Through an increasingly challenging multimedia-simulated case study, you practice essential project estimating and scheduling techniques to build and manage a workable project plan.

Upon successful completion of this course, the delegates will be able to:

• Construct a product-based WBS
• Build an activity-on-node network diagram
• Determe your task durations using three-point estimates
• Review and improve the estimating process and presenting the results
• Calculate Critical Path
• Find and fix errors in the Gantt chart
• Determine the project costs, total budget and resource requirements
• Assess project status, reforecast schedule and costs, and produce  project status report
• Adapt to sudden change

This course will benefit Project managers and others responsible for the planning and implementation of projects.

This is designed for project team leaders, project planning engineers and heads, and senior project control and business services professionals who have the responsibility for planning and controlling project schedules and costs in client and contracting companies.

Day 1:

Introduction

·         Defining schedule and costs

·         Building a plan from earliest completion date

·         Comparing estimates to actuals

·         Revising your plan

Best Practices for Project Planning

Building the foundation

·         Generating your WBS

·         Developing a product-oriented focus

·         Identifying the appropriate level of detail

Day 2:

Diagramming network relationships

·         Working with network diagrams

·         Applying CPM and PERT diagrams

·         Defining precedence relationships

·         Establishing dependencies

·         Determining lead and lag times

·         Constructing PDM diagrams

Developing Realistic Estimates

Choosing the right estimating model

·         Engaging subject-matter experts

·         Applying the Delphi technique

·         Generating analogous estimates

·         Preparing parametric estimates

·         Contrasting bottom-up and top-down methods

·         Applying Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM)

Dealing with uncertainty

·         Formulating three-point estimates

·         Factoring in contingency

Day 3:

Integrating the Schedule and Critical Path

Computing the Critical Path

·         Adding task durations to determine path lengths

·         Identifying the critical path

·         Recognizing near-critical and non-critical paths

·         Determining probabilistic critical paths

·         Prioritizing your management time

Creating Gantt charts

·         Building Gantt charts following industry standards

·         Representing the relative durations of tasks graphically

Fine-tuning your plan

·         Calculating activity float

·         Planning delivery by applying earliest start times

·         Optimizing the plan using latest start times

·         Rescheduling activities within their float tolerance

Building a Budget

Categorizing project costs

·         Identifying direct and indirect cost elements

·         Itemizing capital expenses

·         Costing based on WBS tasks

Graphical modeling of costs

·         Calculating total project costs

·         Adding costs to the Gantt chart

·         Determining expected cash flow

Day 4:

Realistic Resourcing

Schedules that make sense

·         Factoring in productivity

·         Allocating resources effectively

·         Baselining your plan

Responding to delivery-date changes

·         Fast-tracking the project plan

·         Crashing the Critical Path

·         Leveraging Goldratt's Critical Chain

Measuring and Improving Performance

Monitoring your plan

·         Recording actual durations

·         Tracking cash flow

·         Assessing performance

·         Determining and summarizing project status

Day 5:

Performing EVA

·         Calculating schedule and budget efficiency

·         Quantifying cost and schedule variance

·         Projecting impact on project outcomes

·         Mapping EVA to cost accounting

·         Reconciling and addressing project issues

Communicating with Stakeholders

·         Incorporating inbound information into outbound reports

·         Applying the right level of detail

·         Interfacing project information to organizational reporting

A variety of methodologies will be used during the course that includes:

·         (30%) Based on Case Studies

·         (30%) Techniques 

·         (30%) Role Play

·         (10%) Concepts

·         Pre-test and Post-test

·         Variety of Learning Methods

·         Lectures

·         Case Studies and Self Questionaires

·         Group Work

·         Discussion

·         Presentation

This rate includes participant’s manual, Hand-Outs, buffet lunch, coffee/tea on arrival, morning & afternoon of each day.

Daily Course Timings:

    08:00 - 08:20       Morning Coffee / Tea

    08:20 - 10:00       First Session

    10:00 - 10:20       Coffee / Tea / Snacks

    10:20 - 12:20       Second Session

    12:20 - 13:30       Lunch Break & Prayer Break

    13:30 - 15:00       Last Session