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THE USE OF PROJECTS FOR TRAINING PURPOSES IS INCREASING rapidly (note the number of people now writing about it) and the method is now being fairly extensively used both in industry and in education. In many cases, however, it is used as little more than a sort of do‐it‐yourself training kit whereby the trainee is given a topic or a problem and left to his own devices; if the result is less than satisfactory then it is the fault of the trainee and certainly not the fault of the training officer! If the training officer is to use the project as a TRAINING method then he will have to be involved all the way through and not confine himself to a few comments handed out during the project review. In fact, the whole project will have to be very carefully planned and structured so that the trainee's progress is continually monitored, thus enabling the training officer to prompt, encourage, guide and advise. The training officer must do this if he is to assist in the learning process and not merely chronicle it.

In this contribution, a model of evaluation of customer satisfaction about training programs is described. The model is developed and implemented for an association of training companies. The evaluation has been conducted by an independent organisation to enhance the thrustworthiness of the evaluation results. The model is aimed at determining the quality of training programs as perceived by project managers from the organisations that purchased in company training programs from the training companies. Reliability research showed satisfying results. The model is based on the methodology in effectiveness research, and the data was used to test a model of training effectiveness. The results show that this model is confirmed for two categories of projects: projects that were aimed at achieving learning results and changed job performance respectively. The model does not fit for projects aimed at supporting organisational change. Various questions as to the development of the evaluation model are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to study project management performance measures by analyzing how training utility affects the relationships between mutual trust, social interaction and creativity as well as mutual trust, social interaction and flexibility in projects.

Using training utility and organizational support theory, eight hypotheses were developed. Responses from 279 project management professionals in the USA were collected. The hypotheses were then tested using partial least squares (PLS) and regression with the PROCESS macro approach.

The results suggests that the communication environment indeed has an important role in fostering creative and flexible project managers. Additionally, the study shows that organizations can actively improve the influence of the communication environment on project management creativity through training efforts. Interestingly, these findings may not hold for project manager flexibility.

In today's project management world, organizations need project managers who quickly adapt to changing project management scenarios. To do this, project managers need to be creative, generating new and novel ideas, as well as flexible when converting ideas into action. Organizations often possess large amounts of knowledge, and project managers rely on good communication practices to access this knowledge in response to the required changes in the project domain.

The study includes contributions to theory and empirical research in project management by analyzing the critical role training utility has on the firm communication environments and its outcomes. The study shows that organizations can take an active role by investing in resources to promote flexibility and creativity in projects.

Organizations spend considerable time and money educating individuals on Six Sigma; however, existing literature does not examine Six Sigma adoption at the individual level or the factors that impact individual Six Sigma adoption. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of individual adoption of Six Sigma tools and methodology.

This paper used a single-site field study in a manufacturing organization to empirically test and refine a theory of the factors impacting Six Sigma adoption at the individual level.

Reaction to training, project management and project infrastructure were found to be significant input factors for individual Six Sigma adoption with an R² of 0.482, which indicates that about 48 per cent of the variation in Six Sigma adoption is explained by the input factors. All of the identified input factors were found to have a positive relationship with individual Six Sigma adoption, as well as positive correlations with each other.

This paper was not a controlled experiment or a longitudinal study, so it is not possible from the results of this research to prove causal relationships, although the literature supports a causal relationship between the input factors and outcome.

The findings of this paper will be useful to practicing organizations which seek to improve individual Six Sigma adoptions, as well as inform future Six Sigma adoption research.

Six Sigma adoption at the organizational level has been well documented in the existing literature. The successful adoption of Six Sigma in an organization is dependent, at least in part, to adoption Six Sigma at the individual level. A review of the existing literature indicates that there has been no research into individual adoption of Six Sigma tools and methodology.

Training multimedia projects often face identical knowledge‐transfer obstacles that partly originate in the multidisciplinarity of the project team. The purpose of this paper is to describe these difficulties and the tools used to overcome them. In particular, the aim is to show how elements of cognitive psychology theory (concept maps, semantic networks) and instructional theory (the Gagné taxonomy) combined with mainstream epistemological research help formalise and transmit industrial knowledge through the design of training multimedia.

The paper reports on action research spanning over ten years, taking stock of the experience gathered through 15 training multimedia projects in three large European organisations and their subsidiaries. Knowledge formalisation and transfer methods are illustrated with various examples and industrial applications.

Provided certain conditions and criteria are respected, these tools help unlock various knowledge transfer barriers specific to multidisciplinary training multimedia projects, not only by contributing to tacit knowledge elicitation and codification into the training multimedia resource, but also by providing an interdisciplinary communication vector.

The paper is not concerned with issues such as collaborative use or multidisciplinary support for remote learning platforms, which offer a possible way to extend the analysis.

The knowledge formalisation methods presented in this paper can be applied to any form of project aimed at transferring intra‐disciplinary industrial knowledge within an organisation. In addition, education and training professionals (ETPs) constitute the pivotal element in this process and as such are indispensable to the successful implementation of training multimedia projects.

There is little existing research on knowledge transfer problems intrinsic to multidisciplinary team working in training multimedia projects. The article sheds light on these issues by putting together hitherto unconnected elements of conceptual analysis, which arose from fieldwork.

In the 1990s project management was a growing area, now it is almost impossible to go to any organization where there is not a project. This growth has been so fast that many people find themselves in charge of projects, with none of the special skills required. This paper aims to focus on the issues.

The solution is to provide training as it is through the discipline of project management that all the enablers for change required to survive in the business world today canbe delivered. There is a de facto process based method for effective project management, widely used by the UK government and the private sector both in the UK and internationally, known as PRINCE2^®.

Effective project management training emphasizes structure, creativity and flexibility. The right type of training can offer multiple benefits to an organization to provide a tighter control over resources and an improved level of project risk. It can also raise the management skills of individuals, providing them with greater work satisfaction and long‐term career prospects.

Great project management training should be delivered by subject matter experts who can deliver training experiences that are inspirational and rewarding. Organizations from all business sectors need to invest in good project management training experts who are prepared to engage with their organization's strategic aims and objectives in a partnership rather than supplier role. Those looking to develop their way out of the credit crunch and to secure the future of their staff, customers and business should be taking a serious look at making that investment.

Experience of a middle management training project in Egypt highlights the importance of interorganisational issues in planning and implementing management training projects in developing countries. The initial recognition of local interorganisational networks, identifying key organisations and their representative personnel, and actively working with networks from the perspective of planned interorganisational development activities (IOD) will ensure maximum local environmental support for a project.

The chapter describes the Outcome-Based Evaluation (OBE) Initiative of the New York State Library (NYSL) from its start in 2003. Through extensive training, online support, and integration into statewide processes and grant projects, the initiative has brought OBE to New York State's library community with the overall goals of measuring impact and leveraging funding. NYSL's OBE activities and lessons learned are especially helpful to those interested in developing a similar initiative or aspects of it. The activities and findings of the initiative are reviewed including implementation of the ten-stage OBE Training Plan that was the project's foundation. Logic models and outcomes were used to plan and evaluate most of the initiative.

The OBE Initiative has been a success on many levels. Training and support have been effective in teaching library staff how to implement OBE at regional and local levels. The approach has been widely accepted by libraries. NYSL has also integrated OBE techniques into several statewide processes and grant projects. Through OBE, libraries are able to determine the impact of their programs and services. Outcome data leads to improved planning and better decision making. Users ultimately receive higher quality library services, resulting in a more literate community and workforce. OBE can also support advocacy efforts, leading to increased funding for services. While many in the library community are now using OBE, very few have developed a statewide initiative. The chapter is original and has high value. Each of the three authors has carried out multiple aspects of the project.

This paper aims to contribute to a developing literature on continuous improvement (CI), enabled by Lean Six Sigma (LSS), in higher education institutions (HEIs). It reports on the key learning points arising from the initial steps taken by an Irish university on its CI journey.

A case study strategy was adopted following a participatory research approach. This approach supports reflexivity and also provides access to all relevant documentation and staff within the case university. Thematic analysis was supported by data reduction and display techniques.

The introduction of a LSS approach rather than a reliance on lean alone introduced a structured methodology (DMAIC) that supported simplification of a number of administrative processes. A number of specific improvements were achieved including: Cycle time and cost reduction; customer or employee satisfaction; and rework and error reduction. The findings support the importance of the Readiness Factors as identified by Antony (2014), with particular insight into the role of senior and middle management, the impact of training and deployment of expertise.

This paper is based on an ongoing, longitudinal, empirical study of a single case study in Ireland.

This paper tracks the development of CI in a HEI in a longitudinal manner and adds to the emerging the literature in this area. The paper evaluates the role of management at various levels, analyses the use of LSS tools and techniques and evaluated the role of training and capacity building. Implications for Management are shared including: design and role of training programmes, role of champions at various organisational levels, including key functional areas and sustaining momentum.

Project work of the DESIGN AND MAKE type has come to form an important part of the training of craftsmen, technicians and professional engineers (technologists). For craftsmen and technicians the purpose is to co‐ordinate and extend the basic training which has preceded it. This is illustrated by the fact that the Engineering Industry Training Board incorporate project work in Part C of their first year basic training. Part A, a period of about three months, is concerned with the induction stage; Part B, which normally occupies about six months, is devoted to the development of basic manipulative skills; Part C, the final three months of basic first year training, deals with more specialised skills. Throughout the first year there is a progression from bench‐exercises and test‐pieces towards the manufacture of useful items. In one way this is a progression away from manufacturing for scrap towards manufacturing for use. An example of this is to be seen in the trainees making the tools which they will be using as craftsmen; in some training schemes this occurs at a very early stage. There is another element in this progression which takes place throughout first year training: it is a passing forward from making single, individual components from diagrams prepared by the instructor towards the manufacture of more complex assemblies starting with a specification supplied by some client, purchaser or consumer. This forward progression culminates in the project. Thus, the project presents the instructor with the means of broadening out the thinking of the trainee. By that time the trainee is relatively competent at manipulative skills and the project introduces him to the problems of manufacture, with all its anxieties of meeting delivery dates, working to a pre‐determined cost, integrating a collection of individuals into a team with a common aim, last‐minute changes in specification and design and so on.