Project Management (Part 4) - You Want This Project Done When?

In Project Management (Part 4) - You Want This Project Done When?, you'll learn ...

• An organized approached to help you develop a more realistic estimate of how long your project will take
• How to use a network diagram to determine schedule possibilities
• Methods to reduce the length of your critical paths
• Why you shouldn’t allow “fudge factors” in your schedule

Overview

Preview a portion of this course before purchasing it.

Credit: 3 PDH

Length: 37 pages

Over the past 25 to 30 years the number of projects in the workplace has skyrocketed. Projects of all types and sizes are now the way that organizations accomplish their work. People who want to devote their careers to planning and managing those projects are vital to their successes.

At the same time, a new breed of project manager has emerged. This new breed may not have set career goals to become project managers, but they do know they must successfully manage projects to move ahead in their careers. Clearly, project management has become a critical skill, not a career choice.

Even though these people realize they need special tools, techniques, and knowledge to handle their new types of assignments, they may not be able or willing to devote large amounts of time to acquiring them, which is where this Project Management course series comes into play.

This course is Part 4 of a 9-part series based on the popular book Project Management for Dummies, 4th Edition, which provides tools and techniques in accordance with PMI’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). Each course in the series is stand-alone. Feel free to jump back and forth through the courses depending on your own project-management knowledge and experience and your current needs. However, it is suggested that you complete the series in sequential order if you are new to project management concepts.

This course, Part 4 of the series, will show you techniques that will help you proactively develop an achievable schedule for your project. You’ll learn how to draw network diagrams and how to choose the best one for your project. You’ll discover how critical path impacts your overall project schedule.

You’ll learn the concepts of slack, forward and backward passes, mandatory vs. discretional dependencies, predecessors and successors and the reasons why you should eliminate “fudge factors” from your schedule. You’ll learn how to avoid the pitfall of backing in to a schedule. You’ll learn how to actively estimate activity durations. And you’ll learn methods to reduce your schedule’s critical paths.

This course is applicable to engineers of all disciplines working in any industry. Whether you are an experienced project manager or you’ve never been on a project team… Whether you’ve had significant project-management training or you’ve had none… this course series will provide the knowledge and tools you’ll need to plan and manage projects.

The courses in this series were written to be direct and (relatively) easy to understand. But don’t be misled — the simple text still navigates all the critical tools and techniques you’ll need to support your project planning, scheduling, budgeting, organizing, and controlling.

For those seeking Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, the tools and techniques provided in this course series are in accordance with PMBOK. In fact, a section is provided at the end of each course module that specifies where the topics in the module are addressed in PMBOK.

It’s important to note that PMBOK identifies what best practices are but doesn’t address in detail how to perform them or deal with difficulties you may encounter as you try to perform them. In contrast, this course series focuses heavily on how to perform the project-management techniques and processes. However, if you’re preparing to take the PMP examination, use these courses as a companion to PMBOK, not as a substitute for it.

From Project Management For Dummies ® , 4th Edition. Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey . Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Specific Knowledge or Skill Obtained

This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:

• How to illustrate a work plan using a network diagram
• How to approximate activity durations and form your project’s initial schedule
• How to present your project’s schedule
• How to use the Critical Path Method (CPM) to build your project’s overall schedule
• The difference between a forward pass and a backward pass
• The concepts of total slack and free slack
• Factors that affect predecessors
• Mandatory vs. discretional dependencies
• Two methods for deciding on the immediate predecessors for your project’s activities
• How to avoid the pitfall of backing in to your schedule
• The sequence of steps required to develop an initial project schedule
• Methods for estimating activity durations
• Commonly used formats in which to present your schedule

Certificate of Completion

You will be able to immediately print a certificate of completion after passing a multiple-choice quiz consisting of 18 questions. PDH credits are not awarded until the course is completed and quiz is passed.