Project Planning and Risk Management to Improve Project Success

“We turned to LSA Global’s project planning and risk management training to help us take our project performance to the next level. As we continue to grow and our projects are increasing in complexity, it is imperative that we step up our game.

I would recommend LSA to anyone looking to take project performance to the next level.”
Scott Wassmer | US Director of Production | AKQA

“The customized Program Management Leadership workshop was exceptional—highly engaging, practical, and immediately actionable. The team gained valuable strategies to strengthen execution excellence, elevate program leadership, and drive meaningful impact on the company’s growth.”

Scott Bordelon | Senior Principal Engineering Program Manager | Astera Labs, Inc.

The success of a project is largely dependent upon how well you initially plan the project and how effectively you manage risks along the way. As project complexity increases, the value of project planning training and project risk management training best practices increases significantly.

For example, the upcoming Harvard Business Review points out that, according to Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford and Alexander Budzier of McKinsey, out of 1,471 IT change initiatives (such as ERP and CRM system implementations) studied worldwide:

1 in 6 IT change initiatives turn out to be money pits
Cost overruns averaged 200%
Schedule overruns came in at almost 70%

Smart companies devote the necessary time, effort, and skills to ensure that projects are planned and managed for success. LSA’s Project risk management training and project planning training programs and consulting services have a proven track record of helping leading organizations better plan successful projects and manage project risk.

Project Planning Training
Project planning takes both time and money. The payback? Increased awareness of project risks, clarity of project responsibility, greater visibility of project resource requirements, and higher probability of project success.

Effective project planning starts with proper project definition.

Project Planning involves having the skills, knowledge, and practices for project work breakdown structures, project network diagrams, project work package estimates, project scheduling, project Gantt Charts, project resource leveling, project management software, and estimating.

See project management planning training course outline.

Project Planning and Risk Management: A Practical Guide for Leaders

Project Risk Management Training

Avoiding all risks means avoiding all opportunities. Effective project risk management increases the odds of success.

“Failure to actively manage project risk” is one of the most frequently cited causes of project failure. Effective project managers systematically manage the uncertainty inherent in every project to minimize the threats without crippling the opportunities. It’s a fine balance that the best project managers know how to achieve.

See project risk management training course outline.

To speak with an LSA Expert and learn more about the Project Planning and Risk Management options for your company, please contact us.

Related Information

LSA did a great job. The project management solution was really well done from both a content and approach perspective. Overall a very positive experience that provided a lot of value. They really understood the art and science of project management and the specifics of our industry.

Laxmi Peri
VP Technology & Product Development

Thanks for a great and valuable session. The Project Management expertise and methodology that you brought to the table was perfectly targeted to our needs and our company. You definitely helped us launch an important step in driving best practice company standards around project management. I highly recommend this workshop to anyone looking to improve project management skills and methodologies.

Bill Thayer
VP Field Operations

We hired LSA to design and deliver a Project Postmortem for sixty five key people on a mission critical project with a very tight turnaround. LSA’s ability to identify the key trends, leverage points, and next steps was remarkable.

They really got to the heart of the issues in a constructive and unbiased manner that exceeded our expectations.

It was not an easy task with so many skeptical people with different agendas, styles, experience, and perspectives. But they nailed it. Thank you!

Darrell Gallagher
Head of Studio

We have found LSA to be highly responsive to meeting our unique project management training program needs. Their passion for high levels of customer satisfaction and quality align very closely with our core values.

Kudos to LSA Global for the custom program that they provided my team. It was exactly what I wanted, and your team did a great job of engaging our group and providing the solid Project Management skills that we need.

Laura McHugh
Director

The project management training program was fantastic. It could not have gone any better. It was extremely helpful to me as a manager to be strategic during a time of explosive growth and change. It was fully customized to our industry and our needs, everyone came out of it with a solid direction of next steps. We are excited to take the next steps with LSA Global and to implement the project management best practices in a way that works for our unique culture.

Karen M. Inzilla
Director, Sales Operations

We turned to LSA Global to help us take our project risk management practices to the next level. As we continue to grow and our projects are increasing significantly in complexity, it is imperative that we incorporate risk management best practices deeper into our Delivery and Project Management methodologies to continue to increase productivity, efficiency, and client satisfaction. I am really happy with the results and would recommend LSA to anyone looking to take project risk management to the next level.

Scott Wassmer
US Director of Production

LSA’s Project Management facilitator is one of the best I have ever worked with. His efforts and work in teaching complex and intensive Project Management principles across all levels and backgrounds within our organization have been of the highest value.

Leslie Guzman
Learning and Development

We recently designed and implemented two high value Project Management Workshops with LSA. The goal was to improve the fundamental project management skills for less experienced project managers and team members and to prepare our experienced project managers to become PMP certified. The programs were very well received and additional sessions have been requested. Both facilitators were excellent, building strong rapport with our scientists and taking time to encourage & answer questions. Based upon the results and the feedback around the company, the next workshops are already full. I highly recommend LSA to any company looking to take their project management skills to the next level.

Stacey Porter
Senior Manager Learning & Development

The customized Program Management Leadership workshop was exceptional—highly engaging, practical, and immediately actionable. The team gained valuable strategies to strengthen execution excellence, elevate program leadership, and drive meaningful impact on the company’s growth.

Scott Bordelon
Senior Principal Engineering Program Manager

LSA recently designed and delivered a project postmortem for a highly strategic project with a group of 25 team members from engineering, design, marketing, product management, sales, manufacturing, purchasing, business development, research, and finance. The pre-workshop diagnostic, interviews, and experiential session greatly exceeded our expectations.

We were able to honestly and effectively get everything out on the table, agree upon key lessons, and create a targeted action plan that made sense for our unique situation, team, and culture. The whole process made a very complex and potentially political situation a big success. We could not have done the retrospective without LSA.

Eric Vernon
Director of Operations

LSA’s ability to do an effective project postmortem and then help us to use those insights to define and plan our next strategic project were invaluable. Their practical approach and built-for-purpose project kickoff and definition methodology have definitely taken our project definition, project planning, and project management skills to the next level.

I bet they helped us to move 4 times faster than we would have without their help.

Elizabeth Smith, PMP
Senior Project & Portfolio Manager

FAQs

Project planning and risk management training helps leaders and teams improve execution, reduce costly surprises, and increase the likelihood of delivering projects on time and within budget. By identifying risks early and creating proactive response plans, organizations can improve decision-making, accountability, communication, and overall project performance.

This training is ideal for project managers, program managers, team leaders, functional managers, PMO leaders, and cross-functional teams responsible for delivering complex initiatives. It is especially valuable for organizations managing multiple priorities, tight deadlines, changing requirements, or high-stakes projects.

Participants learn how to define project scope, establish timelines and deliverables, identify and evaluate risks, prioritize threats based on probability and business impact, and create mitigation and contingency plans. The training also strengthens stakeholder influence, engagement, communication, cross-functional alignment, accountability, and the ability to adapt project plans as conditions change.

Organizations that actively manage project risks are better prepared to anticipate obstacles before they become major issues. Effective risk management improves resource allocation, accelerates decision-making, strengthens collaboration, increases organizational agility, and reduces delays, budget overruns, and operational disruption.

Strong project execution directly affects revenue growth, profitability, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and strategic execution. Organizations with disciplined planning and risk management capabilities are more likely to deliver initiatives successfully, respond effectively to market shifts, and sustain high performance across teams and functions.