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Manage project execution

Enhance planning, management and tracking of projects with Microsoft Project training and Coaching

Plan to succeed with project management. Plans communicate a vision of how to meet objectives. Planning tools like Microsoft Project help capture, manage and communicate decisions associated with project management. 

Microsoft Project enhances your ability to plan, manage and track projects. A project plan improves your communication with clients, management and your project team.

Microsoft project is powerful but also has a learning curve that deters many from harnessing its power. Shorten the learning curve with ISP training. Too many people try Microsoft Project, give up in frustration and swear they won't use the package again. Most of them don't even scratch the surface of Microsoft Project's power.

ISP offers in-house training courses designed to suit your needs. Select topics and customize training to suit your needs. We use your case studies when working with your teams. This increases the relevance of our training and allows your team to absorb concepts more quickly. Manage Project Execution

Your plan provides a foundation for managing project execution and tracking progress.

 

Manage Project Execution

Time	Topic	Manage Project Execution
8:30am	Publish project plans.	Plans are a powerful communication tool with your team, clients and management. Plans identify roles and responsibilities.
245pm	Focus efforts on high priority items.	Never enough time to do everything. Aim to satisfy your clients' prime objectives.
245pm	Run effective meetings with Turbo brainstorming.	Meetings are where major decisions take place. Make your meetings effective and avoid wasting valuable time.
245pm	Perform project work.	Team members complete assignments and report progress.
245pm	Avoid missing key deadlines with Time-Box Scheduling.	Treat your estimates as a budget. Reward team members for meeting deadlines.
245pm	Monitor project progress.	Capture progress information from team members
245pm	Track and report project progress.
245pm	Manage scope creep with change control.	Identify change requests and completion in your action plan.
245pm	Manage client expectations.
245pm	Bring project in on budget and on time.
245pm	Rescue projects in trouble.	Not all projects or tasks go as planned. Know how to react when problems arise.

Establishing consistent project reporting

Clear communication builds credibility with your sponsor and stakeholders. 

Project manager should create a communication plan early in the project life cycle to establish expectations with the client and management. Schedule project review meetings. Split time between focusing on the project and communicating with clients and management.

Project reporting occurs at two levels. First the project managers report progress on their individual projects. Second the project management office should provide management and clients with an unbiased view of the status of each project. Organizations need an early warning system to identify projects that need attention. Many projects slip behind schedule long before anyone being aware of what is happening.

Project managers communicate progress to clients and management to maintain support for the project so your resources will not be stolen for other projects. Communicate project schedule and budget progress against the project baseline. Progress is measured by finishing key deliverables on reported milestones. Progress reports should include issues and risks that threaten project success.

Project managers can spent lots of time preparing project status reports. Project reporting takes considerable amount of time. Microsoft Project offers the advantage of reporting from a single data source. Reporting from project plans improves integrity of project progress reports. Unlock valuable project information by standardize reports with Microsoft Project Server and Web Access. Project reporting requires project managers to keep their plans up to date.

Organizations can lighten a project manager's communication workload by standardizing reports across projects. Standardization improves communication because users don't have to learn the unique reporting style of each project manager.

The last session discusses methods and tools for reporting project progress to clients and management. Participants will learn to:

1. Create a communications plan for your project.
2. Create consistent reporting standards
3. Understand reporting requirements
4. Design efficient reporting systems.
5. Build custom reports with tables and views.
6. Automate standard project reports across projects.
7. Understand the power of macro's and Visual basic for applications
8. Report progress to management
9. Conduct a post-project audit

email Brian Mullen with your questions

Warning: This web site under continuous improvement.

Click here List of Recommended books on Project Management, Team Building, Estimating, Software Development methodologies, requirements definition, and Microsoft Project.

Copyright March  11, 2007 Brian Mullen, I.S.P. information systems planning corp.
Last updated: April 12, 2007