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

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)