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Through case studies and hands-on practice, examine each step involved in estimating time, resources and costs for budgeting and project scheduling.
The elements of the planning phase of a project are critical to its execution and control. Learn how to accurately track performance throughout the project’s life cycle using valuable metrics.
The PMI Authorized Training Partner logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
This course can be applied to the following certificate:
Project Management Certificate
Benefits and Learning Outcomes
- Start projects on an optimistic note, with better estimates, and keep them on schedule
- Develop earned-value management metrics to measure performance
- Have your projects finish on schedule
- Gain immediate results to take back to your daily applications
- Collaborate with others on real-world situations and gain immediate solutions to take back to your workplace.
Course Outline/Topics
Seminar Outline
Estimating
- Assessing a project charter prior to creating estimates
- What’s involved in estimating time
- Scheduled and unscheduled duration
- Effort
- Defining the role of the work breakdown structure in estimating
- Estimating duration using weighted average estimating
- Estimating and calculating effort
- Linking a work breakdown structure to resources and costs
- Connecting a work breakdown structure to estimated duration, scheduled duration and effort
- Customizing Microsoft Project® to ensure estimates are accurate
- Estimating non-HR costs
Scheduling
- Creating a project roadmap (the schedule)
- Types of dependencies when ordering tasks
- Scheduling reality check
- Types of dependencies between tasks
- Constraints on the schedule
- Types of constraints on start and finish dates
- Selecting the type of constraint to use on the schedule
- Using scheduling diagrams: Activity on Node Network Diagram, Gantt Chart, PERT Chart
- Identifying predecessor and successor tasks for a project
- Understanding critical path: What it is, where it is, why should I bother and how will I know it is calculated correctly
- Scheduling resources
- Resource leveling
- How to calculate a productive day
- Eight types of resource loading on the task
- Determining if resources are over-committed and what to do about it
- Baselining the schedule to measure progress
Performance To Date
- Determining the types of performance to track at the beginning of a project: Actuals, progress to date, stoplight reports and summary reports
- Tracking and reconciling actuals against the estimates and the schedule
- Interpreting a schedule stoplight report
- What to do when the project is in trouble
- Fast tracking a project
- Crashing a project
- How to decide which course of action to take
- Interpreting and taking action on a project summary report