The outcomes required by the various participants are reviewed throughout the sessions, while participants are guided through exercises which build the necessary skills. Wherever possible, work is done on the actual plans, customised elements and protocols which must be put in place, rather than on dummy information.
In some instances, formal Project Management processes and techniques may have to be explained to give be context to the features provided by the software.
Topics and techniques covered will vary depending on what the participants and organisation need. These may include:
- Creating a clear Work Breakdown Structure
- Selecting task types suited to your own projects’ activities
- Working with dependencies and constraints
- Using the Network Diagram to optimise your activity logic
- Creating resources appropriate for your projects
- Allocating resources with attention to task types and effort-driven scheduling
- Working with multiple projects and a shared resource pool
- Viewing your project budget and cost flow
- Creating custom fields for integrating information unique to your own types of projects
- Working with calendars and other time information
- Tracking progress on projects
- Exporting and importing project data to and from other programs
- Standardising the Project environment by means of global settings and templates
- Creating an integrated approach for working with other users
- Creating reports
- Grouping, filtering or sorting resources and tasks according to the requirements of your projects
- Common mistakes in using Microsoft Project
- Limitations of the software and workarounds for advanced requirements such as Earned Value tracking of Cost resources
