Managing Time-Constrained Projects with Microsoft Project

Learn how to manage projects with time constraints and fast-track schedules with Microsoft Project.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files

1. Checking Your Project Schedule

• Making tasks automatically scheduled or manually scheduled
• Checking task links
• Adding lag or lead between tasks
• What does the Deadline field do?
• Tracking deadlines with formatted taskbars
• Adding buffers to your schedule
• Managing buffers

2. Reviewing the Schedule

• Displaying the critical path and slack
• Fixing an incomplete critical path
• Filtering to show the critical path
• Filtering to show multiple critical paths
• Setting a baseline
• Looking for schedule problems

3. Shortening the Schedule

• Fast-tracking tasks
• Adjusting lag time between tasks
• Understanding crashing
• Finding the best tasks to crash
• Adding resources to tasks to shorten duration
• Using different resources to shorten duration
• Reducing scope
• Working with a task calendar

4. Executing the Schedule

• Resetting a baseline
• Entering actuals for a time-constrained project

Conclusion

• Next steps