For Project Managers that use Project 2003/2007 Professional in the enterprise environment

About This Course

This 3-day course prepares project managers to manage their projects effectively in a Project Server environment. The course is an onsite course typically customized to the Project Server configuration of the client organization. Our process for customization is:

• Onsite consulting days to review the configuration and select the relevant topics
• Offsite course customization
• Onsite test of custom course material and exercises
• Onsite course delivery

Dates: Click here for a listing of course dates.

Class Computer Lab

Participants need to be trained in the custom enterprise configuration of the client corporation. This can be:

• The production server with extra student accounts for training purposes, or
• A separate server in the classroom that is identical to the production server, or
• A Virtual PC or VMware image created by ProjectPro Corp in which the client configuration is emulated. This will require extra consulting days before course delivery.

Course Learning Objectives

The following learning objectives are subject to customization:

• Understand how to most effectively utilize the Microsoft Project Server for managing projects.
• Be able to create a project schedule using MS Project Professional in an enterprise environment using enterprise templates, enterprise calendars, and enterprise views
• Be able to assign resources from an enterprise resource pool and from local resources you create yourself
• Be able to monitor and manage resource workloads in an enterprise environment
• Be able to collaborate with and manage project team members on the task list, assignments, documents, risks and issues of each project
• Be able to track the project schedule during the project execution phase using electronic timesheets and status reports
• Be aware of the dashboards views for the project sponsor and senior management: portfolio views (traffic lights and tracking views) and portfolio analyzer views (resource utilization, portfolio bubble charts).
• Be aware of the configurable options in Project Server that affect Microsoft Project Professional
• Be aware of the best practices for Project Server.

Detailed Topical Outline

The following course topics are subject to customization:

Overview of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution

• Project management, EPM and business processes
• Business benefits of Project Server
• Project 2003/2007, Project Server, and PWA and how they work together
• The different users, groups and categories in Project Server
• High level architecture and database structure

Creating a new enterprise project in Project 2003/2007

• Enterprise configuration
• Enterprise Global and the local Global.MPT
• Enterprise calendars
• Enterprise project templates
• Setting up a new project
• Relevant MS Project options
• Project Information dialog box: enterprise project fields
• Tasks
• Creating the Work Breakdown Structure and fleshing it out to detail tasks
• Finding the right level of detail
• Fixed Duration, Fixed Units and Fixed Work tasks and when to use each type of task
• Recurring tasks and overhead tasks
• Estimates
• A process for estimating
• Estimating durations or work (effort) and the task types: Fixed Duration, Fixed units and Fixed Work
• Difference between gross and pure work time estimates and viewing the enterprise setting
• Dependencies and the network logic
• The principle of dynamic schedules
• Using dependencies to model cause and effect in the project
• How to determine the predecessor and successor in a relationship
• Types of dependencies and when to use each type
• How to check the completeness of the network logic
• Deadlines (target dates): how deadlines support dynamic scheduling
• Schedule Constraints (fixed dates): types of schedule constraints and how they make your schedule rigid
• Resources
• Human, facility, machine/equipment and material resources
• Generic, actual and local human resources
• Part-time and full-time human resources and varying resource availability
• Viewing the resource calendar assigned to the resource
• Viewing the time-related cost, per unit cost, per use cost enterprise rates
• Viewing cost rate tables for varying cost rates and multiple rates per resource
• Using the Enterprise Resource Pool and creating local resources yourself
• Building Teams from the Enterprise Resource Pool in MS Project, how the RBS-field and the skill codes function when staffing a project
• Calendars: using enterprise calendars (base calendars) as project calendar and task calendars.
• Assignments
• Enterprise assignment processes: who staffs projects and who assigns to tasks?
• Replacing generic resources in an enterprise template using the Resource Substitution Wizard
• Part-time versus full-time; driving versus non-driving assignments
• Three rules to make MS Project an easy tool for you
• Assigning the three Task Types
• Checking on resource availability before assigning (proactive workload leveling)
• Resource Usage and Task Usage Views
• Using the Team Builder for re-assigning

Publishing to Project Server

• Checking the schedule before publishing
• Did I apply the best practices?
• Using a 40-point checklist and ready-made filters to check the quality of the schedule before publishing
• Publishing
• Saving versus publishing a schedule
• The publishing menu and collaboration options
• Publishing the project
• Publishing the assignments
• Working offline with your schedule
• Project versions

Monitoring Project Tasks in PWA

As a team member:

• Tasks page overview
• Rejecting tasks
• Bringing all workload together: to do lists, new task request, and non-project time

As a project manager:

• Updates page: accepting and rejecting updates
• Updating the project schedule with the accepted changes

Optimizing

How to manage resource workloads

• Proactive or reactive workload leveling?
• Preventing over-allocations using the Enterprise Resource Pool
• Resolving over-allocations:
• Making workloads visible and finding the over-allocations
• When to level by hand and when to rely on Project 2003/2007?
• Leveling workloads by hand:
• The best view to resolve over-allocations yourself
• A complete list of ways to resolve over-allocations manually
• Leveling workloads automatically:
• What Project 2003/2007 can and cannot do for you in resolving over-allocations
• Leveling algorithms used by Project 2003/2007
• Where to check how Project 2003/2007 resolved the over-allocations

How to decrease the duration of your project

• Optimizing for Time (having unlimited resources): the Critical Path Method (CPM):
• Difference between free and total slack (float)
• Situations that fragment the Critical Path and what to do about it
• Shortening or crashing the Critical Path

Risks, Issues and Documents

• Collecting and managing risks and issues
• Publishing project documents and document management
• Customizing textual status report templates and merging received reports into a project report

Updating

• Updating cycle defined
• Updating tasks versus updating assignments (time sheets)
• Baselining
• Options
• Timesheet view
• Team members update on changed assignments
• Project manager checks the timesheets and updates the project schedule.
• Project manager re-optimizes the schedule after assignments updates from team members

Reporting

• Creating one-page reports … always!
• How to defend a visible time buffer or cost reserve to your manager, sponsor or client
• Reporting the project the way you want: developing custom views using custom Fields, Tables, Filters and Grouping
• How to promote them as new enterprise views
• Status reports: how to use and best practices