Course Syllabus

Defining Project Management

Simply put, project management is defined as the process of managing all the elements of a project to complete it. This includes supplies, labor, financials, workflow, deadlines, vendors, miscellaneous setbacks, and any other tasks defined in the project scope. Project management is becoming increasingly important within companies in order for them to operate successfully and efficiently. The skills that managers and employers are given during training to manage the day-to-day operations of a company are different than the ones they'll need to manage individual projects. Because corporate projects are often much more involved with numerous people and vendors included in project operations, MS Project helps corporate project managers organize every task and goal to streamline workflows and facilitate a more successful project outcome.

Successfully managing a project requires discipline. It requires that time, scope, and cost are managed in a way that bring about the completion of specific goals or a project itself. Mistakes in project management can cost organizations potentially millions, and MS Project can mitigate these damages and provide a more streamlined workflow. Good project management requires planning and organization that doesn't work well with traditional paper and pen hardcopy files. Files get lost, only one person can handle a file at a time, and file transfers and management are much more cumbersome without software and networking technology to help. Microsoft Project can help project managers and corporate staff (including executives that oversee project costs and efficiency) organize their projects and meet their goals by acting as a virtual assistant that can produce information, charts, and reports to help the project smoothly advance through to completion.

There are three things that must be managed during a project, and all three of them can be fully managed in MS Project. This will help you better understand what MS Project offers you and help you put the aspects of this software to work more efficiently once we've learned how to use it.

• The first is cost. Cost is everything and anything that has to do with money related to your project. It includes people, equipment, material, profit, vendors, contractors, services, and any other type of project requirement that essentially costs the organization money or leads to legitimate overall profit. If anything costs or makes your company money in relation to a project, then it is factored into the cost.

• Next is time. The time used for a project is the sum of all the time used to complete tasks that lead to the completion of the project. This can include employee time, equipment time, and even time to see profit. MS Project lets you identify time for each task so that you can better estimate time for future projects. You can get reports and estimates on the time tasks should take, so MS Project doesn't just give you an overview of current projects, but it helps you better define workflows and estimates for future projects.

• Finally, there is the scope. The scope of your project can also be referred to as the specifications for the project. The specifications or scope define what the final results are supposed to be. Quality is a major part of the scope, and the more detailed a project manager makes the scope, the better chance a project will be successful without any surprises. One benefit of MS Project is that it helps eliminate surprises, which usually turn into increased costs due to missing or forgotten specifications.

With the above three variables defined, if your project is well managed, it delivers exactly what it was supposed to within the given time frame and without spending more money than what was allocated. By managing the above three components using MS Project, success can be much easier to achieve.

Understanding Projects

By definition, a project is a temporary endeavor that is completed to create a unique product or service to enhance the corporation or offer additional value to clients and customers. You will use MS Project to organize and manage any products or service that you or your company create. Projects are made up of tasks that must be completed in order to complete the project as a whole. When you get started with Project, just know that tasks are major components in project workflows that must have a scope, take time to complete, and cost the organization some of its budget. In other scenarios, a task could add project, but it's much more common for a task to be a debit rather than a credit to the organization.

Think of tasks as your to-do list that will get you from point A to point B. Your tasks can be as detailed (or not) as you want them to be. A task can be simply researching competition, or it can be a phase of your project that contains a summary task as well as subtasks. For example, if you are creating a new software application for your company, your task might be to research similar software, but this is vague and requires more detail. Detail can be accomplished using subtasks. Subtasks might be researching businesses that have similar software, analyzing their sales, and then looking at their pricing models.

In Project, tasks are organized into phases, also known as stages. In the Gantt chart view of Project, you will be able to see your tasks, as well as an outline of the time it will take to complete each one. Since timing is always an important component of your project, MS Project allows you to set up and view the timing relationships for each task. You can also set dependencies, which will help identify any additional scope to complete a task. A dependency will show that one task (task A, for example) must be completed before Task C can begin. We'll learn all about this later in the course.

What to Expect from This Course

This course was designed to teach you how to successfully use MS Project, no matter if you've ever used the program before or not. Both a beginner and seasoned Project user can benefit from this course, starting with the basics of the program including navigation and continuing on to more advanced features. You do not need to have access to MS Project to take or complete this course. However, it is recommended as you can follow along and see each project component added, edited and deleted.

We've broken this course down into multiple lessons to make it easier for students to study and practice the program. Each lesson details different features of Project and provides step-by-step instructions on how to use them. At the end of each lesson, you will find a lesson exercise with questions and answers that you can use to quiz yourself on the amount of information that you've learned.

The lesson exercises were designed to test you on the material presented in each associated lesson. Lesson exercises are graded; therefore, they are mandatory. Lesson assignments give you a chance to practice what you've learned in the lesson by using Project. These are optional and do not affect your grade, but it is encouraged that every student tries to complete them.

We've also added a course project for those students who have access to Project and want to get some hands-on practice using the program. The course project is optional just like the assignments. However, while the assignments give you a little practice using features taught in the corresponding lesson, the course project gives you the chance to manage your first project using the skills you've learned in each course section. You'll find an introduction to the project at the end of this lesson, then instructions following lessons four, eight, twelve, and sixteen.