Setting Up Projects For Success Using Microsoft Office Project 2003

Introduction

Even experienced project managers need help making the most of the tools at their disposal. Project managers at every level are asked to manage projects with short schedules, tight budgets, and scarce resources. This hands-on course focuses on the critical planning stage of a project and how to set a project up for success. Hands-on exercises with Microsoft Word and Project will demonstrate effective and easy-to-implement techniques to better plan, schedule and allocate resources. The goal of this course is to enable project managers to increase their productivity, which means they have more time to stay on top of the critical project management tasks that increase the chances of project success

Audience

This course is designed for career project managers and those professionals for whom project management is an integral part of their daily jobs, and who have a vested interest in improving the effectiveness of project management and the success of projects - often under complex or difficult circumstances. This audience has experience managing projects, but is looking to enhance its project management skills and its ability to handle more concurrent projects or to manage larger and more complex projects.

At Course Completion

After completing this course, students will be able to:

· Explain how effective project plans facilitate project success.

· Quickly set up project plans that communicate key project information to the entire project team.

· Develop schedules in

Microsoft Project that communicate the project tasks effectively and accurately.

· Assign resources to tasks to obtain the desired results.

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

· Experience participating in project teams as a project manager, manager, supervisor, team leader, or consultant. Note that students do not have to carry the title of project manager or possess a degree or certification in project management.

· Basic understanding of project management concepts, such as task lists, work breakdown structures,

Gantt charts, task dependencies, scheduling constraints, and resource allocation.

· Hands-on experience with

Microsoft Project, including the ability to:

· Create tasks and subtasks to build a project schedule.

· Link tasks to create dependencies.

· Assign resources to tasks.

· Change task properties.

Course Outline

Module 1: An Introduction to Project Planning

This module introduces the student to the components of project plans, explains how project plans contribute to the success of projects, and identifies factors that contribute to a project's success or failure.

Topics and Activities

· Why Project Plans Are Important

· Components of a Project Plan

· Expert Video: Jump-Start

Project Success with Planning

· Discussion: What Makes

Projects Succeed or Fail?

After completing this module, students will be able to:

· Describe the components of project plans and their purposes.

· Explain how project plans contribute to the success of projects.

· Identify factors that contribute to project success or failure.

Module 2: Preparing an Effective Project Plan

This module explains why effective communication is important to project success and introduces the student to techniques that help communicate project plans effectively. In this module, you will create a project plan template to facilitate the creation of future project plans.

Topics and Activities

· Why Effective Communication Is Important

· Techniques for Communicating Effectively

· Demonstration: Using the Outline View in Word to Organize Project Plans

· Walkthrough: Communicating Project Information

· Demonstration: Creating a Project Plan Template

· Building Project Budgets

After completing this module, students will be able to:

· Recognize why effective communication is important to project success.

· Examine techniques that effectively communicate project plans.

· Organize project plans by applying the Outline command.

· Explore techniques that effectively communicate project information to all stakeholders.

· Create a project plan template to facilitate the creation of future project plans.

· Improve project communication by applying the features of Microsoft Office applications in creative ways.

Module 3: Building Better Project Schedules

This module focuses on how to build a project schedule that helps stakeholders and team members understand the work that must be performed to complete a project. In this module, you will modify an existing project schedule to explore techniques for communicating project schedules effectively.

Topics and Activities

· Building an Effective

Overall Schedule

· Building an Effective

Gantt Chart

· Exercise 1: Clearly

Communicating Phases, Tasks, Milestones, and Deliverables

· Best Practices for

Communicating Task Detail

· Exercise 2: Documenting

Work Packages

· Exercise 3: Linking a

Task to a Work Package Document

· Demonstration: Preventing

Inadvertent Schedule Constraints

After completing this module, students will be able to:

· Explain how easy-to-understand project schedules help team members contribute to project success.

· Create a project schedule with tasks that emphasize the phases, deliverables, and key milestones of the project.

· Create a project schedule that makes it easy to identify the deliverables that result from tasks.

· Differentiate tasks that represent work from tasks that represent tangible results.

· Choose effective methods for communicating the details of work associated with project tasks.

· Avoid unintentional schedule constraints and remove any that may have been added by mistake.

Module 4: Allocating Resources to Project Tasks

This module introduces techniques for assigning resources to tasks and leveling resources to remove over-allocations. In this module, you will modify existing resource assignments to obtain the resource allocations you want. You will also apply different techniques in Microsoft Project to resolve resource over-allocations.

Topics and Activities

· Problems and Opportunities in Resource Allocation

· How Microsoft Project

Calculates Task Values

· Exercise: Mastering

Tricky Resource Assignments

· How Microsoft Project

Levels Resources

· Putting It All Together:

Presenting Project Plans More Effectively

After completing this module, students will be able to:

· Recognize why reasonable resource assignments make it easier to manage projects during project execution.

· Evaluate which Project task fields to modify to obtain the resource allocations you want.

· Assign resources to tasks without changing the desired characteristics of the tasks.

· Describe the algorithm that Microsoft Project uses to level resources and how that can lead to unexpected leveling results.

· Apply different techniques in Microsoft Project to resolve resource overallocations.

About the Author

Bonnie Biafore is a PMI-certified project management professional (PMP) and project management consultant. She helps clients learn how to manage projects more effectively and how to have fun while doing so. She is a nationally-known speaker and trainer, renowned for presenting project management and personal finance topics in an entertaining and engaging way. Bonnie is also an award-winning author of several books, including QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly 2005,)

Online Investing Hacks (O'Reilly 2004,) the NAIC Stock Study Handbook (NAIC 2003,) and Troubleshooting Microsoft Project 2002 (Microsoft 2002.