As a base-level component of our Contractor Project Solutions suite, this workshop is the perfect partner for our Project Planning Foundation workshop and as an ideal prerequisite for our Planning and Execution workshop.  This workshop is also the first segment of our Essential Microsoft Project for the Contractor workshop.

• Be able to find and use day-to-day Microsoft Project commands with ease.
• Be able to create new projects and apply realistic calendar settings to these projects.
• Be able to list, scope and schedule tasks that describe and match a project’s objectives.
• Understand the fundamental concepts of resource assignment and allocation; both for internal workers and external contractors.
• Be able to review and analyse project’s criticality and where spare time against tasks may be available.
• Produce stakeholder-friendly reports.
• Understand the importance of a project’s baseline and how to track and reschedule project progress from the past into the future.
• Be able to review project performance and replan a project to help meet its key objectives

This first workshop section explains Microsoft Project from first principles; the database, the scheduling engine, the views & tables & reports, together with the ribbon-based command structure. Within this section, you will also learn how to create a new project, set its fundamental options, define project calendars and resources, and create the project’s top-level structure of key deliverables.

• Project for the desktop’s user interface
• Ribbons, tabs, groups and commands
• One database with multiple views
• Multiple views and shared tables
• Projects and Excel-friendly dashboards
• New projects, existing projects and templates
• Adding definitions at the project level
• Saving your project
• Defining your project’s working day
• Adding nonworking time to your project
• Defining your project’s resource pool
• Reviewing your project’s options
• Planning your project from the top down
• Managing key project events with milestones
• Top-level project reporting for stakeholders

Section two is all about creating a well-defined and realistic project plan. You will learn how to expand a project’s outline into tasks and milestones, which in turn you will specify and schedule. Intelligently using views and tables, you will review and optimise your project, in preparation for reporting this data to your stakeholders with insight and clarity. As work and cost are key tenets of a workable project, you will also gain an understanding of how your project’s plan can best model the real world.

• Breaking down your project’s outline
• Scoping tasks with duration values
• Scheduling tasks with dependencies
• Managing dependencies between manually-scheduled tasks
• Reviewing task structure and sequence
• Changing timescale displays for charts
• Tasks that drive end dates and those with spare time
• Applying views and tables for schedule analysis
• Changing relationships between tasks
• Views and Reports for project stakeholders
• Assigning people to tasks
• Entering task cost values
• Reviewing work and cost values

Section three is all about managing the course of a project during its riskiest phase, execution. You will learn how to set realistic targets with baselines, update progress around as-of dates and fix tasks to stakeholder-driven schedules. You will also learn the importance of rescheduling remaining work into the future and how your project’s current work/cost/time model can be analysed and (where necessary) replanned using views and tables within the Microsoft Project toolset.

• Creating and displaying update boundaries
• Updating task progress
• Setting required task start dates
• Setting deadlines against tasks
• Rescheduling incomplete work
• Reviewing baseline performance
• Reviewing schedule performance
• Reviewing work and cost performance
• Getting back on track: Reduce the project’s scope
• Getting back on track: Change how work is performed
• Getting back on track: Change how tasks are scheduled

The final workshop section closes off a completed project. You will learn how views, tables, filters, and reports can be used to analyse project performance, thus gaining invaluable lessons that can be applied to future projects.

• Analysing your project’s successes