produces.
- Steering committee role play, every participant holding a stakeholder role.
- Field stories from real assignments in every module: what worked, and what turned out expensive.
- Templates handed over and filled in during the session, not distributed at the end of the day.
- Tool-agnostic content: the documents produced work just as well in a spreadsheet as in a project management tool.
Assessment of learning
- Beforehand: a positioning questionnaire (steering experience, current projects, difficulties encountered) that sets the weighting between modules.
- During the session: continuous assessment of workshop output — framing note, milestone schedule, risk register, dashboard — against a criteria grid handed to participants at the opening.
- The steering committee role play is observed and debriefed against five criteria: preparation, clarity of the options, timekeeping, decision actually obtained, written record.
- At the end: a validation quiz covering the eight modules, corrected and discussed in the room.
- At the end: presentation of the steering pack produced, assessed on the consistency between framing, schedule, risks and rollout criteria.
- A few weeks later: a one-hour remote check-in, outside training hours, on what was actually applied from the individual action plan.
Where what I teach comes from
Adrien Bouthet, freelance IT project manager and Product Owner based in Bordeaux, eight years on high-stakes digital projects. At La Banque Postale I have been steering the digital onboarding journeys since February 2025: a budget in the order of one million euros, two external partnerships integrated through APIs with no disruption to the existing system, and fewer than three production incidents per year thanks to reinforced RUN supervision. The year before, on the new document management platform run jointly with Caisse des Dépôts, I took over a late project and brought it back on track in under three months: 500 million documents migrated in GDPR compliance, licence costs cut from €600k to €20k per year. Those figures are results from steering assignments, not promises made to participants: they simply say where the templates, the trade-off criteria and the committee role plays used across these two days come from. I have also been teaching in Bordeaux schools since 2020, which did a great deal for the hardest part of the trainer's job: making transmissible a practice you otherwise perform on reflex.
Real example
The "taking over a project that has come off track" module comes from a real situation: on La Banque Postale's new document management platform, run with Caisse des Dépôts, a late project was brought back on track in under three months, 500 million documents were migrated and licence costs went from €600k to €20k per year. That is an assignment result, not a promise made to participants: it is where the governance and risk management templates worked on during the session come from.
Read the case studyFrequently asked questions
Do I need to have steered a project before?+
No. The session starts at framing and assumes no prior training in project steering. It is built for junior project managers, business managers promoted onto a digital project, and non-technical profiles. More experienced participants mostly get value from the governance part and from spotting trajectory gaps.
Do we work on our own projects or on a textbook case?+
On yours. A real project is chosen during the preparatory call and serves as the material for every workshop: the framing note, schedule, risk register and dashboard produced during the session are those of that project, usable the next morning.
Is the session run on site or remotely?+
Both. On site at your premises, in Bordeaux and across Nouvelle-Aquitaine, or remotely anywhere in France. The remote format keeps the sub-groups and the committee role play: that constraint, not logistics, is what caps the number of participants.
How many participants at most?+
Twelve. Beyond that, peer review no longer fits the stated durations and the committee role play loses its point, since everyone turns into a spectator.
Can the programme be adapted to our context?+
The duration and the learning objectives do not move. What is adjusted during the preparatory call is the weighting between modules and the examples used: a team taking over a project already under way will spend more time on trajectory gaps and governance, and less on initial framing.
Do we need a specific tool, Jira for instance?+
No. The templates are tool-agnostic and work in a plain spreadsheet. Examples draw on Jira and Confluence because those are the tools I use daily, but these two days are not software training.
How is this different from bringing in a project manager?+
Training makes your team self-sufficient on the method; on a reinforcement assignment, I am the one holding the project day to day. The two often combine: train the team, then step in on the most critical project, or the other way round.
Framework and terms
Funding
These sessions are invoiced directly to the company, out of its own skills development budget. They are not eligible for pooled funding schemes (OPCO, CPF, France Travail), which require Qualiopi certification.
Certification
This session is not a certifying course. I do not deliver any Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance, Scaled Agile (SAFe) or PeopleCert (ITIL) certification, nor any qualification registered with the RNCP or the Répertoire spécifique. The goal is operational: practices you can apply, not a diploma.
Contractual framework
Each session is covered by a professional training agreement (convention de formation professionnelle) signed before the start, setting out the objectives, the programme, the duration, the delivery arrangements and the agreed fee. The internal rules applicable to the session are handed to participants at the opening.
Certificate of attendance
A certificate of completion is handed to each participant at the end of the session. It states the objectives, the nature and the duration of the training, along with the results of the assessment of learning.
Accessibility and disability
Disability referent: Adrien Bouthet, contact@adrienbouthet.fr. Any situation requiring an adjustment (access to the premises, adaptation of the materials, of the pace or of the assessment arrangements) is examined during the framing phase, within 5 working days. If the adjustment exceeds our means, we refer to specialised resources (Agefiph, Cap emploi).
A team to train in project steering
Book a free first call. We look at your current projects, pick the one that will serve as workshop material, and set the dates.
The matching service
Freelance IT project manager