Microsoft Project Professional Essentials

Overview

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.

Prerequisites

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.

Objectives

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

Outline

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.