Estimating, Scheduling and Managing Project Performance

Through case studies and hands-on practice, examine each step in estimating time, resources and costs for budgeting and project scheduling.

The elements of the planning phase of a project are critical to its execution and control. Learn how to accurately track performance throughout the project’s lifecycle using valuable metrics.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

This course can be applied to the Project Management Certificate.

Instructor

Jackie Ramin, PMP

Jackie Ramin is a Program Manager at CDW in Madison, Wisconsin. In her nineteen years at CDW, she has managed information technology projects including Cisco IP telephony, network engineering, servers and storage, data center co-location, e-commerce web site development, and ... read more

Benefits and Learning Outcomes

Start projects on an optimistic note, with better estimates, and keep them on schedule
Develop earned-value management metrics to measure performance
Have your projects finish on schedule
Gain immediate results to take back to your daily applications
Collaborate with others on real-world situations and gain immediate solutions to take back to your workplace.

Course Outline/Topics

Seminar Outline

Estimating

Assessing a project charter prior to creating estimates
What’s involved in estimating time
Scheduled and unscheduled duration
Effort
Defining the role of the work breakdown structure in estimating
Estimating duration using weighted average estimating
Estimating and calculating effort
Linking a work breakdown structure to resources and costs
Connecting a work breakdown structure to estimated duration, scheduled duration and effort
Customizing Microsoft Project^® to ensure estimates are accurate
Estimating non-HR costs

Scheduling

Creating a project roadmap (the schedule)
Types of dependencies when ordering tasks
Scheduling reality check
Types of dependencies between tasks
Constraints on the schedule
Types of constraints on start and finish dates
Selecting the type of constraint to use on the schedule
Using scheduling diagrams: Activity on Node Network Diagram, Gantt Chart, PERT Chart
Identifying predecessor and successor tasks for a project
Understanding critical path: What it is, where it is, why should I bother and how will I know it is calculated correctly
Scheduling resources
Resource leveling
How to calculate a productive day
Eight types of resource loading on the task
Determining if resources are over-committed and what to do about it
Baselining the schedule to measure progress

Performance To Date

Determining the types of performance to track at the beginning of a project: Actuals, progress to date, stoplight reports and summary reports
Tracking and reconciling actuals against the estimates and the schedule
Interpreting a schedule stoplight report
What to do when the project is in trouble
Fast tracking a project
Crashing a project
How to decide which course of action to take
Interpreting and taking action on a project summary report