From Practice to Experience

Microsoft Project – A Hands-on Course for Planning and Tracking Projects

The course provides an overview of project planning and execution (monitoring and control). Participants will learn to master MS Project for preparing a project schedule and recording project status. The course follows the steps a project manager follows for preparing a project schedule.

The course encourages participants to use Microsoft Project for preparing a project schedule for a work or home project of their choice. Participants may submit their project schedules for review. The instructor will engage in a dialog with each participant providing specific feedback and suggestions. The objective is to apply what has been learned on a real world project immediately.

The course consists of four half-day modules each three hours long. Following is a summary for each module.

Module 1

This module introduces a step by step approach for using Microsoft Project. It provides an overview of how Microsoft Project organizes project data using views and tables. Participants start preparing a draft schedule by

Entering a task list (WBS)

Adding milestones

Defining the sequence of tasks (dependencies)

Module 2

Module two continues developing a project schedule. The following functions are covered:

Define resources and costs

Define the characteristics of tasks

Estimate task duration

Make assignments

The draft schedule allows participants to answer the following two questions:

1. How long will it take?

2. How much does it cost?

The module concludes by describing how to add time constraints that reflect the desired deadlines.

Module 3

Module three begins by covering the views and tables that are useful for analyzing the project schedule. The focus of module three is on debugging the draft schedule, removing (1) overallocation conflicts and (2) time conflicts. At the end of module three participants will have completed a project schedule ready for project execution.

Module 4

Module four describes the steps for creating a project baseline and how to use it. The focus of module four is on tracking the project status by entering actuals, such as start date, percent complete and remaining duration. It also discusses the views used for analyzing the project and the steps for taking corrective actions. The module concludes with an overview of the project reports.

E-mail: ulla@ullamerz.com
Phone: 303.499.7301
Fax: 303.499.0607