Microsoft Project Professional Essentials

To effectively plan a project, you need to identify the tasks involved, determine the resources required, and estimate the overall project cost. Microsoft Project Professional is a tool that assists you in managing these elements efficiently.

In this course, you will learn how to create and modify a project plan from scratch. Once your plan is in place, you’ll set a baseline, track actual progress, and generate reports to compare performance against the original plan.

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Navigate and identify key components of Microsoft Project Professional
• Use different views to effectively manage and interact with a project plan
• Create new project plans
• Develop a detailed project schedule with task dependencies and milestones
• Allocate and manage resources within a project plan
• Monitor and track project progress against the baseline
• Generate and interpret reports to communicate project status and performance

Participants should have:

• An understanding of project management concepts would be beneficial
• Attendees must be comfortable opening, closing and saving files, and be able to navigate through files and folders in a Windows environment

Target audience

This course is ideal for individuals who are new to Microsoft Project Professional and want to learn how to build a project schedule from the ground up. It’s also well-suited for users looking to refresh or enhance their existing skills. No prior experience with Microsoft Project Professional is required.

Module 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Project Professional

• Introduction to Microsoft Project Professional
• Exploring the Microsoft Project Professional Environment
• Identify different views and tables in Microsoft Project Professional

Module 2: Creating a Project Plan

• Creating a New Microsoft Project Plan
• Setting Project Working Time
• Project Information
• Creating Summary Tasks
• Defining the Task List

Module 3: Creating the Project Schedule

• Task Durations
• Defining Milestones
• Difference between Manual and Automatic Scheduling
• Task Relationships
• Creating and Applying Task Calendars
• Working with Constraints and Deadlines
• Recurring Activities
• Adding Notes to a Task

Module 4: Manage Resources in a Project Plan

• Resource Types
• Working with Resource Calendars and Availability
• Adding Resource Costs
• Assigning Resources to Tasks
• Effort-Driven Scheduling
• Resolving Resource Overallocation

Module 5: Introduction to Project Tracking

• Setting a Project Baseline
• Identifying the Critical Path
• Marking completed tasks
• Entering Actuals

Module 6: Viewing and Reporting Project Detail

• Filter, Group and Highlight Project Information
• Adding Tasks to the Timeline
• Using Standard Reports in Microsoft Project Professional
• Exporting Details to PDF

Exams and assessmrnt

This course does not include any formal assessment.

Hands-on learning

This course includes

• Instructor led discussions around the use of Microsoft Project in the real world.
• Guided exercises demonstrating the key concepts in project scheduling.
• Independent exercises to reinforce learning and build project planning skills.