As a core component within our Contractor Solutions suite of training workshops for Microsoft Project users, this workshop is a perfect partner to our Microsoft Project Foundation and Microsoft Project Planning & Execution workshops.

• Articulate the key characteristics that make a project successful.
• Understand what makes a project team successful and how team dynamics change through the phases and stages of project lifecycles.
• Understand who the key stakeholders are within a project and have communications strategies for each stakeholder.
• Be able to distil a client’s requirements into an accurately scoped project plan.
• Be able to schedule tasks with duration, work and dependencies and analyse their effect upon the project as a whole.
• Understand the importance of project risk management and how risks can be quantified, qualified, and mitigated.
• Be able to effectively analyse schedule, work, and cost performance against a project’s agreed baseline.

This first workshop section provides an insight into what project planning and project management are all about. It commences with an understanding of what makes for a successful project and why effective planning and execution influence project success. Next, delegates will learn the importance of managing the interrelationships between a project’s fundamental objectives. Finally, the phases and stages of a project’s lifecycle are discussed, together with the key deliverables produced within each stage.

• What makes for a successful project?
• Why do I need to plan?
• What is project planning?
• Balancing a project’s objectives
• Phases and stages of a project’s lifecycle
• (Alternative) phases and stages of a project’s lifecycle
• Nine steps to a successful project

The second workshop section commences by discussing how projects are initiated and how project teams are created and mobilised. Next, project stakeholders are considered, along with how to satisfy their needs and communicate effectively with them. Finally, the importance of understanding and articulating client requirements is investigated, together with project charter creation and techniques for appraising project investments.

• Defining the role of a project manager
• Developing and managing the project team
• Satisfying internal and external stakeholders
• Communicating with a project’s stakeholders
• Understanding a client’s requirements
• Defining a project charter document

Workshop section three is all about creating flexible forward-looking project plans. Several key project development strategies are discussed in detail, all with the aim of creating a model of the real world that is both accurate and flexible. Analysis techniques are introduced to provide a comprehensive understanding of how and when tasks and work will be delivered within the project, together with an appreciation for expediency when resolving potential project bottlenecks.

• Planning your project from the top down
• Breaking down your project’s outline
• Managing key project events with milestones
• Scheduling tasks with duration values
• Scheduling tasks with linear dependencies
• Scheduling tasks with complex dependencies
• Resolving dependency illogicalities
• Creating networks of interdependent tasks
• Task schedules and timescales
• Finding critical tasks that drive end dates
• Finding tasks with spare time
• Changing dependency detail
• Fixing tasks around dates
• Work and cost aggregation
• Creating responsibility matrices

The fourth workshop section concentrates on managing the multitude of risks that can determine a project’s success – or its failure. From investigating qualitative risk causes and effects through to risk qualification and mitigation strategies, from cost/work/schedule variances compared to project baselines; delegates will receive a toolbox of techniques to manage all types of project risks – for all points within a project’s lifecycle.

• When and how to manage project risks
• Causes and effects of project risks
• Qualifying and quantifying risks
• Ways to mitigate project risks
• Using baselines to create project targets
• Reviewing baseline performance
• Reviewing schedule performance
• Reviewing work and cost performance
• Getting a project back on track

The final workshop section considers projects in the latter stages of their lifecycle. By conducting quantitative and qualitive analyses of as-built projects, delegates will gain invaluable lessons that they can apply to future projects.

• Project closure checklists