Course Objectives:Project managers must work within tight schedules, manage resources across the organisation and deliver results on time and within budget. Microsoft Project is a powerful tool to help you break a project down into manageable parts, identify potential bottlenecks and keep your project on track. In this course, you learn how to solve typical project and business problems using the planning, controlling and reporting features of Microsoft Project.

Who Should Attend: Anyone who needs to use Microsoft Project to plan, manage or control a project. Familiarity with project management terminology such as tasks, resources and critical path is helpful.

• Overview of project management standards and terms
• The role of Project in the Microsoft Enterprise solution
• Configuring Microsoft Project for local use and the enterprise
• Customising options and the user interface

Module 2 - Building a Project Plan from Scratch
Planning activities

• Standardising and documenting the project plan, charter and network diagram
• Outlining project phases, activities, tasks and milestones
• Analysing a project with work breakdown structures

Creating a plan in Microsoft Project

• Scheduling a project based on the start or finish date
• Reproducing the WBS in Project
• Entering normal tasks, summary tasks and subtasks
• Placing tasks in sequential order
• Calculating task durations
• Creating accurate project schedules

Designating calendars

• Investigating Project's three default calendars
• Creating and customising project, task and resource calendar
• Configuring Project to accurately calculate working and non-working time
• Creating and sharing organisation-wide project calendars

Scheduling project tasks

• Establishing dependencies and relationships between tasks
• Linking and interrelating tasks
• Optimising the schedule using lead/lag times
• Constraining tasks to target specific dates
• Defining milestones and setting deadlines
• Selecting the most appropriate task types

Module 3 - Keeping Your Project on Track
Optimising the schedule

• Examining significant scheduling factors
• Establishing the critical path
• Refining and finalising the project plan

Updating a project and recording progress

• Creating primary and multiple baselines and interim plans
• Initiating Microsoft Project plans and incorporating actual progress
• Identifying factors affecting task schedules using tasks drivers
• Implementing change highlighting to show the impact to a project plan
• Manipulating and rescheduling tasks
• Comparing baseline (budgeted) costs and actual costs
• Monitoring resource progress and balancing workloads
• Completing and archiving project plans

Module 4 - Communicating and Reporting Project Data
Organising and summarising reports

• Sorting and filtering tasks and resources
• Categorising information with groups
• Highlighting specific data with cell shading
• Sorting and filtering tasks and resources
• Categorising information with groups
• Highlighting specific data with cell shading

Distributing project information

• Displaying complex data with custom views
• Creating visual reports for display and analysis using Microsoft Excel and Visio
• Generating dynamic reports using active project data
• Publishing project data to a Web site
• Integrating Microsoft Project with other applications

Related Courses:

• Advanced Microsoft Project Training
• Introduction to Prince2 Project Management
• Public Course Schedule of dates

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