Project Management Using Microsoft Project 2013

The course is designed for individuals who want to familiarize themselves with MS Project Professional 2013 and begin planning their projects in MS Project 2013. The course is based upon the best practices of project management as suggested by the PMBOK® from PMI®.

The course duration is 2 (two) days, and covers all aspects of Project planning, monitoring & tracking using MS Project 2013.

Workshop Objectives

At the end of the workshop you’ll be able to:

• Understand the basics of Project Management

• Navigate the Project 2013 interface

• Set up a new project in Project 2013

• Enter and modify milestones and tasks

• Enter duration or work estimates

• Enter dependencies between tasks

• Enter deadlines and constraints

• Define and assign resources

• Level resource utilization

• Optimize the schedule

• Create a Baseline

• Report and track progress

• Generate reports

• Customize field, views, tables and reports within MS Project

• Customize Gantt Chart

• Work with master projects & subprojects

What is New in MS Project 2013

• Improved Interface

• Improved Calendar options

• Track project budgets at a high level

• Identify cost resources across multiple tasks

• Leverage new project templates

• Identify factors affecting task schedules

• Show the impact of your changes

• Multiple Undo and redo option

• Produce charts, graphs, and diagrams of your project data

• Highlight specific data with cell highlighting

• Create visual reports with calendar enhancements and 3-D Gantt bars

Participants’ Takeaways

The participants will take away:

• PMI® PDU certificate for taking or maintaining PMP® certification.

• A guide to managing projects using MS Project 2013 with Exercises, Case Study & Handouts

• A Trial version of MS Project 2013, if needed.

Logistic Requirement(s)

A Laptop for each participant with the below configuration:

• Hardware: Pentium III or higher/ 512 MB RAM / 2 GB free HDD

• Software: MS Windows XP/2000, MS Office 2013, MS Project 2013, Printer configured

Workshop Format

The program is an instructor led classroom session with self-paced learning through hands-on practice, which is highly interactive by means of practical exercises and case studies.

Eligibility

The course is targeted at individuals who want to use MS Project Professional 2013 to manage projects effectively should enroll in this course, including:

• Projects Managers

• Project Leads

• Team Leads

• Team Member

• IT support executives

• PMO Staff

• Manager of Project Managers

There are no pre-requisites, and anybody in the above role, in any industry or domain can attend this two-day course.

An understanding of Project Management concepts like – Triple Constraint, PERT, Critical Path Method, Crashing, Fast Tracking, Variance calculation, and Earned Value Management is desired but not mandatory. Prior experience of using MS Project (any version) would be an added advantage.

Course Outlines

Introduction

• What is a Project?

• Overview of Project Management

• Project Management Life cycle

• Triple Constraint Theorem

• Factors influencing Project Management

• Challenges in Project Management

Basics of Project Management

• Scope definition

• Work Breakdown Structure

• Decomposition

Scheduling Concepts

• Task Relationships

• Sequencing – Network Diagram

• Applying Leads & Lags

• PERT estimation Technique

• Critical Path Method

• Schedule Baseline

Cost Management Concepts

• Top Down estimation

• Bottom-up estimation

• Earned Value Management technique

• Change Management process

• Configuration Management

Introduction to MS Project

• Getting familiar with MS Project interface

• Navigating the interface

• Usage of Project Guide

• Usage of Project Template

Project Plan Development

• Creating a new Project Plan

• Set-up the default project environment

• Entering of Project tasks and building a WBS

• Apply Task relationships

• Estimate & apply Task/ Activity durations

• Setting up multiple Calendars

• Task Constraints

Resource Deployment

• Identify project resources

• Apply resource attributes like – cost, calendars, type etc.

• Assigning Project Resources

• Resource leveling

• Resource constraints

Project Costing

• Entering Cost information for all resources

• Arriving to project cost & budget

• Deriving Cost baseline information

Progress tracking and Reporting

• Saving of Baselines

• Critical Path Analysis

• Updating progress information into the Project Plan

• Progress reporting

• Performance reporting

Multi-Project Management

• Creating Master and sub-projects

• Linking Tasks crossing projects

• Sharing of Multi-Project Information to the Stakeholders

Reporting

• Generate different levels of project reports

• Project summary

• Project detail Gantt Chart

• Milestone Chart

Customization

• Customize Views

• Customize Table

• Customize Gantt Chart

• Customize Fields

• Customize Reports