Scheduling with Microsoft Project (MS Project) like a pro

Updated Feb 2023: What’s new in latest MS Project 2021 updates + video on WBS

Updated Nov 2023: Made Cheat sheets and Assignments slides numbering clearer

Do you want to know how the professional project managers use MS project for scheduling?

Are you a beginner and want to learn to schedule with MS Project the way professionals do it without going through the soporific details of functions that are never used?

Hi all – In my 20 years as Project Manager I have successfully implemented projects for HP and IBM (amongst others) and if you follow this course you will know MS Project as much as I (and most Project Managers) do.

That’s all there is to it but it can be very powerful if used properly.

Overview

This course will show you how to create a schedule in Microsoft Project like pros do.

The course focuses on the most important functionality that is used in real life, on real projects. In my 20+ years as Project Manager I have only used the functions outlined in this course.

Project Managers simply do not have time to build complex projects schedules. Schedules need to be

• easy to maintain / fast to update
• easy to share / easy to understand

For this reason Project Managers only use a few (but powerful) components of the Microsoft Project / MS Project functionality.

This course focuses on what knowledge is required to build a solid and usable schedule. The type of schedule project managers needs, for him/her but also to present a clear timeline to peers and Management.

There are 3 main chapters to this course:

In the introduction, I walk you through the software.

• First very briefly then
• In more detail where I show you the main functionalities.

Part 1 will show you

• The main functionality
• How to build a schedule in 6 steps
• Practice activity for each concept.

In Part 2 we will

• Review some more advanced concepts.
• Do a practice activity for this Part.

Finally in the conclusion I will explain some other functionalities that are never used.

Have fun!