Intermediate Forecast Scheduling (Workload Modeling) - online course - live

For those who are experienced users of Microsoft Project 2016/2019/2021 or Project for the Desktop (Project Online).  The course is designed for: project schedulers, project team members, project managers, project controllers, project control officers, and project engineers. This course is a live, online class: You will attend 4 live session of 3 hours each (total of 12 PDUs).  The Dates for the sessions will be determined with you. The sessions will be recorded, so you can easily catch up on a missed session. About This Course A project schedule as a workload model is a schedule that projects the aggregated workloads of the resources over time and the total effort for the project. It is an effort‑based schedule and requires loading resources into the schedule.  A Workload Model supports organization-wide resource management; Project Online will aggregate total workloads by resource across projects. The overall goal of the course is to learn how to create Workload Models of a project. The content of the course is restricted to scheduling a single project in Microsoft Project Online. Each Participant Will Receive A copy of the published textbook 'Forecast Scheduling with Microsoft Project Online 2018'.    NEW a free one-year license for our 'Forecast Scheduling App' that performs the checks on best practices in an automated fashion and helps you improve your schedule. An electronic certificate with 12 PDUs (live-online and self-paced classes) upon completion of the course An opportunity to earn the 'Forecast Scheduler – Workload Modeling' certificate of competency and earn an additional 20 PDUs (For more, see: Overview Certification) Please Bring to Class A computer loaded with Microsoft Project 2016/2019 or Project for the Desktop (Project Online).  Learning Objectives After this course, you will: Be able to create a valid, dynamic and robust workload model of your project to forecast it continuously. A workload model is a resource-loaded project schedule. Be an expert in optimizing resource-constrained project schedules: Resource-Critical Path Be able to create custom reports with regards to time forecasts and workload projections Know how to efficiently update the schedule during project execution to continuously forecast the project end date, workloads and cost  Course Topics  From Time Model to Workload Model: Add the 5A’s: Activities, Availabilities of Resources, Assignments, Assignment Effort, Assignment Units Add the activities Assign resources while paying attention to assigning a percentage or number of resources to an activity, so that the amounts of Work calculated by MS Project come out right  Setup The Principle of Forecast Scheduling: creating a schedule in such a way that it continually forecasts time and the aggregated workloads and total amount of effort for the project. Options: relevant options for workload models Manually scheduled tasks and whether to use them (Not!) The Project Calendar  Work Breakdown Structure Finding the right level of detail for breaking down the work Fixed Duration, Fixed Units and Fixed Work tasks and when to use each type of task Recurring tasks (status meetings) and overhead tasks  Estimates  A standard process for estimating Estimating and entering work (i.e. effort as opposed to durations) Protect the Work estimate; set task Type to Fixed Work Workload model formula: Work/ Units of Resources = Duration Difficulties in estimating and techniques to address them  Dependencies and Network Logic  The principle of dynamic scheduling saves you time Using dependencies to model cause-and-effect relationships in the project Types of dependencies and when to use each type How to check the completeness and correctness of your network logic  Deadlines (target dates) How Deadlines support the principle of dynamic scheduling and how Constraints wreck it Type of schedule constraints (fixed dates): How they make your schedule rigid and maintenance-hungry  Resources Types of resources: human (Work), material, facility, equipment (Material) and monetary (Cost) resources Humans: Generic versus actual resources: when to use each type? Part-time, full-time and team resources Flat resource availability or availability that varies over time Stable rates or rates that vary over time Calendars: the project calendar, task calendars, base calendars and resource calendars   Assignments The formula: Duration * Units = Work How to best deal with this formula: Three rules to make MS Project an easy tool for you Assign Resources dialog Team Planner view: pro’s and con’s Part-time versus full-time assignments  How to manage resource workloads Preventing or resolving overallocations? Making workloads visible and finding over-allocations Resolving over-allocations: When to level by hand and when to rely on MS Project  Leveling workloads by hand The best view to resolve over-allocations yourself: Resource Allocation view A complete list of methods to resolve over-allocations manually  Leveling workloads automatically What MS Project can and cannot do for you in resolving over-allocations Leveling algorithms used by MS Project Where to check how MS Project resolved the over-allocations: Leveling Gantt view  Optimizing for Time and Workloads Review of The Critical Path Method (CPM) How resource-leveling affects the Critical Path Having limited resources in a resource-constrained schedule: the NEW concept of a Resource-Critical Path that incorporates logical AND resource dependencies Finding the Resource-Critical Path in a Workload Model Ways to shorten or crash the Resource-Critical Path  Checking the Schedule before Publishing Is the schedule a valid, robust and dynamic model of the project to forecast its end date, the aggregated workloads over time and the total effort continuously? Using our 76-point checklist for Workload Models and our Forecast Scheduling App (FSA) to identify the violating tasks / resources How-to steps on improving your schedule with FSA  Reporting the Project, the Way You Want Creating one-page reports … always! How to defend a visible time-buffer to your sponsor or client Timeline view Use the Reports ribbon Develop custom workload views with custom Fields, Tables, Filters and Groups Create custom workload reports: Workloads over Time (Time-Phased and Cumulative), the NEW concept of an ‘Earned Work’ report (a simplified version of Earned Value expressed in ‘hours’) How to re-use reports elsewhere using the Organizer  How to enter actual progress and how to update estimates in the schedule:  Updating tasks versus updating assignments (the latter needs an electronic time sheet) Baselining: how to maintain a baseline when change requests are approved Efficiently updating tasks (no electronic timesheet) Efficiently updating assignments (using an electronic timesheet)