This course presents practical concepts and techniques for using a commonly available but often misused management tool—Microsoft Project. A general-purpose scheduling tool Microsoft Project applies to Agile, Critical Chain, and other project management methods. It is appropriate for small, isolated projects, as well as multiple, coordinated projects and programs and can aggregate resource workload for comparison with resource capacity. In this course, you will learn parametric estimating and how to use progress tracking to improve estimating data for future projects. Microsoft Project helps you shape your organization’s future.

Many project managers attempt to self-educate on project scheduling and, for years, remain beginners, using a small fraction of the tool’s capabilities. In this course, you will learn to configure Microsoft Project for ease of use, to plan a project using a schedule template included with Microsoft Project, to update tasks correctly, and to recover from delays.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to

• Plan a project using a schedule template provided with Microsoft Project.
• Use Microsoft Project at an intermediate level.
• Apply a schedule template for rapid project scheduling, for incorporating lessons learned, and for improving estimating data.
• Transition generic resource assignments into persons, set their average daily effort allocation, level their workload, and set the project baseline and deadline.
• Include both a risk reserve developed from a registry and a project estimating uncertainty buffer developed from task range estimates.
• Track task progress correctly and recover from delays.

Topics Include

• Hand scheduling
• Configuration of Microsoft Project options and artifacts
• Dependencies among tasks in the schedule template
• Specific project schedule copied from a schedule template
• Scaling of estimating data according to specific project size, complexity, and resource productivity
• Estimating uncertainty
• Resource pool
• Transition generic resources into persons and allocate resources per workday
• Project priorities
• Workload leveling, critical path, and slack (float)
• Baselining and deadlining
• Addition of shock absorbers (risk reserve and estimating uncertainty buffer)
• Correct updating techniques
• Delays from task late starts, interruptions, revised estimate, increased lag
• Recovery techniques: fast-tracking, crashing, and crunching
• Advanced Techniques

Professional Credit

This PMI®-approved course qualifies for 15 Professional Development Units for people already holding the PMI Project Management Professional® certification.