Project Management

Simulation-Based Work Experience Programme — Founding Cohort

Opportunity Overview

This pathway is designed for aspiring, transitioning and developing Project Managers who may understand project-management principles but need stronger evidence that they can apply those principles in realistic delivery environments.

Participants operate within simulated professional environments where projects are already happening. They may inherit unclear scope, competing stakeholder expectations, delivery slippage, limited resources, unresolved risks, changing requirements, governance deadlines or dependencies on other teams.

Participants are expected to understand the situation, determine what needs to happen next and produce appropriate professional work.

The responsibilities below represent the breadth of professional work available across the simulation library. Individual participants will encounter different combinations depending on the simulations they activate and may undertake simulations across other disciplines.

Workplace Responsibilities & Jobs to Be Done

• Project initiation and mobilisation: You may review an incoming project brief, understand the business objective, identify ambiguity and determine what information, decisions, resources and stakeholder engagement are required to mobilise the project successfully.
  
• Project planning: You may develop a structured delivery approach translating objectives into defined activities, deliverables, milestones, dependencies and measurable outcomes while identifying assumptions affecting delivery.
  
• Scope management: You may establish what is and is not within project scope, assess requests for additional work and determine the impact of proposed changes on cost, time, resources, dependencies and outcomes.
  
• Milestone and schedule management: You may analyse delivery schedules, identify milestone risks, assess slippage and recommend corrective action where delivery is falling behind plan.
  
• Risk management: You may identify emerging risks, assess probability and impact, determine mitigation strategies and decide when a risk requires escalation.
  
• Issue management: You may inherit active delivery issues requiring investigation, ownership, resolution planning and escalation, while distinguishing immediate issues from risks that have not yet materialised.
  
• Assumption management: You may identify assumptions underpinning delivery plans, determine which require validation and assess how invalid assumptions could affect viability or delivery.
  
• Dependency management: You may analyse dependencies between teams, suppliers, systems, projects or external organisations and determine how they should be tracked, coordinated and escalated.
  
• Stakeholder management: You may identify stakeholders with different levels of influence, interest and expectations, determine engagement strategies and respond professionally when priorities conflict.
  
• Governance and assurance: You may prepare information for project boards, steering groups, governance forums or assurance reviews and determine which decisions, risks or concerns require senior attention.
  
• Project reporting: You may assess available project information and produce evidence-based reporting communicating progress, delivery confidence, emerging risks, key decisions and required interventions.
  
• Change control: You may evaluate proposed changes to requirements, scope or delivery plans and recommend action based on their wider impact.
  
• Resource and capacity management: You may assess whether available people, skills, time or budget are sufficient to meet commitments and recommend prioritisation or corrective action.
  
• Delivery recovery: You may inherit a project experiencing delays, unresolved risks or stakeholder dissatisfaction and diagnose underlying problems before developing a credible recovery approach.
  
• Implementation and transition: You may plan how project outputs move from delivery into operational use, considering readiness, communications, dependencies, adoption and outstanding risks.
  
• Project closure and learning: You may evaluate project outcomes against original objectives, identify lessons learned and recommend improvements for future delivery.
  

Throughout these scenarios, you will be expected to demonstrate professional judgement, prioritisation, communication and defensible decision-making when information is incomplete or conflicting.