Diageo

How QA provided Diageo, one of the world leading drinks companies, with a major project management training and certification roll-out.

The Challenge

In today’s fast-moving business environment, there isn’t the time or money for major projects to be delivered late, wrong or not at all. It’s no surprise then, that project management skills are something which organisations take very seriously.

Diageo, the world’s leading premium drinks company, had decided to roll-out a project management training programme throughout its Information Services (IS) organisation worldwide. The programme, which Diageo called the Project Excellence Programme (PEP), would be based around the globally recognised Project Management Institute (PMI) methodology. Diageo felt that such a large-scale training programme would not be best managed by one training provider, so it approached leading training companies in different regions to provide the training. For both the UK and in Africa, the training contract was awarded to QA.

The Solution

QA used a sophisticated on-line training needs analysis tool, to assess the project management competencies of Diageo’s teams. Totally focused around PMI, the on-line tool asked around one hundred questions, helping to measure the degree of training required for each person. Some people would require a complete training programme, while others more experienced in project management would simply require a refresher course.

QA also planned the training roll-out, and developed the content for the suite of project management courses – while helping Diageo Global IS to define its project management processes.

Diageo’s employees first attended an initial project management overview course, before returning to their workplaces to take up their roles, including the running of projects. They kept in touch with QA’s instructors via e-mail, for support, help and advice. Next, key project managers from the Diageo teams will return for more intensive training – a PMI course which leads to the internationally-acknowledged Project Management Professional (PMP) certification (which is currently held by around 75,000 project managers in 120 countries worldwide).

The project is a success, with QA training over a hundred people in the UK and more than three hundred in Africa. In addition, QA provided a series of ‘executive sponsor workshops’ to Diageo’s top teams in Africa, so that they could fully understand the company’s need for project management, the training, and their roles as ‘sponsors’ to the project. While the project management training was being rolled out, QA also provided ITIL service management training to Diageo’s teams in Africa.