Project Scheduling Essentials

Are your deliverables consistently late? This course is for your Project Controls Officers or for those who need to learn how to create and use one of the most valuable project management tools: a project schedule. Defining project success often involves completing on time and on budget, and project budgets are often driven by resource costs and the scheduling of those resources. This 3-day course is the first part of our intensive 5-day program on Project Scheduling and Controls. It prepares participants to create realistic schedules, resource load those schedules, and update and track project progress. With this valuable skill, project managers and planners will improve control of their projects.

Our instructors are seasoned project scheduling professionals, who have experience in a wide variety of industries and with a number of scheduling software packages (including Microsoft Project and Primavera). Examples used will include construction, IT, and telecommunications. In addition to scheduling theory, practitioners’ tips and tricks will be demonstrated.

We continue our tradition of experiential learning, with hands-on exercises, in which participants will use a “live” project to create a schedule, update it, and track it. Participants will practice transferring project logic into a bar chart, which is best achieved using software; therefore, it is advisable that participants bring their own laptops already loaded with scheduling software to create and update a schedule. Although scheduling software will be discussed and used, it is not the intent to teach to any specific scheduling software package.

Overall, this course reinforces the theory learned in general project management courses (like Procept's Project Management Essentials) with practical, hands-on exercises that illustrate the nuances and common exceptions to the general practices. The course is broken into two parts:

• Part 1 - This one-day workshop will give participants hands-on experience using the techniques needed to build more realistic (a.k.a. "good") project schedules.
• Part 2 - Over two additional days, participants will dive deeper into various scheduling techniques, understanding their practical application, identifying and dealing with exceptions, and understanding other subtle nuances of application that can transform a schedule from "good" to "great!"

This unique professional level course is appropriate for those seeking to obtain their professional credential in planning and scheduling, such as PMI-SP^® (PMI’s Scheduling Professional) or AACE PSP^® (AACE International’s Planning & Scheduling Professional) credentials. This course is an approved AACE course.
 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Part 1 (1 day)

Participants will gain the practical skills to:

• Identify the role of a good schedule in projects
• Relate the Work Breakdown Structure to schedule detail
• Create a simple master schedule
• Create and analyze a logic diagram
• Create a simple bar chart
• Translate relationships into dependencies
• Identify the critical path
• Calculate total float and free float
• Create a schedule
• Use standard scheduling terminology

Part 2 (2 days)

Participants will gain practical skills to:

• Create realistic and effective project schedules
• Update and track project schedules in many scenarios that reflect the complexity of real-world projects
• Apply best practices in scheduling projects
• Start their preparation for the scheduling examination from PMI or AACE

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

The Project Scheduling Essentials course is appropriate for individuals who are:

• Want to improve their project controls
• Want to pursue a career in project planning and project controls
• Want to enhance their resume and marketability
• Work in a project management environment, in any industry or discipline, and want to increase their scheduling knowledge
• Want to prepare for the PMI-Scheduling Professional,or the AACE Planning & Scheduling Professional credentials

Part 1 is ideal for those just starting their scheduling career, while Part 2 is aimed more at those with more experience.

PREREQUISITE

An introductory course in project management such as Project Management Essentials is advisable.

MATERIALS

You will receive a course binder containing a copy of the presentation slides. Course files in Microsoft Project will be available. It is advisable for you to bring your laptop with a scheduling software package already installed (Primavera, Microsoft Project, SureTrak, or similar).
 

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

The following is a more detailed breakdown of what you will learn across the full three days of this course (both Part 1 and Part 2 combined).

PMI is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.