Project Management (Part 5) - Planning Time: Determining How Much and When

In Project Management (Part 5) - Planning Time: Determining How Much and When, you'll learn ...

• How to accurately plan your project’s personnel needs and nonpersonnel resources
• How to factor productivity, efficiency, and availability into work-effort estimates
• The three stages of a project budget and how to prepare them
• Methods for determining project costs for a detailed budget estimate
• The steps you need to take to determine, evaluate, and manage the risks that may affect your project
• How to gauge the likelihood of a risk and estimate the extent of consequences

Overview

Credit: 4 PDH

Length: 48 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 5 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 5 of the series, covers how to develop your project schedule and estimate the resources you’ll need, as well as how to identify and manage project risks.

In this course, you’ll learn how to accurately plan your project’s resources. You’ll learn the three stages of a project budget. You’ll learn the methodology for estimating costs when preparing a detailed project budget.

You’ll learn how to identify and manage the risks that can threaten your project. You’ll learn how to recognize risk factors. You’ll learn how to assess risks by looking at probability and consequences. Finally, you’ll learn how to develop a risk-management strategy.

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.