Microsoft Project Masterclass — A 2-Day Course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Synopsis

The MS Project Master Class provides expert guidance and tuition for those who have planning experience and need to use MS Project to plan and control their projects, including those managing multiple projects that share resources.

This course includes extensive hands-on practical exercises that will provide those attending with the best possible foundation to develop the skills required to use MS Project to efficiently plan, manage and control their projects and maximise the effective use of the available resources.

This course carries the award of 15 Professional Development Units (PDU’s) for PMI re-certification.

This is a 'learning by doing' course, combining practical exercises and demonstrations with interactive discussions to ensure that delegates gain maximum benefit from this event.

Course Objectives

After completing this course the student will be able to:

• Set up a new project in MS Project
• Set up and use global, project and resource calendars
• Enter project tasks and define appropriate work breakdown structures
• Define major and minor milestones
• Define task dependencies
• Define a resource pool and allocate resources to tasks
• Set task constraints
• Manage risk and identify/quantify risk actionss
• Identify and resolve resource conflicts
• Identify tasks on the critical path
• Develop strategies for reducing project duration
• Create/modify/review views, tables and filters
• Identify and apply project management activities
• Update the plan with actuals
• Use the printing and reporting facilities of MS Project
• Use project groups
• Create and maintain inter-project dependencies
• Share resources across multiple projects

Intended Audience

This course is suitable for anyone who has existing experience of planning projects and is currently using MS Project 2000, 2002 or 2003 but has had no formal training on the product. Also, those who are migrating from MS Project 98 or from another project planning application and are new to MS Project 2000, 2002 or 2003. This course is not suitable for Micrsoft Project 2007 users.

Prerequisites

• Delegates should possess previous experience of planning projects.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Outline Course Contents

Overview of MS Project

• Using MS Project help functions
• Navigating the MS Project environment
• Global and local options (default settings)
• Views, tables and filters
• Working with global, project and resource calendars
• Organizer

Defining a Work Breakdown Structure

• Top down approach
• Milestones and deliverables
• Entering/outlining the tasks
• Use of templates
• Defining task links
• Adding task notes

Allocating Estimates and Resources to Tasks

• Defining a resource pool
• Assigning resources and estimates to tasks
• Adjusting resource calendars
• Assigning task constraints
• Fixed units, duration and work
• Effort driven tasks
• Multiple resource rates
• Assigning fixed costs

Reviewing the Schedule

• Risk and contingency
• Identifying and resolving resource conflicts
• Resource levelling
• Strategies for reducing project duration
• Crashing the schedule

Planning for Control

• Feedback mechanism and frequency
• Identifying and quantifying control activities
• baselining the plan

Customising the Environment

• Defining company standards
• Modifying/creating views, tables, filters and reports

Project Control

• Updating the plan
• Reviewing project status
• Printing and reporting project information

Multiple Projects

• Inserting project(s)
• Defining inter-project links
• Resource sharing