• Introduction to Microsoft Project

• Overview of project management concepts that apply to Microsoft Project
• Introducing the Microsoft Project interface
• Customizing the Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar

• Creating a New Project Plan

Building a project plan

• Producing a work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Entering tasks, summary tasks and milestones
• Estimating and entering task duration
• Establishing relationships between tasks
• Working with different types of dependencies
• Adjusting the project schedule to target specific dates

Scheduling essentials

• Leveraging manual and automatic scheduling
• Conceptualizing and identifying the critical path
• Analyzing and managing the schedule

Optimizing the project plan

• Implementing lag and lead
• Applying deadline dates to the project plan
• Setting, locating and removing task constraints
• Managing master and subprojects

• Controlling Your Project Plan

Configuring calendars

• Creating new and updating existing calendars
• Analyzing the relationship between project, task and resource calendars
• Changing default calendar options

Applying calendars to projects, tasks and resources

• Assigning calendars appropriately
• Updating your project plan due to calendar changes

Sharing project calendars

• Saving calendar changes to the Global template
• Sharing and organizing calendars

• Keeping Your Project on Track

Preparing for tracking

• Validating the project plan
• Establishing the baseline

Tracking task progress

• Identifying key steps in the tracking process
• Updating the project plan with tracking data
• Analyzing variance against the project plan
• Creating graphical status indicators

Troubleshooting schedule problems

• Reviewing project task updates for timeline problems
• Resolving issues with the project schedule

• Managing Project Resources and Assignments

Creating and assigning resources

• Defining work, material and cost resources
• Assigning resources to tasks
• Utilizing budget resources
• Configuring resource pools

Managing and tracking resource assignments

• Troubleshooting resource assignments
• Investigating and resolving resource over allocations
• Tracking assignment progress
• Leveraging the Usage views to manage assignments

• Analyzing Project Data and Preparing Reports

Creating reports

• Examining basic and dynamic report types
• Designing dashboard indicator reports
• Building custom tables, filters and reports
• Creating Visual Report templates
• Automating reporting tasks via macros