From the course: Microsoft Project Step by Step: Planning for Successful Project Management

Introduction - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Microsoft Project Step by Step: Planning for Successful Project Management

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Introduction

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Welcome to Microsoft Project Step by Step: Planning for Successful Project Management. My name is Cindy M. Lewis and I will be your instructor for this course. You may know me from my work with Project Management Institute chapters throughout the United States as a member, speaker, event sponsor, and mentor. If you haven't met me virtually or in person before, I have been making mistakes and learning from them for over 25 years. I hold multiple credentials, including Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Trainer, and both a Scheduling Professional credential and Project Management Professional credential from the Project Management Institute. I'm honored to have received my 10th Most Valuable Professional award from Microsoft. I hold a BBA degree from Western Michigan University, and MBA degree from Regis University, and I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses at Grand Valley State University. Through my training and consulting business for pillars of success, I work with customers every day, helping them deliver successful projects by using the scheduling features of Microsoft Project. If you're taking this course, you have a desire to learn how to create a plan that will help you deliver a solution for your organization, and don't worry, no experience is needed. If you have used Microsoft Project before, I'll be sharing tips that will help you expand your knowledge. My most recent book, Microsoft Project Step by Step covering project online, desktop client, complements this video course and may be used to help you practice your skills. The goal of this course is to take you through plan development and management in three critical areas: tasks, resources, and costs. In Lesson 1: Learn about project and project management. We'll discuss the benefits of scheduling, cover the project family, discuss new features, and provide an introduction to project management. In Lesson 2: Become familiar with the interface and plan overview features. You'll take a spin through projects interface, including Gantt chart view, Backstage view, Split views, and reports. You'll also learn some feature shortcuts to make you more efficient. In Lesson3: Define the steps in plan creation. We'll create a plan from scratch and discuss how to set up the project calendar and enter key properties. In Lesson 4: Build an organized task list and create dependencies. We'll set the task mode, build a task list with estimates, create milestones, build a multi level outline, create dependencies, and augment tasks with hyperlinks and notes. This lesson provides critical information about task development and serves as the foundation to the rest of our course. In Lesson 5: Develop work and cost resources. We'll begin our discussion on what it takes to accomplish tasks. We'll discuss how to create a list of people who will function as work resources, and how to configure each resource based on their pay rates and availability. Next, we'll configure cost resources such as travel, which might be needed to complete a task on our plan. Moving on to Lesson 6: Assign resources to tasks. We'll complete our discussion on resources by assigning one or multiple resources to a task using different methods. With the effort driven feature, we will control how work gets distributed on a task. We'll look at how cost resources allow you to enter a variable cost, and we'll review the fully assigned plan in a variety of ways to see calculations by either task or by resource. In Lesson 7: Format and share your plan. We'll customize two key views for communication; Gantt chart view and Timeline view. This will provide both a detailed and executive summary view tailored to the needs of your stakeholders. In addition, we'll explore how reports can be customized with formatting choices for different chart elements. Finally, you'll learn how to take information out of project and share it with others through email, a document, or in a presentation. In our final lesson: Set a baseline and apply common tracking methods. You'll learn how to take a plan and prepare it for recording how tasks are delivered. This includes saving a baseline to compare against, indicating tasks that are completed on schedule along with tasks that are partially complete. We will also tackle tasks that do not go according to plan by incorporating actual dates, actual durations, and updating remaining calculations when needed. Overall, you'll learn more about the different tracking approaches and how they may be used for your preferred level of accuracy. Again, welcome to our course, and let's get started.

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