Project management in MS Project

Programme

Day 1

The logic of project management in MS Project

• The project structure in the system
• Project parameters and settings
• Planning «from the start date» and «from the finish date»
• Basic interface elements
• Practice: creating a new project

Building the project structure (WBS)

• The task hierarchy
• Summary tasks
• Milestones
• Types of tasks
• Duration and work effort
• Practical work 1: Developing the project structure

Dependencies and execution logic

• Types of links (FS, SS, FF, SF)
• Lags and leads
• Constraints and deadlines
• The critical path
• Time reserves
• Practice: building the project's logical model

Calendar planning

• The project base calendar
• The resource calendar
• Individual work schedules
• Exceptions and public holidays

Resource management

• Types of resources: work, material, cost
• Creating a resource pool
• Assigning resources to tasks
• Properties of assignments
• Types of tasks (fixed units, fixed work, etc.)
• Practical work 2: Assigning resources and a preliminary workload analysis

Workload analysis and resource levelling

• Views for analysing workload
• Identifying overloads
• Manual levelling
• Automatic levelling
• The impact of levelling on project deadlines
• Practical work 3: Levelling overloaded resources

Day 2

Managing work effort

• Distributing work effort
• Adjusting assignments
• Changing workload units
• Optimising staff use

Managing project cost

• Methods of accruing costs
• Fixed and resource costs
• Assignment cost
• Planned and actual cost
• The project budget

Analysing and optimising the schedule

• Critical path analysis
• Finding reserves
• Methods of shortening deadlines
• The balance between deadlines and resources

Tracking project execution

• Saving the baseline plan
• Entering actual data
• Percentage of completion
• Variance analysis
• Progress indicators

Management reporting

• Standard reports
• The project summary
• Visual dashboards
• Creating your own reports
• Using templates for standardisation