Project Scheduling and Planning Skills Course

Introduction

The late delivery of projects has become the scourge of project professionals worldwide. Countless numbers of projects undertaken by organizations in the private and public sectors significantly overrun the project schedule and budget, and as a consequence fail to achieve the organization's financial and strategic objectives.  This is often accompanied by sizable increases in costs, reduction in quality and with substantial financial losses to the organization. Why? This is due mainly to the failure of many project professionals to successfully apply the tools and techniques of modern project planning, scheduling and control to their projects.

This course will feature:

• Practice in project planning techniques
• Understand the relationship between time and cost
• Understand crucial issues affecting project control
• Methods to meet deadlines and get project back on track
• Proven techniques to achieve project success

Objectives

• Apply techniques used in resource planning and control
• Understand the time-cost trade-offs
• Identify risk sources and minimize their impact and learn how to sustain project momentum
• Administer project documentation and reporting
• Develop effective performance monitoring and control systems

Content

Day One

Project Scope Planning and Definitions (Fundamentals)

• Introduction to Project Management
• Scope Planning
• Work Packages
• Scope Execution Plan
• Triple Constraints - Time Cost, Scope
• Project Delivery Systems

Day Two

Project Schedule Planning

• Economic Evaluation and impact of interest rates
• Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)
• Project Estimating
• Gantt Chart - Schedule Baseline
• Precedence Network Diagramming
• Building schedule logic
• What is float?

Day Three

Critical Path and Network Scheduling

• Activity development
• Network calculations
• Forward and backward pass
• Lead and Lag Scheduling
• Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
• Time-Cost-Scope Trade-off

Day Four

Advanced Planning Methods and Project Control

• Preparing a Line of Balance Schedule (LSM)
• Project Control Systems
• Earned Value Analysis
• Earned Value Reporting
• Resource Allocation Algorithms for Resource Prioritization
• Time and Cost Tradeoff

Day Five 

Progress Reporting and Schedule Acceleration

• Progress Tracking and Monitoring
• Options for Accelerating the Schedule
• Crashing the Schedule - How?
• Lean Approaches