D.B. Crane and Associates, Inc.

Planning & Control
Education Microsoft® Project
Education Facilitated Project
Start-Ups Mentoring
 

Microsoft® Project
Tips

Practical Project Planning, and Control:

Combining traditional classroom lecture and hands-on exercises, students will learn a process for developing project plans.

Working in a team, students will practice using the project plan as a "what if" model to answer questions such as the following:

• Can we achieve the completion date based on a logical development process and if not what could we do differently?
• Can we do it with the resources available?
• Can we do it within budget?
• Can we do it with the currently defined scope?

The class will combine lecture and hands on “experiential learning.”  The students will work with a simple case that they will develop with their teams.  This will include the creation of Tasks using a simplified Work Breakdown Structure approach, estimating of Durations and Resource Work, examining potential costs based on resource assignments, mapping out task Dependency Relationships, exploring methods for compressing the schedule to achieve a desired Deadline and analyzing options for resolving Resource Over Allocation.

Students will also learn to use the project plan as a progress reporting tool.  They will experience recording actual progress to date, how to "drill down" to discover variances and determine if the variances are significant.  In addition they will learn about the appropriate reports and graphs for reporting to management.

Note: Microsoft® Project is used extensively to facilitate learning in this course, however this is not a specific MS Project course.  Sufficient explanation of the software is provided to enable students with no prior experience in it, working with teammates, to complete all exercises.  This course provides the theory and concepts that are needed as a starting point to then study MS Project in depth.

Who Should Attend:

Those who are now or will be a part of a project team as either the team leader or as a member.  This includes persons who are principally technology contributors but who will be part of project teams.  It also includes anyone needing an in-depth knowledge of how to plan and control a project.

What Will Be Learned:

• A simple, logical process for planning and controlling projects
• How to use the project plan as a simulation model
• Task estimating techniques that combine Duration, total Resource Effort and the Percent Per Day that a resource can be devoted to task work
• Simplified yet detailed understanding and techniques for task Dependency Scheduling and its relationship to Process Mapping
• How to use schedule compression techniques such as “Fast Tracking”
• How Resource Schedules interact with Task Schedules; why both must be planned and managed and which one can take priority when
• How to use Resource Leveling techniques
• How to accurately record Project Progress
• How to use Variance Analysis to make decisions for the future of the project