Real-Life MS Project: 2009 Recordings and Discussion Area

Microsoft Project is a widely-used, widely-misused project scheduling tool. This series of web seminars will unveil some of the most widely misunderstood features and functions of the software, to help you schedule your real-world projects more easily.

This six-hour collection includes:

• Control Your Schedule
• Resource Leveling
• Large Teams
• Managing Risk
• Custom Views and Reports
• Updating a Schedule

All these seminars assume that you have a basic, working knowledge of MS Project and project management. We will not go over basic menus and dialog boxes. Instead, you will learn the concepts needed for an experienced project manager to apply MS Project effectively to real-world situations.

Control Your Schedule

The 'Control' session covers the single feature that most frustrates MS Project users: how to change work or duration without messing up other numbers in the plan. There is a relationship between work, duration, and units that is critical, but not obvious. Fixed duration, work, and units will also be covered.

This session also covers the network diagram in MS Project. Most people have never used it before, but it can be incredibly helpful for some types of scheduling problems.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the relationships between units, duration, and work in MS Project
• Be able to predict which numbers will change when you update units, duration, or work
• Understand the role and function of the network diagram
• Become comfortable exploring and customizing the network diagram

Resource Leveling

This 'Resource Leveling' session explains about how to ensure that each person, machine, or other resource is used at capacity, but not above capacity, through the entire project. MS Project offers several ways to level resources, and we discuss the pros and cons of each one. We also talk about why you might not want to level resources at all.

Learning Objectives

• Understand what types of projects demand resource leveling and which do not
• Appreciate the high cost and difficulty of doing resource leveling properly, and why it might not pay to completely optimize your resource use
• Learn both automatic and manual methods to level resources using MS Project

Large Teams

This 'Large Teams' session will answer the question, "What's the best solution if I have a large team, but not an enterprise to manage?" Microsoft touts MS Project Server and other products as the ideal solution for large enterprises, but they are not always the best products for large teams. You will learn about tools like resource pools, as well as alternatives to MS Project that might meet your needs.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the challenges of large teams, including multiple projects, multiple teams, team-based work, and reporting needs
• Be able to use the features in MS Project desktop software to help manage larger efforts, including cross-project links and resource pools
• Learn the limits of these techniques, and be able to list alternative vendors and growth strategies, when your scheduling problems are more than MS Project can handle
• Be able to list Microsoft products for large groups as well as several competing vendors' products

Managing Risk

This 'Managing Risk' session will explore tools and techniques to managing risks in Microsoft Project. MS Project does not offer risk management as a built-in function, so we will explore add-on tools such as Monte Carlo analysis packages. The session will also show you different ways to represent risk events, buffers, and other risk management tools using Microsoft Project, spreadsheets, and other tools.

Learning Objectives

• Understand what risk management tools MS Project does provide, and why these are not adequate for most projects
• Review sample output from a Monte Carlo tool, to understand what information these systems can deliver
• Learn the names of products and vendors that do explicitly handle schedule and budget risk
• Learn ways to represent risk events, buffers, and other risk-management factors in a MS Project schedule

Custom Views and Reports

This 'Custom Views and Reports' session will showcase some of the most powerful tools in all of MS Project: its ability to generate attractive and useful reports. You will learn

• How to customize lists and grids of information
• Explore some of the powerful built-in reports and graphs
• Key limits to the built-in graphics and reporting engine
• Ways to display data both graphically and in text

Learning Objectives

• Understand the customization possibilities in MS Project
• Learn the range of built-in views and filters
• Learn to customize views, tables, and other displays
• View a range of graphical and text tools to report project information in MS Project
• Learn which types of information and graphs are better produced from a spreadsheet or other presentation tool

Updating a Schedule

This 'Updating a Schedule' session will take the mystery out of updating your schedule to show progress. This process is called 'statusing' or 'updating' a schedule in different industries, but it is always a challenge. The sessions will show how a properly constructed schedule can be many times easier to update than a poorly constructed one. You will learn concrete methods to keep your schedule up-to-date, whether you have a time-sheet system or not.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the difference between updating tasks and assignments in MS Project
• Get an overview of different methods to apply updates to your schedules
• Learn the advantages and disadvantages of timesheet-based updates
• Learn how to re-forecast delivery dates, assignments, and other key project information

What Is Included

• Access to the recordings of all six, one-hour web presentations
• Accessible with all major web browsers and computer platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux
• Access to recordings of the live events with video and audio (MP3, AVI, iPod MP4)
• R.E.P. PDU credit for the events, whether you experience them live or recorded
• Discussion before and after the event in an exclusive on-line learning area

About the Presenter: Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C

Alex has managed projects for 15 years, usually using MS Project as the scheduling tool. He has discovered more ways to misuse MS Project than he can count. He has saved his fellow project managers thousands of hours of work by explaining simple short-cuts and solutions in MS Project.

Alex has spoken at project management conferences all over the world, including the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia. His articles have appeared in newsletters and websites internationally. His articles on Real-Life MS Project have consistently ranked as some of his most popular ones.

Alex owns Real-Life Projects, Inc., and does speaking, training, and consulting for his clients, to help them improve and transform their businesses. He says he is the person to call “when you don’t have time to waste” and you need an experienced adviser.

You can learn more about Alex at http://www.alexsbrown.com and about Real-Life Projects at http://www.rlprj.com.