Master using Microsoft Project to plan and manage your projects on this two-day introduction to Microsoft Project training course.
Our friendly, certified Project trainers will have you confidently using Project in no time.
This is a hands-on course. We make sure that you have plenty of time to try out what you are being taught and ask questions.
By the time you finish, you will be able to:
For more advanced users we also offer an advanced Project training course and training on Project Online Professional.
Our usual trainer for this course is Serena.
Serena began her career as a business analyst before moving into IT training.
She is a Microsoft certified and TPMA qualified trainer and has 20+ years’ experience of leading training courses, managing training projects and writing training materials.
Click the sections below to see the full details of what is covered on this course.
The first session of this course introduces the basics. It begins by showing you how to navigate around the MS Project interface and menus. This should be familiar to anyone who is an experienced user of Microsoft Office. From there it introduces the basics of setting up a new project. So creating a new project and setting it up with basic details.
The key topics trained in this session are:
This session covers some useful background and helps to put Microsoft Project into a practical context. We review what is project management, why planning is so important and how project management tools, and more particularly computers, can make the process of project management simpler and faster.
The key topics trained in this session are:
Tasks are one of the key building blocks of project management. This section explains how MS Project handles the individual tasks that make up your overall project. It shows you how to create a new task, how it is measured (time, work, units etc) and how to move or duplicate tasks that you have already created.
This session also covers how you set the constraints on a task and the deadlines for a task. Ensuring that the tasks for your project are correctly set up and configured is vital for a smooth running project.
The key topics trained in this session are:
Dependencies explain the relationships between tasks in Project. Within a project most tasks will be linked. So for example, if you are renovating a house you cannot paint a wall before you have plastered it, allowed it to dry and prepared it to be painted. This session focuses on how Project works with related tasks and how you can set up the dependencies to help you understand how your project is progressing and how best to run it.
We look at working in Project with tasks that have a lead time and also a lag time in this session. These are tasks where they can either overlap to some extent with the previous task (lead time) or where some clear time is required between one task being completed and the subsequent task commencing (lag time). Adding lag times is also a simple way to build in a small amount of contingency into a plan.
The key topics trained in this session are:
This session focuses on how you set up and input your project resources into MS Project. It also shows you how to set up the costs of your resources correctly. Once you have correctly set up your tasks and resources for a project, you are well on your way to having a clear plan for its execution.
The key topics trained in this session are:
Having set up your resources in the previous session, this session covers how you then work with and assign your resources to tasks. It covers part-time resourcing and how you can specify usage either by hours or percentages. We also look at a case study on resources in Project to finish this session.
The key topics trained in this session are:
The other key input into a project is materials. This session covers these in detail showing you how to assign material consumption in various ways so that it best fits the profile of usage in the project.
The key topics trained in this session are:
The final part of working with the inputs for a project is to pull together materials and resources into a Project Cost plan. This session shows you how to add costs either per day or per usage, or to make them fixed. It also shows you how to change the costs during a project if necessary. Once we have completed this session, creating a full cost plan for your project will be simple.
The key topics trained in this session are:
This session drills down into the detail of working with deadlines and constraints. By default all tasks are set with a constraint of As Soon As Possible but if something needs to be completed for a set date (for example a conference or other fixed date) then setting that date will allow Project to flag up very early if changes to the plan will impact that date.
The key topics trained in this session are:
This session shows you how to use Project to manage and keep track of a live project once you have it fully set up. It shows you how to create a baseline for your project. This allows you to then compare future project plans with your initial plan very simply. We also cover how to update a project for actual results and how to delay tasks that are already set up.
The key topics trained in this session are:
You do not need any prior knowledge of Project to attend this course, as it’s designed for beginners.
As long as you have a basic working understanding of Windows applications, you’ll be absolutely fine.
Our courses run from 9.30 am to roughly 4.30 pm with a break mid-morning and mid-afternoon and a longer break for lunch.
To attend this Project course online, you will need:
✔ MS Project on your Windows PC/laptop with a camera, speakers & microphone
✔ A stable internet connection capable of running Zoom
✔ To be a confident computer user and able to use Zoom to attend the course
If you have access to a second screen, we would encourage you to use it as it improves the experience.