Practical Project Management

Our Practical Project Management course  is a great introduction to the Project Management discipline. Long time practitioners of Project Management methodologies use a lot of acronyms and industry specific jargon. We break down these arcane terms and show you how you can use the principles that they represent to improve your productivity and management success.

The methods we teach are well established and are based on the best practices standards from the Project Management Institute’s Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (aka, PMI’s PMBOK).

In this course, we will break up into small groups to take a project from cradle to grave. We supply you with a good deal of open tools and templates to assist you in managing projects which you can take with you, fine-tune to fit your specific needs, and put them to work for delivering immediate ROI.

This course serves as an excellent lead-in to the concepts covered in our Mastering Requirements Gathering course.

SharePoint 2010 for Effective Project Management

SharePoint is a fantastic tool for document management and team communication, but that’s not all there is to it. While SharePoint’s friendly user interface lends itself exceptionally well to standard Project Management practices, SharePoint can be an integral part of any team collaboration – not just project teams. In this hands-on course, we walk you through building sites and exploring SharePoint’s out-of-the box features.

You don’t have to be a Project Manager to find SharePoint a positive influence on your processes. Whatever term you use to describe your role in your organization (Project Manager, Team Member, Executive, Employee, Grunt), SharePoint can help you get your job done.

By the end of this course you will have a strong familiarity with the SharePoint platform and solid knowledge of its application for getting projects done.

Managing Projects with Microsoft Project (2007 & 2010)

We have two versions of the Managing Projects with Microsoft Project course. One is optimized for using Microsoft Project 2010 and the other for using Microsoft Project 2007. The intent of both courses is the same however: to get you inside the mind of the Microsoft scheduling engine.

To do this, we cover in-depth the power of the flexible scheduling approach in Microsoft Project. If you’ve ever been frustrated by Project, you’ve probably found yourself hammering away, trying to force Project to suit a static schedule. We’ll show you how to work with Project to build well formed, dynamic schedules.

With our Mobile Lab, you’ll be able to use Project over the length of this course even if you don’t own it yourself!

Mastering Requirements Gathering

In our Practical Project Management course we’ll introduce you to the concept of requirements gathering,  but this course is where you really get to the meat of it.

Often, a successful project is defined as a project that is on time, within scope, and on budget. We take a slightly different perspective. While the standard definition can certainly indicate the potential for a successful project, we define project success as a satisfied customer. And there is only one sure way to get a satisfied customer: requirements gathering.

Learn how to define and document your customers’ needs, prevent scope creep, and ensure project success.

We provide you with tools and templates for your own professional use and walk you through the requirements gathering process and life cycle with a full hands-on simulation.

PMP Prep

If you are preparing to get your Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, this is the course for you.

We walk you through a long list of tips and tricks for taking the exam and passing all of the other necessary requirements. We provide you with an overview of the application process, a tool for collecting the requisite hours, and guidelines for getting certified.

When you leave this class you’ll have a good idea about what to expect from the test, tools to help you get there, and two books in your hands (The PMP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try by Andy Crowe and PMI’s PMBOK 4th Edition).

Stay up to date!

Remember, you can always find our most up-to-date public course listing on our public class schedule.

Well, the 2009 calendar year has started (whether or not we want it to).  2008 presenting many new and exciting events, of which none of them I intend to recap in this post.  Looking ahead, 2009 is shaping up to be equally exciting.  I am guessing that Microsoft may shed a lot more light on the next version of Microsoft Project (ssshhhh, don’t tell anyone).  

So, as I reflect on the year (which I mentioned I won’t detail the events), I couldn’t help myself in looking back at previous versions of Microsoft Project.  Basically, I was curious to remind myself of the history, and ‘how did we get here’.  That’s what we do as project managers, right? We start by capturing historical data, and getting our proverbial arms around the situation at a high level.  

Demand for scheduling remains high; it’s still all about the results.

As I was kicking off my personal project of understanding some of the history of the largest project management technical tool in history, I have to also be a pragmatic practitioner and ‘look ahead’. Forecasting; one of the most sought after concepts in business.  History, status and forecasting are the main reasons project management exists, and could be the only purpose for project management practitioners. Let’s face it, only the nerdiest of us get exciting about changing Gantt bar color, solving the mysterious automatic resource leveling issues, and let’s not forget the always fun game of ‘chase that ghost task’.

I digress!  My idea (and I welcome your input as this can be a fun, group activity) is to draft a short series of posts about some of the fun history of Microsoft project, and see if we can’t look ahead at what we can expect. The reason behind my madness is that Microsoft Project (from at least the Microsoft Project 98 version) has maintained a majority of the scheduling capability we use today.  Now, there is no debate in my mind that scheduling IS the holy grail in business. If a company cannot uncover the activity that is driving the business AND the resource(s) doing the activity, then that company will never realize its true potential. Scheduling is decades old, and the Microsoft Project scheduling engine functionality remains mostly intact version to version (less tweaks and adjustments based on solution design). You can pull a copy of Microsoft Project 98 out of the box, and execute a majority of actions just like pulling a copy of the current Project 2007 Desktop.  What makes these versions vastly different you wonder?  It’s the output – the user interface, reporting and integration with other systems and technologies.  Let’s relate project scheduling to the economy:  the fundamentals are sound which remain the core value of the activity.  What changes are the environmental impacts and adaptation.  So, the rich reporting features, way-cool web interface and extensible integration platforms of Microsoft Project are based on the environmental pull.  However, the requirement of solid scheduling and focus of results remains consistent.

Demand for scheduling remains high; it’s still all about the results.

To wrap up this post, below is a list of the technical specifications and features of Microsoft Project 98 and all earlier versions.  You will notice that Project 98 was an inflection point for the technology.  Huge changes to the software as well as a repositioning on behalf of the Microsoft product team to align this product to potential web integration was included.  Finally, I am preparing to present to a local PMI Chapter, and I intend to reference project scheduling material from the 1960’s.  This is the cool part for your nerdy schedulers — the material I will reference is still relevant today —- isn’t that cool!  Enjoy a quick look back, and prepare for the future – but keep on scheduling!

Demand for scheduling remains high; it’s still all about the results.

                      Windows 2.1 (Windows 286)

To change the Assignment Owner on a task, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you are in the Gantt chart view.

2. RIGHT Click in the empty gray box, in the upper left corner of the Gantt table, where the column and row headers meet.

3. Choose “…Assignment Owner” from the list of available tables.

4. LEFT Click to select the table. You will see the columns in your table change.

5. Find the appropriate task row that you want to change and Double Click on any cell in that row. This will bring up the Task Information window.

6. On the Task Information window click the “Resources” tab.

7. In the “Assignment Owner” column use the dropdown menu to choose the new Assignment Owner. Your choices will be limited to those resources you recruited to this project team from the Global Resource Pool.

8. Click “OK”. The name will change in the “Assignment Owner” field in the project. from the Global Resource Pool.

Posted By: Rick Nobleman

Create the list of team names

1. Click Server Settings in the Quick Launch menu.
2. Click Enterprise Custom Field Definition on the Server Settings page.
3. On the Custom Fields and Lookup Tables page, click New Lookup Table.
4. On the New Lookup Table page, type a name for the lookup table in the Name box. For example, you could type Help Desk.
5. In the Code Mask section, specify the numeric or alphabetic structure of each value in the lookup table.
6. In the Lookup Table section, type the team names in the table and then click the buttons on the toolbar to create a hierarchical relationship between the values.

Create a custom field that contains team names

1. On the Quick Launch, click Server Settings.
2. On the Server Settings page, click Enterprise Custom Field Definition.
3. On the Custom Fields and Lookup Tables page, edit the Team Name field by clicking the field name.
4. In the Custom Attributes section, select Lookup Table, and then click the name of the lookup table that you created in step 4 of “create the list of team names”.
5. In the Required section, select Yes or No to indicate if each user is required to have a team name or not.
6. Click Save.

Assign team members to a team

1. On the Quick Launch, click Resources.
2. In the table, select the resource who you want to make part of a team, and then click Edit Details.
3. In the Team Details section, create one of the two types of team members:
   • To create a team lead, click the Team Assignment Pool box and then select the team in the Team Name box. You can also browse for the name of the team by clicking Browse.
   • To create a regular team member, clear the Team Assignment Pool box and then select the team in the Team Name box.
4. Click Save. If you selected multiple resources, click Save/Next to change the information for the next resource.

Assign work to the team

Once you have set up the teams, assign all tasks initially to the team lead.

Team members who are not leads can now go to their My Work page, select Self-assign Team Tasks on the Actions menu, and then select those tasks that they want assigned to them.

The team lead can see on the My Work page all team tasks that have been assigned to him or her. Other team members can only see those tasks that they assigned to themselves.

Original article:  Here

Posted By: Robert Walden

This inaugural blog post is to introduce the concepts of improving the work and performance of Project Practitioners.  Future posts will focus on the ideas, techniques and options for practitioners to gain efficiencies from their environment.  The objectives will include:

•    Practitioner asset management and allocation (Schedulers Portfolio)
•    Recycling technology and methodology
•    Linking past experiences and delivery with future ideas and strategy

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this first in the series of “Green EPM” .

Old Microsoft Project schedules:  what does one do with the archived schedules that once were the sun and moon of a project or program, but now just burn megabyte space on a disk drive somewhere? Old schedules may not be of much use, aside from historical records.  However, I presume a considerable amount of work went into the development, execution and closing of the schedules, as it reflected and controlled the performance of the related project.  This is really documentation of the practitioner, and his/her use and enhancements of project management competencies.

Why do we want to recycle old schedules and project data?  Asset management!  The data and presentation of content are the raw assets of the practitioner. It is also the performance record of stakeholders to the project.

What do you want to do?  Start with a new blank Microsoft Project file.  Insert past schedules: Tool bar <<insert; project; select project(s)>>.  Add as many projects as feasible.  This is where you can be creative, but mindful.  You want to bundle the projects accordingly.  For example, projects within similar clients, industries, time frames, etc.  You will also want to ensure your very large schedules are considered as they may dilute the value of being combined with other projects (size issues).  Now that you have consolidated past schedules into one file, you can slice and dice the data to extract unique project meta data.  Examples include: review your notes against a task, identifying unique, common and non-value notes.  Also, look for recurring slippage.  Analyze the WBS, and work packages.  Which resources (whether generic or actual) where more or less proficient?  The output of this exercise allows you, as a practitioner, build a referenceable library of past project experiences, by building your professional assets to be applied to future projects.

This exercise may take some time, but it is time well invested into building a portfolio view of your past (and best) practices and real performance against actual projects.  Recycle, reuse applies to schedules as well as the environment. Eco-technology: data from closed projects is still useful.

Posted By: Tim Cermak