About This Course

This 0.5-day course prepares executives and sponsors to monitor their project portfolios effectively in a Project Server environment.

Dates: Click here for a listing of course dates.

Course Learning Objectives

The following learning objectives are subject to customization:

• Understand how to most effectively utilize the Microsoft Project Server for monitoring projects.
• Be able to track project schedules during the project execution phase
• Be able to monitor and manage resource workloads in an enterprise environment
• Be able to collaborate with and manage project managers on schedules, budgets, documents, risks and issues
• Be able to work with the dashboards views for the project sponsor and senior management: project center views and portfolio analyzer views
• Be able to determine the right health indicators for portfolios, programs and projects
• Be aware of useful views and reports to manage portfolios or programs
• Gain insight into the reporting power of Project Server
• Know how to interpret Earned Value reports
• Be aware of implementation issues around 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 in Project Server and their stake

Monitoring Projects in PWA

• Assessing health of projects in Tracking Gantt view in the Project Center
• Using traffic light views in the Project Center: what are solid health indicators?
• Earned Value views: what to look for?

Monitoring resource workloads

• Viewing resource utilization
• Finding the resource constraint and maximize throughput

Risks and Issues

• Monitoring risks and issues across many projects: dashboard
• Finding and analysing tendencies in risks and issues

Reporting

• Asking for one-page reports … always!
• Allowing project managers to own their time buffer or cost reserve: the mature thing to do
• What to ask for in the enterprise views