Introduction to Project Scheduling

Perhaps the biggest contributor to project success is starting the project on the right path. A properly developed project schedule ensures that the project is addressing the correct strategic and tactical objectives and that the expectations of project stakeholders and team members are both realistic and aligned. This one-day workshop teaches a structured approach to defining project objectives and priorities, choosing an appropriate delivery strategy, and then creating a project schedule that will set expectations and that can be used as a baseline against which to measure progress.

Learning Objectives

Those new to project planning practices will learn how to define project objectives and priorities, choose an appropriate delivery strategy, and create a project schedule.

Course Outline

  • Defining Project Scope & Objectives
    • Product Breakdown Structures (PBS)
    • Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)
  • Work Package Prioritization
  • Delivery Strategy Options
    • Waterfall
    • Iterative
    • Incremental
    • Agile
    • Choosing the Right Approach
  • Rolling Wave Planning
  • Defining Milestones
  • Estimating Techniques
  • Building a Schedule Using the Critical Path Method (CPM)
    • Creating a Network Diagram
    • Forward Pass
    • Backward Pass
    • Calculating Float
    • Finding the Critical Path
  • Schedule Reduction Techniques
    • Crashing
    • Fast Tracking
    • Phasing
  • Schedule Tracking & Control

Who Should Attend

This course provides introductory information on project planning. The course is primarily aimed at those interested in learning about project management; however, all project delivery participants (including sponsors, financial analysts, and project team participants) will get value from attending.

Course Materials

Participants in this course receive a course workbook including printouts of all course presentation materials.

Testimonials

Anonymous participant feedback from a session taught in March 2014:

  • "Excellent!"
  • "The facilitator was very effective. Knowledgeable about subject matter and able to adapt to the needs of the group."
  • "The teacher was very professional and easy to understand."
  • "A perfect teacher."
  • "The instructor was very clear and gave tools that can be used on complex or small projects and gave examples."