What are the consequences to your project if the schedule is incorrect? How confident in the completion date would you be, given that most project schedules contain errors that greatly reduced the schedule accuracy? This 7-hour course covers the essential skills needed to create and maintain a correct project schedule that contains tasks and resources. Topics include a brief review of schedule types, typical formats, critical path method calculations and interpretation of float values. Scheduling best practices will be explained including correct use of task relationships, how to handle the uncertainty in task duration, check for network logic breaks, and correct use of constraints, summary tasks and contingency. Effective methods for adding resources to tasks, reporting progress, handling changes, and compressing the schedule will also be discussed. This course includes practical scheduling exercises and participants will have the option of doing the exercises on their computer.
This course is intended for project managers, IT managers, business analysts, and anybody else with some experience preparing schedules and who want to develop expertise in creating and modifying project schedules using scheduling software.
This course covers the critical skills necessary to create and maintain a correct project schedule that contains tasks and resources. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Effectively use Precedence Diagramming and the Critical Path Method
- Describe and use the types of task relationships
- Explain the relationship between duration, work, and availability, and how picking the task type affects schedule calculations
- Use scheduling best practices to prepare a correct schedule
- Know how to resource load a schedule
- Check a schedule for mistakes
- Describe the procedure that should be followed when preparing a project schedule
Module 1: Defining and Sequencing Project Activities
- Schedule Management Basic Concepts
- Define Activities
- Sequence Activities
Exercise
- Prepare Network Diagram
Module 2: Resource-Duration Estimating and Schedule Development
- Estimate Activity Resources
- Estimate Activity Durations
- Schedule Development Methodologies
- Schedule Display Types
- Critical Path Method Calculations
Exercise:
- Project Schedule – Network Analysis
This course addresses the following knowledge areas of the Project Management Institute’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide):
- Project Scope Management
- Project Schedule Management