Effective Planning & Scheduling Courseware and Training Materials

What's included?
What’s included?
Available for delivery as a download from our web server or provided on CD, this courseware package includes the following resources to make your trainer’s life much, much easier.

This courseware package includes:

	Student Manual. Fully customisable. May be opened in any wordprocessor and changed to meet your exact needs.
	Trainer manual. Fully customisable with additional information for trainers.
	Ice breakers and class activities. Fully customisable. Delivered as a folder full of activities for your students.
	Content overview. Fully customisable. Comprehensive course overview to help you market your course to your customers.
	PowerPoint presentations. Fully customisable. Complete set of PowerPoint slides for use by the trainer.
	Sales information sheets. Fully customisable. Information sheets to help you sell your course to your employees or external customers.
	Additional reading… Fully customisable. Give your students some recommended further reading materials for this course.

To get started, just open this ‘Effective Planning & Scheduling’ training courseware in your favourite word processor. You can fully customise the materials to suit your exact learning needs and include your own branding. Your own tailor-made course, delivered ‘off-the-peg’ and saving you thousands of pounds in development time and man-hours. Just press print and the perfect learning experience is yours to deliver.

Course outline
Course outline

Introduction

As project managers and leads, we all know how difficult it can be to accurately determine the duration of a project, yet that is exactly what is expected of us on a regular basis. This workshop will not disclose the secret of creating an accurate schedule, because there isn’t one. However, it will provide the factors and fundamental elements that you should consider and address when creating any type of schedule.

Participants should complete the Intermediate Project Management workshop prior to this course, or have equivalent knowledge. This course presumes that participants

• Can define projects and project management
• Understand a project’s life cycle
• Are familiar with the basics of project planning and scheduling
• Know how to complete a Statement of Work and/or a project charter

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Define and create a Work Breakdown Structure
• Identify and understand task relationships
• Estimate task durations and determine project duration
• Construct a network diagram
• Calculate the critical path of a project
• Use the Program Evaluation and Review Technique to create estimates
• Plan for risks
• Create a communication plan
• Effectively allocate project resources
• Update and monitor the project schedule

Course contents

• Introduction and Course Overview You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.
• Projects and Schedules To begin, participants will review what a project is and why schedules are so important.
• The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) This session will teach participants what a Work Breakdown Structure is, what its role is, what formats and numbering can be used, and the process to create one. Participants will then create their own WBS for taking a camping trip.
• Estimating Activity Durations Next, participants will receive tips on how to estimate the length of each task and the project.
• Estimating Case Study In this session, participants will perform task estimations for their camping trip project.
• Identifying Task Dependencies In this session, participants will learn key definitions and the four types of dependencies. Participants will also complete two exercises to give them some hands-on practice.
• Aligning Resources with Activities Next, participants will learn about resources, Resource Breakdown Structures, resource scheduling, and resource leveling. Participants will then complete a case study.
• Project Planning To begin the second day, participants will learn how to create network diagrams, use the Critical Path Method and the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), and create Gantt charts. Participants will go through the full Critical Path Method to create a network diagram with earliest and latest start and finish times and slack.
• Scheduling Software In this session, participants will discuss the benefits and disadvantages of using project management software.
• Uncertainty and Risk Management Whether we choose to address it or not, there is some form of risk in every project we undertake. This session will give participants some ways to manage risk.
• Communication This session will explore the four key elements of any communication and give participants a framework for communicating with various project team members. Participants will also complete a communication plan.
• Creating a Viable Schedule Each of the previous topics will come together in this section to create a workable schedule. Participants will also brainstorm solutions for common scheduling problems.
• Updating and Monitoring the Schedule To wrap up the course, participants will receive some tips on schedule management.
• Workshop Wrap-Up At the end of the second day, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.

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