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MS4009 Setting Up Projects for Success Using Microsoft Office Project 2003

Module 1: An Introduction to Project Planning

This module introduces the student to the components of project plans, explains how project plans contribute to the success of projects, and identifies factors that contribute to a project’s success or failure.

Topics and Activities

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    Why Project Plans Are Important

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    Components of a Project Plan

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    Expert Video: Jump-Start Project Success with Planning

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    Discussion: What Makes Projects Succeed or Fail?

    After completing this module, students will be able to:

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    Describe the components of project plans and their purposes.

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    Explain how project plans contribute to the success of projects.

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    Identify factors that contribute to project success or failure.

    Module 2: Preparing an Effective Project Plan

    This module explains why effective communication is important to project success and introduces the student to techniques that help communicate project plans effectively. In this module, you will create a project plan template to facilitate the creation of future project plans.

    Topics and Activities

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    Why Effective Communication Is Important

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    Techniques for Communicating Effectively

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    Demonstration: Using the Outline View in Word to Organize Project Plans

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    Walkthrough: Communicating Project Information

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    Demonstration: Creating a Project Plan Template

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    Building Project Budgets

    After completing this module, students will be able to:

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    Recognize why effective communication is important to project success.

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    Examine techniques that effectively communicate project plans.

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    Organize project plans by applying the Outline command.

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    Explore techniques that effectively communicate project information to all stakeholders.

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    Create a project plan template to facilitate the creation of future project plans.

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    Improve project communication by applying the features of Microsoft Office applications in creative ways.

    Module 3: Building Better Project Schedules

    This module focuses on how to build a project schedule that helps stakeholders and team members understand the work that must be performed to complete a project. In this module, you will modify an existing project schedule to explore techniques for communicating project schedules effectively.

    Topics and Activities

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    Building an Effective Overall Schedule

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    Building an Effective Gantt Chart

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    Exercise 1: Clearly Communicating Phases, Tasks, Milestones, and Deliverables

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    Best Practices for Communicating Task Detail

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    Exercise 2: Documenting Work Packages

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    Exercise 3: Linking a Task to a Work Package Document

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    Demonstration: Preventing Inadvertent Schedule Constraints

    After completing this module, students will be able to:

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    Explain how easy-to-understand project schedules help team members contribute to project success.

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    Create a project schedule with tasks that emphasize the phases, deliverables, and key milestones of the project.

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    Create a project schedule that makes it easy to identify the deliverables that result from tasks.

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    Differentiate tasks that represent work from tasks that represent tangible results.

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    Choose effective methods for communicating the details of work associated with project tasks.

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    Avoid unintentional schedule constraints and remove any that may have been added by mistake.

    Module 4: Allocating Resources to Project Tasks

    This module introduces techniques for assigning resources to tasks and leveling resources to remove over-allocations. In this module, you will modify existing resource assignments to obtain the resource allocations you want. You will also apply different techniques in Microsoft Project to resolve resource over-allocations.

    Topics and Activities

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    Problems and Opportunities in Resource Allocation

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    How Microsoft Project Calculates Task Values

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    Exercise: Mastering Tricky Resource Assignments

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    How Microsoft Project Levels Resources

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    Putting It All Together: Presenting Project Plans More Effectively

    After completing this module, students will be able to:

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    Recognize why reasonable resource assignments make it easier to manage projects during project execution.

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    Evaluate which Project task fields to modify to obtain the resource allocations you want.

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    Assign resources to tasks without changing the desired characteristics of the tasks.

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    Describe the algorithm that Microsoft Project uses to level resources and how that can lead to unexpected leveling results.

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    Apply different techniques in Microsoft Project to resolve resource overallocations.