Best Practices: Scheduling using
Microsoft Project 2010

PMPs Earn 14 PDUs

Syllabus in PDF Format

Course Overview

This intensive two-day boot camp focuses on the “best practice” scheduling skills that you need to manage projects successfully with Microsoft Project 2010. This course shows you how to drive the tool through each stage of the project management life cycle and offers multiple best practices for using the software while defining, planning, executing, and closing a project. Although framed around PMI’s project life cycle, the course content is methodology-agnostic and focuses on hands-on learning methods.

In preparation for this class, each student receives the following:

• A copy of the Ultimate Study Guide: Foundations, Microsoft Project 2010 book, which serves as both the course manual and a valuable reference book
• A detailed Preparation Guide document detailing the competencies and knowledge required to pass the certification exam
• Student sample files in Microsoft Project 2010 format

For courses taken via Cyberspace, each participant must use his or her own computer to access the virtual training environment. A high-speed internet connection is recommended. Participants do not need to have Microsoft Project installed in order to participate in the hands-on exercises.

Target Audience

Everyone who manages projects using Microsoft Project 2010 should take this course, whether in an enterprise or desktop-only environment. We target this course at the needs of full-time project managers, as well as those who function as project schedulers or project support technicians.

Pre-Requisites

Although not required, it is helpful for students to have hands-on project management experience or a high-level understanding of project management principles.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Describe the stages of the project management process
• Understand the Microsoft Project user interface
• Define a new project using a 6-step process
• Perform all required task planning and understand how to use task dependencies and task constraints properly
• Add Work resources to a project
• Assign Work resources to tasks
• Use the new Team Planner view to analyze resource assignment data
• View the Critical Path in a project
• Save a baseline for a project
• Enter task progress using a best-practice methodology
• Analyze project variance
• Revise a project based on project variance
• Change a project based on change control methodologies and re-baseline the project using multiple methods
• Report on project progress using the new Timeline view and Excel Visual Reports
• Close a project using a best-practice methodology