Project Schedule Development

Overview/Description
 Your superior asks, "Is your project on time?" This question can send a shiver down your spine if you know that the project has fallen behind. You could make up the time by working extra hours or hiring more people, but these solutions will come with a cost. With proper planning and an accurate project schedule, this pitfall can be avoided. Project managers use the process of project schedule development to determine realistic start and finish dates and to ensure their project is finished on time. This course, "Project Schedule Development," will help you to understand the process and enable you to increase your chances of a successful project by creating more accurate schedules. This course is aligned with "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK ® Guide), published by the Project Management Institute (PMI ®).

Target Audience
 This course is specifically targeted at project managers, project team members, functional managers with employees assigned to project teams, project stakeholders, any team manager or member interested in project management, executives committed to their organization's growth, managers required to take on new challenges, and top managers with vision.

Expected Duration
3.0 hours

Lesson Objectives:

Inputs to Schedule Development

  • recognize the benefits of using the inputs to project schedule development.
  • match the types of project network diagrams with the given dependencies or conditions.
  • distinguish between resource pool descriptions and resource requirements in given examples.
  • identify schedule constraints and assumptions, given examples.
  • identify the information that should be included in a project or resource calendar.
  • determine whether a project schedule requires a lead or a lag.
  • identify the schedule components of an activity duration estimate.

    • Schedule Development Tools and Techniques

  • recognize the benefits of using the schedule development tools and techniques.
  • perform the calculations necessary to determine a critical path.
  • determine the weighted average for PERT.
  • distinguish between PERT, CPM, and GERT, given examples.
  • determine the appropriate duration compression techniques for a given project.
  • select the advantages to using simulation for a project.
  • determine a probability distribution based on a Monte Carlo Analysis.
  • determine if the resource leveling heuristics technique is suitable for a given scenario.
  • determine the schedule result (finish-to-start dependencies or overlaps) created by the project management software, given a schedule.

    • Outputs from Schedule Development

  • recognize the advantages of using the outputs from project schedule development.
  • match the graphical project schedule format to its characteristic.
  • select the components of a schedule management plan.
  • identify the supporting detail for a given project schedule.
  • determine whether the resource requirements, for a given project schedule, need to be updated.

    • Course Number: PROJ0243