Delivered in bite-sized segments, this workshop combines our 4-hour Microsoft Project Foundation and 8-hour Microsoft Project Programmes & People workshops to deliver a comprehensive understanding of the Microsoft project toolset. Hands-on tutorials and thought-provoking exercises based on real case study projects will provide you with the skills and the smarts to deliver quality projects and programmes on time and on budget.

• Understand how to navigate Microsoft Project with ease, together with a knowledge of how best to apply the application’s scheduling engine and its underlying database.
• Understand and articulate the concept of multi-project programmes and shared resource pools.
• Understand how to create calendars that match the way real projects, and their people work.
• Be able to create realistic pools of individuals and role-types that will perform the work scheduled within the projects.
• Be able to create accurate high-level projects and then expand top-level deliverables into a tasks and work that accurately describes the scope of the project.
• Understand the intricate concepts of resource assignment and be able to correctly schedule work and resource effort that depicts the reality that the project seeks to plan.
• Understand the concepts and intricacies of resource optimisation and accurately apply tools and techniques to match resource supply with demand.
• Be able to review a project’s criticality and have a toolset to produce meaningful reporting – to all levels of project stakeholder.
• Understand project update cycles and baselining techniques, all to provide a vital mechanism to ensure projects stay on track.
• Be able to accurately update date, time and work ensuring the project correctly reflects the environment that it works within.
• Be able to analyse work, cost and date variances thus providing early warning for any project-related risks and issues.
• Be able to share resources between projects, balancing and optimising work across the programme.
• Be able to manage a master project / subproject structure, removing any unnecessary scope duplications and schedule conflicts.

This first workshop section explains Microsoft Project from first principles; the database, the scheduling engine, the views & tables & reports, together with the ribbon-based command structure. Within this section, you will also learn how to create a new project, set its fundamental options, define project calendars and resources, and create the project’s top-level structure of key deliverables.

• Project for the desktop’s user interface
• Ribbons, tabs, groups and commands
• One database with multiple views
• Multiple views and shared tables
• Projects and Excel-friendly dashboards
• New projects, existing projects and templates
• Adding definitions at the project level
• Saving your project
• Defining your project’s working day
• Adding nonworking time to your project
• Defining your project’s resource pool
• Reviewing your project’s options
• Planning your project from the top down
• Managing key project events with milestones
• Top-level project reporting for stakeholders

Section two is all about creating a well-defined and realistic project plan. You will learn how to expand a project’s outline into tasks and milestones, which in turn you will specify and schedule. You will review and optimise your project, in preparation for reporting this data to your stakeholders with insight and clarity. As work and cost are key tenets of a workable project, you will also gain an understanding of how these can be manipulated (and where necessary optimised) to ensure your project’s plan can best model the real world.

• Breaking down your project’s outline
• Scoping tasks with duration values
• Scheduling tasks with dependencies
• Managing dependencies between manually-scheduled tasks
• Reviewing task structure and sequence
• Changing timescale displays for charts
• Tasks that drive end dates and those with spare time
• Changing relationships between tasks
• Views and Reports for project stakeholders
• Assignment scheduling choices
• Assigning people to tasks
• Entering task cost values
• Reviewing work and cost values
• Resolving resource conflicts

Section three is all about managing the course of a project during its riskiest phase, execution. You will learn how to set realistic targets with baselines, update progress around as-of dates and fix work and tasks to stakeholder-driven schedules. You will also learn the importance of rescheduling remaining work into the future and how your project’s current work/cost/time model can be analysed and (where necessary) manipulated to best balance the work to be performed against the resources that carry out that work.

• Using baselines to create project targets
• Creating and displaying update boundaries
• Updating task progress
• Setting required task start dates
• Setting deadlines against tasks
• Rescheduling incomplete work
• Reviewing baseline performance
• Reviewing work and cost performance
• Getting back on track: Reduce the project’s scope
• Getting back on track: Change how tasks are scheduled
• Getting back on track: Change how work is performed

Section four closes off a completed project. You will learn how views, tables, filters, and reports can be used to analyse project performance, thus gaining invaluable lessons that can be applied to future projects.

• Analysing your project’s successes

This first Programmes & People module explains the fundamental concepts behind Microsoft Project; its database, its scheduling engine, its views & tables & reports, together with the ribbon-based command that controls how it all works. Creation of new projects is explained; including project templates, calendar settings & scheduling defaults, together with project metadata to aid in business intelligence reporting. To ensure every project can achieve its objectives, project-specific and enterprise-wide resource pools are introduced, together with how best to optimise the use of both role-type resources and individual people.

• Programmes and projects within a portfolio
• Resource sharing across a project portfolio
• Custom views, tables and reports
• New projects, existing projects and templates
• Project-level definitions
• Saving a project for the first time
• Understanding the global project template
• Understanding demand for and supply of time
• Adding resources to the project
• Understanding project options
• Creating a list of project deliverables
• Top-down task scheduling
• Intelligently using milestones
• Creating a high-level project timeline

This next module is all about creating robust and workable project plans that correctly describe a scope of work, balanced against an ability to meet required timescales. High-level deliverables are expanded to form detailed tasks and milestones, which are subsequently defined, linked to one another, and then scheduled. Task criticality is examined, together with how recurring work can be planned. Real-world techniques for assigning work to tasks are introduced, with emphasis on how to accurately model utilisation of people and effort to correctly fulfil resourcing requirements for the project. Reporting to project sponsors is considered, together with reporting styles that match the needs of the recipient, all sliced-and-diced by meaningful project metadata. Finally, processes for placeholder assignment replacement, automated resource levelling and interactive resource optimisation are used to ensure the organisation’s people are used expediently and efficiently in delivering organisation-wide benefits.

• Expanding deliverables to create a project outline
• Intelligently using task duration and work values
• Displaying levels of outline detail
• Creating dependency links between tasks
• Resolving scheduling inconsistencies
• Inserting a subproject schedule
• Combining subproject detail
• Manage project data with the use of tables
• Manage project schedules by reviewing task criticality
• Adding recurring tasks to the schedule
• Views and dashboards for project sponsors
• Setting up the printed page
• Understanding effort-driven scheduling
• Understanding task type scheduling
• Defining and scheduling assignment work.
• Assigning expenditure values to tasks
• Viewing & editing task usage
• Viewing & editing resource usage
• Replacing placeholder assignments
• Setting resource leveling options
• Reviewing the effect of resource leveling
• Interactive resource optimisation

Module three provides an intensive walkthrough of techniques to balance work, time and deliverables within a project’s most risky phase, execution. Project governance processes are explored, ensuring that all project stakeholders have accurate and timely access to a single version of the truth. Straightforward and practical ways to progress work, expenditure and dates are then investigated, together with how tasks and people can be scheduled against immovable dates; plus, how incomplete work can be correctly scheduled from the past into the future. Progress reviews enable the revision of project scope, task sequence, and resource work schedules. Detailed project updating is then examined, relative to change-controlled baseline revisions. Detailed analysis of variances and flexibilities within the project’s schedule provide the opportunity to make intricate changes to when tasks occur, and resource work is performed.

• One version of the truth
• Setting a project’s baseline
• Establishing and displaying the project’s status date
• Keeping all your stakeholders informed
• Entering percentage task progress
• Constraining when tasks start
• Constraining when tasks and milestones finish
• Rescheduling individual tasks
• Visualising update statuses for tasks and resources
• Visualising project status using dashboards
• Revising, adding or removing project scope items
• Adding work and cost to fulfil scope revisions
• Modifying task and resource schedules
• Adding new scope to an existing project baseline
• Detailed task and assignment updating
• Rescheduling all outstanding work
• Using tables to analyse schedule and baseline performance
• Using custom fields for performance analysis
• Analysing project performance within dashboards
• Optimising task schedules
• Optimising resource schedules

The final module expands the project universe to encompass a portfolio of initiatives, work and people across the organisation. The concept of a shared resource pool is explained in detail, together with role and organisational breakdown (OBS) definitions. Portfolio-wide resource availability is examined, together with its impact upon the schedule of the portfolio’s projects. Inter-project task linking is also investigated to ensure efficient work handovers between project participants. Finally, the project portfolio is optimised to remove any duplication of work or deliverables across interrelated subprojects.

• Resource creation within a shared pool
• Resources and availability
• Resources and calendars
• Resource cost profiles
• Understanding shared metadata
• Sharing resources from a common pool
• Reviewing work schedules for shared resources
• Optimising work schedules for shared resources
• Linking a subproject to a master project
• Integrating the subproject within the master project
• Investigating scope duplications
• Revising task and work schedules across a programme