Project Planning Skills
for Defining and Achieving Project Success
Project managers must work within tight schedules, manage resources across the organization and deliver results on time and within budget. If there's one thing on which everybody agrees, planning is the single most important activity PMs should engage in to achieve these goals.
A detailed, systematic, team-involved plan is the absolute foundation upon which all successful projects are built. Without it, risks become greater, time is spent poorly, money is spent unwisely and projects go off track. Project managers—who are also strong leaders—know that having the skills to plan effectively up front will benefit them throughout the project's lifecycle.
In order to balance resources and deliver under strict deadlines in the face of ever-increasing customer expectations, effective project managers need the core skills required to schedule and deliver critical projects on time. Building a strong, detailed project plan, creating a realistic, closely managed schedule, and effectively estimating and managing resources are all critical competencies for today's project managers.
The following courses will help you develop the critical planning abilities needed for achieving project success.
Preparing for the PMI Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP)® Exam
Course 248 • 3 Days
You Will Learn How To:
- Develop realistic schedules to achieve timely project delivery
- Construct project network diagrams to identify the sequence of work
- Calculate Critical Path to determine the project duration
- Effectively assign resources to build a realistic baseline schedule
- Perform schedule analysis and recommend corrective actions to keep the project on track
- Build readable and reliable project reports to keep stakeholders informed on progress
► Get more details and a current schedule Project Budgeting and Estimating: Taking Control of Your Projects
Course 923 • 3 Days
You Will Learn How To:
- Create an accurate budget for any level of work from individual project tasks to entire portfolios
- Estimate tasks using activity-based costing, and aggregate to project budgets
- Aggregate individual costs to form a project budget
- Quantify risk to justify contingency funding and produce a defensible baseline
- Manage the program budget, allocating funds to projects with the best rate of return
- Leverage Earned Value Analysis to determine project status, forecasts and any necessary corrections
► Get more details and a current schedule Creating a High-Impact Work Plan for Business Analysts
Course 912 • 3 Days
You Will Learn How To:
- Develop a work plan that successfully addresses the needs of a business analyst (BA)
- Define the goals and deliverables of the initiative and develop the work charter
- Organize, structure and schedule work using breakdown structures, network diagrams and bar charts
- Adopt common and effective techniques to estimate task work and duration that reflect initiative uncertainty
- Identify, analyze and manage risks that affect scheduling
- Keep the work on track and manage key controls while meeting stakeholder expectations
► Get more details and a current schedule Microsoft® Project 2010: A Comprehensive Hands-On Introduction
Course 3702 • 3 Days
You Will Learn How To:
- Leverage Microsoft Project 2010 to plan and manage project schedules and resources
- Build and optimize your project plan through best practice principles
- Create, modify and organize calendars in order to control the project schedule
- Track progress, update plans and monitor variances between target and actual project deliveries
- Assign resources to tasks and troubleshoot overallocation conflicts
- Structure dashboards and reports to effectively share project data
► Get more details and a current schedule Microsoft® Project 2007: A Comprehensive Hands-On Introduction
Course 299 • 3 Days
You Will Learn How To:
- Plan, build and manage project schedules and budgets using Microsoft Project 2007
- Build a project plan, enter tasks and develop calendars
- Establish task constraints and deadlines, and create task dependencies
- Forecast and allocate human and material resources
- Track progress, update plans and monitor variances between target and actual project deliverables
- Create dynamic reports and custom views to communicate project information
► Get more details and a current schedule
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