The Standish offers two types of online educational courses for The Good Sponsor.  Our courses are designed specifically for busy people. They are individual focused with mentor guidance for high retention rates.  They are designed to be asynchronous and students can begin at any time and complete the course at their own pace. We have two types of courses: Influence and Mentor.

Sponsor Influence Course

The Sponsor Influence Course is designed to improve the skills of sponsor’s influence on the project team, stakeholders, or executive management. In addition, the course can help project managers influence project sponsors. The course is a rapid structured program overseen by a professional mentor. This workout is optimized to present the most important material in the shortest amount of time. The course is accomplished in 12-lessons at your pace.  Each of the 12 lessons is accomplished in 3-steps.

Step 1 Lesson Material: First we ask you to read a chapter in the Guide for Sponsor Influence. Then we ask you to listen to a podcast and or video. In some of the lessons there is an exercise that you will need to complete.  Once you complete the lesson you need to mark it as complete to start the dwell time.  

Step 2: Dwell Period: Once you mark your lesson as completed, you will start your thinking time of 5-hours. This observation or dwell period lets you gather your thoughts and create a 25-word feedback on what you took away from the lesson and how you would use these skills in your everyday life.  

Step 3: Mentor Feedback Acceptance: Once you send your feedback to your mentor, he or she will review your feedback. Your mentor will either accept it or your mentor will suggest improvements.  Once your mentor has accepted your feedback you can start the next lesson. 

The course starts and ends with doing a skills assessment. The idea of the course is to help you measure your skills and abilities against the Standish yardstick before and after the course.  Once completed, the appraisal system will generate a score and provide a 5-page benchmark report for you against other people or organizations. The course will help you to understand the principles and skills of being a good sponsor and how you stack up. The benefits of the Influence Course are: 

Increase project success and reduced failures

·       3 suggestions for maximizing your improvement

·       Constant skills improvement

·       Understanding the principles and skills needed

The course will take about 1 hour and a half per day over 12 days (estimated 20 hours).   Once you have completed the course, you will get a certificate of completion.  You may be able to claim 12 to 20 hours of professional development credits. To start and pay for course go here.

Sponsor Mentor Course

The Sponsor Mentor Course is designed to mentor and help other students that take the Sponsor Influence Course. The Influence Course or equivalent is a prerequisite to Sponsor Mentor Course.  Once you complete both the influence and mentor classes you can apply to be a Standish Mentor for Sponsor Influence Classes. The Mentor Class follows the 12 lessons in the influence class and provides additional material, helpful hints, and feedback instructions.  In addition, the course additional material not in the Influence course builds on the skills for project teams, stakeholders, or executive management. This additional material can help project managers and project sponsors. The course is a rapid structured program overseen by a professional mentor. This workout is optimized to present the most important material in the shortest amount of time. The course is accomplished in 12-lessons at your pace.  Each of the 12 lessons is accomplished in 3-steps.

Step 1 Lesson Material: First we ask you to first chapter in the Mentor’s Guide to being a project sponsor. Then we ask you to listen to a podcast and or video. In some of the lessons there is an exercise that you will need to complete.  Once you complete the lesson you need to mark it as complete to start the dwell time.  

Step 2: Dwell Period: Once you mark your lesson as completed, you will start your thinking time of 5-hours. This observation or dwell period lets you gather your thoughts and create a 25-word feedback on what you took away from the lesson and how you would use these skills in your everyday life.  

Step 3: Mentor Feedback Acceptance: Once you send your feedback to your mentor, he or she will review your feedback. Your mentor will either accept it or your mentor will suggest improvements.  Once your mentor has accepted your feedback you can start the next lesson. 

The course starts and ends with doing a Mentor’s skills assessment. The idea of the course is to help you measure your skills and abilities against the Standish yardstick before and after the course.  Once completed, the appraisal system will generate a score and provide a 5-page benchmark report for you against other people or organizations. The course will help you to understand the principles and skills of being mentor for being a good sponsor and how you stack up. The benefits of the Mentor Course are: 

Increase project success and reduced failures

·       Greater understanding the sponsor principles and skills 

·       Partner with Standish for Fee based Education

·       Provide Mentor Service to Standish & Internal

·       Promote Influence courses 

The course will take about 1 hour and a half per day over 12 days (estimated 20 hours).   Once completing the course, you will get a certificate of completion for the mentor’s class.  You may be able to claim 12 to 20 hours of professional development credits.  

You should consider this as an advance course to the basic influence course so you can help other project managers, Scrum Masters with project sponsor influences. Or you could become a Standish Partner.  As a Standish sponsor influence mentor, you will spend 1 to 2 hours helping and guiding students. As a partner with Standish, you will receive 50% revenue for both acquiring and mentoring Sponsor Influencing Students. Contact Jennifer Lynch (jennifer@standishgroup.com to join this class or prequalify to mentor students and partner with The Standish Group.