Microsoft Project Level I

Microsoft Project Level 1 Course Overview

Microsoft Project is an indispensable software for project management.  It can help you to build highly-detailed task lists and Gannt charts, accurately track resources and create sophisticated reports.

However, MS Project is not solely used by career professionals, but also by event planners and goal-oriented people, in general.  The Level 1 Project class is an excellent choice for those interested in learning the basics of using MS Project.  You do not have to be a Project Manager to benefit from Microsoft Project, as it allows you to choose the level of granularity you want to achieve.

In Lesson 1, we begin by discussing some basic Project Management concepts, such as the characteristics of a project and the Project Triangle.  We then turn to the Project interface itself, and take a brief tour around the screen, pointing out various icons and shortcuts for increasing efficiency.

Lesson 2 transitions into defining a project.  This is where a new plan is created and entered into the software.  While it seems pretty basic to “define” a project, a well-defined project can end up saving both time and money, as revisions to the project plan can be minimized before the project even begins.  Once the project itself is officially defined, we can create the project calendars, which will dictate the working time schedules for the project resources.

Lesson 3 focuses on tasks.  Tasks are the individual jobs that must be completed to move forward in your project.  In Project, we examine how tasks can either be manually entered into the software, or imported from another program, such as Excel.  This task list can further be refined by assigning a work breakdown structure (WBS), which makes the tracking of tasks much easier.

We then examine task relationships.  By default, most tasks proceed in a step-by-step fashion: task 1 begins and ends before we move to task 2.  However, when multiple people (resources) are involved in a project, multiple tasks may be worked on simultaneously by different resources.  It is therefore vital to evaluate the task relationships for each task on the list.  Following relationships, tasks are then scheduled.

Lesson 4 deals with managing resources. We can easily add resources to a project plan and create or assign project calendars for each resource.  It is then that resources can be assigned to each task.  It is inevitable that conflicts may occur, so we also discuss the way to easily recognize and resolve scheduling conflicts in MS Project.

Lesson 5 finishes out the last steps in the planning phase of MS Project.  This includes optimization of a project, setting a Baseline for comparison and reporting purposes, and sharing the project plan with others.