Training Courses
Setting Up Projects for Success Using Microsoft Office Project 2003
Merit, Liverpool Digital, 2nd Floor, Faraday House, 360 Edge Lane, Liverpool L7 9NJ
Member cost: £ 150 (excluding VAT)
Non Member cost: £ 170 (excluding VAT)
SkillWorks Funding
Merseyside-based SMEs can access 60% funding from SkillWorks towards the cost of this course. Please click on the link at the bottom of this page to confirm your eligibility.
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 1 day 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.
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 be able to navigate through the filing system of Microsoft Windows.
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 projects 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.
(Refreshments and buffet lunch included)
Register Interest
« back
Not
Yet Registered? 
