Microsoft Project 2010 Fundamentals

Quick Facts

Delivery Method Online
Professional Certificate
24hrs Suggested Study Time
3 Months Access
Tutor Support
Study On Any Device
2820 Students

Discover how to effectively plan, implement, and control projects using Microsoft Project 2010, the world's most popular project management software.

Discover how to effectively plan, implement, and control projects using Microsoft Project 2010. In these lessons, you'll learn how to use Microsoft Project to think through and organise your project's details, plan a schedule, sequence tasks, produce a baseline, assign resources and costs, track your progress, identify and analyse variances, and revise your project plan.

Once you've constructed a basic schedule, you'll see how to enlarge it and share it with clients and co-workers. In addition, you'll learn Microsoft Project's techniques for fine-tuning different aspects of your project, including splitting tasks for work interruptions and defining material consumption rates.

The knowledge you gain from this course will help you avoid going down dead-end alleys and prevent you from overloading your schedule. If you encounter trouble on your project, you'll be able to apply a number of powerful problem resolution techniques to help get your project back on track.

No matter how complex your projects are, Microsoft Project will help you cut them down to size. By the end of the course, you'll be able to produce project plans that wow your audience and empower you to achieve your business goals.

Courses are delivered to you through expertly executed lessons, online instruction and interaction with like-minded students. Our courses are designed to deliver all of the benefits of studying in a classroom whilst giving you the flexibility to study at a time and place to suit your needs. You can access your classroom 24/7 from any device with an internet connection.

This course has a 3 month duration. You'll complete comprehensive lessons, quizzes and assignments before submitting your final exam at the end of the course to achieve your certificate. Courses must be completed within the 3 month access period.

Microsoft Project can help you manage your project's schedule, costs, and scope in a way that you've never dreamed of. Too often, Project users never use this powerful tool to its fullest potential. In your first lesson, you’ll discover how to improve your project by adopting a formal management approach. You’ll get a quick overview of Project Management, and then you’ll learn the basics of Microsoft Project, including a summary of the Gantt Chart view and ways to create and enter project tasks.

If you're looking for ways to keep organized, you'll see just how to do that in today's lesson! We'll walk through steps to create a project schedule in no time flat. Once you create and enter tasks in Project's Gantt Chart view, you’ll set a schedule by using a calendar and assigning lead times. Then, you’ll need to create task dependencies, sometimes known as links. You'll see how to perform these activities and, in the process, you’ll become comfortable using Project's many dialog boxes. Before you know it, you'll be creating schedules for all your projects with little effort.

You won't get too far with your project without adding resources. While tasks create the backbone of your project, people, equipment, and material bring your project to life. In this lesson, you’ll find out how to apply two types of Project resources—work resources, and material resources. We'll look at two more dialog boxes—Resource Information and Assign Resources—and you'll learn how to analyze resources by using the Resource Sheet and Resource Usage views. 

No matter what project you work on, the bottom line is always important. So get ready to add the final piece to your basic project schedule—costs. We'll start things off by looking through a brief overview of cost accounting, exploring fixed, variable, relevant, and accrued costs. After this review, you'll learn how to assign costs by using the Resource Sheet. You'll even discover how to assign different costs for the same resource and analyze the overall costs for your project by using the Cost Table.

Successful project managers are known for their efficiency and for safeguarding private information. Microsoft Project provides two excellent methods to help you in these areas: project templates and project security. You’ll find out how to use some of the many templates Project has to offer, including the Residential Construction template and the New Product template. You'll also learn how to protect your project information with backups, passwords, and write protection. Then you’ll discover how to put Project’s task constraints to good use.

In this lesson, you’ll discover how easy it is to modify your basic schedules and work with project data. You'll look at the various Project views, such as the Calendar, Leveling Gantt, and the Network Diagram. And if you don't like the default colors or fonts in your schedule or table, you'll be well-prepared to make changes. You'll even learn how and why you might want to create a combination view; add notes to your project; or sort, filter, and group data. 

Many projects experience schedule compression when management or clients ask that the project be completed sooner and for less. In today's lesson, you’ll discover how to improve your schedule's performance. You’ll explore the Project Statistics dialog box, and you’ll learn how to determine the ideal starting point in terms of planned costs and completion dates. You'll see how to change task dependencies to speed up your project, and also find out how to split tasks to add more lead time. You'll also learn how to create recurring tasks and attaché notes to your project’s task bars.

Before you implement your project, you need to create a baseline. This will help you track actual results against what you originally set out to accomplish. Microsoft Project makes it possible to set up a baseline with a few mouse clicks. You'll learn how to create a baseline and then see a variety of ways, including using the Tracking toolbar, to record your actual project results.

Here's where things really start to come together! You'll learn how to compare actual results to your baseline by using the Gantt Chart and reviewing a table. You'll discover how useful status identifiers and progress lines can be to quickly gain information about your project's position. You’ll also begin using the Tracking Gantt and filters to automatically identify slipping tasks. You'll also take a stroll through the basics of variance analysis by discussing the Start and Finish Date, Resources, and Work Variance Tables.

Once your project gets rolling, outsiders will probably want to know how things are going. It can be a real time drain answering each request individually. When others request information from you, Microsoft Project offers the perfect solution: Reports. We'll go over 20 standard reports in five different categories in today's lesson. By the time you finish, you'll be well acquainted with Project’s reporting capabilities, and also, know how to create Visual Reports as Project automatically exports data to Microsoft Excel and Visio.

Now that you're using reports to share project information, you'll occasionally need to print out various views and tables. In this lesson, you’ll delve into printing Microsoft Project documents. You'll be a master at creating different views of your project with the Page Setup dialog box, and you'll clearly understand the mechanics of the Print dialog box and the Print Preview.

No project is complete until it's officially closed. In this final lesson, you'll find out how to close your project and use the Organizer to help you customize and copy views for future projects.

Tony Swaim

Tony Swaim has helped many clients, colleagues, and students reach their professional and personal goals. He has been an online instructor since 1998 and has taught at colleges and universities across the United States since 1981. His focus areas ... Read more

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Frequently Asked Questions

Once you've made the payment, we'll send you a confirmation email with a link to start your course. Feel free to get started whenever you're ready!

You'll have 3 months access to your course. In that time you are free to study at your own pace. The course duration is 24 hours.

Online learning is a flexible way to study that fits around your schedule, giving you the freedom to learn at your own pace from anywhere in the world. You'll have 3 months to complete the course and can take the multiple-choice questions and final exam whenever it suits you.

If you need help, you can contact us anytime. You can also join the discussion area where you can interact with other students. The discussion area for each lesson is open for the entire duration of the course.

Of course! We offer a 7-day money back guarantee. As long as you haven't completed the course, you can get a full refund within 7 days of enrolling.

We do not offer extensions or transfers for this self-paced course. However, you will have 3 months to complete the course, and if you need to cancel within the first 10 days of enrolment, we offer a money back guarantee.

What people are saying about our courses

Mr. Tony Swaim is an excellent instructor, as I have had him for other courses.

Verified Student

I feel like I learned enough of the MS Project program to use it on the job. Good class.

Verified Student

I thought the instructor was terrific! The course was very good and useful for my work as a PM.

Verified Student

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Quick Facts

Delivery Method Online
Professional Certificate
24hrs Suggested Study Time
3 Months Access
Tutor Support
Study On Any Device
8314 Students

Learn from an experienced project manager who teaches you the tricks of the project management trade.

Increase your value to your employer by discovering and mastering essential quantitative and qualitative project management applications.

A successful project begins with process definition, data collection, and the scoping of project requirements. Every project ends with a motivated project team able to accomplish objectives on time and within budget. Winning projects rely on accurate cost and time estimates, identification of the critical path, and use of tracking and control tools.

In this course, an experienced Project Management Professional will teach you the same powerful tools and techniques that experienced project management professionals rely on every day.

You'll increase the probability of project success by mastering the tricks of the trade: Earned Value Performance Measurement, Gantt Charts, Network Scheduling, Work Breakdown Structure, and Cost-Volume Analysis.

You'll become proficient at recruiting project team members and empowering them to succeed. You'll understand the stages of team development, and you'll gain skills in developing and motivating team leaders. You'll learn how to understand and relate to an organisational culture and the differing characteristics of its work groups.

You'll also learn about project software, statistics, change management, processes, and estimating. And you'll gain valuable experience with project planning, control and data analysis tools.

In our first lesson, you'll learn how to use a variety of project management data collection tools including check sheets, histograms, performance charts, and process definition tools such as work breakdown structure (WBS) and flowcharts. After you master these tools, you'll be able to increase your project management effectiveness by leaps and bounds.

Estimating is a very important activity for every organization. It helps you calculate time and costs for your project. When you successfully use estimates, your actual cost of project work is very close to your projections. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to apply quantitative and qualitative estimating methods, such as historical analogy, the walk through and Delphi methods, expected value, and estimates under uncertainty.

Earned value is gaining in popularity in project management circles. Although some people view it as a new concept, they're often surprised to learn that it's been around for more than 30 years. In today's lesson, I'll define earned value, describe its history, and discuss its benefits. You'll learn about the graphical and mathematical overview of earned value, and discover how to create a step-by-step earned value performance measurement (EVPM) system.

Gantt charts, along with work breakdown structure (WBS), earned value performance measurement (EVPM), and the precedence diagram method (PDM), make up the big four of project management. A Gantt chart may be the most popular tool associated with project management because it's an easy to follow timeline chart. In today's lesson, you'll learn about the history of Gantt charts, find out how to create one, and discover their benefits and limitations.

Network scheduling, along with earned value, represents one of the most technical aspects of project management. If you enjoy working with charts and numbers, this lesson is right up your alley! As with earned value, the precedence diagram method (PDM) includes a fair amount of terminology and a little bit of tricky math. Today you'll learn the basics of networks and see how they relate to project management. You'll discover activity-on-arc (AOA) and activity-on-node (AON) network scheduling methods and understand how to use task dependencies, dummy activities, and float time.

In today's lesson, we'll take a break from using calculators and studying elaborate models. You'll learn how resource planning, work flow diagrams, and storyboards can help you create and implement an effective project plan. I'll also show you how to define and implement a project change control system and to how control project costs.

Today, we'll discuss a few more tools to help you with your projects. We'll begin with cost-volume analysis, a tool to help you optimize choices using costs, volume, and desired profits. We'll move on to Monte Carlo simulation, a sophisticated tool you can use when you deal with completely random conditions. You'll learn how to use force field analysis, a tool that helps you evaluate a decision based on pros and cons, and apply the Pareto principle, a 200-year-old concept that helps you to focus on what's important.

I believe that too many people in the project management field place too high of an emphasis on the role of project management software. While it has an important role to play as a tool, software is not a substitute for sound planning, effective implementation and control, and positive leadership. In today's lesson, I'll discuss the nature of project management software and help you identify winning techniques and processes. You'll read two case studies to help you understand issues pertaining to software implementation. You'll learn why some people are reluctant to use project management software, and discover ways to evaluate and select a software supplier.

Many project managers and team members struggle to improve their projects' output. Despite their best efforts to improve customer satisfaction, project personnel are often unable to make much progress. The best way to succeed is to use statistics and a data-driven approach to characterize and improve your projects. Today, you'll learn about the measures of location (median, mode, and mean), the normal curve, and measures of dispersion (range, mean absolute deviation, variance, and standard deviation). You'll see how the Taguchi loss function is an alternative to traditional go/no-go inspection. You'll also learn how to measure variation, use prevention, and apply statistical process control (SPC) to help you produce predictable and acceptable results.

Today, we'll discuss the dimensions of the project team. For your project to succeed, you need a skilled project manager and committed capable project team members. You'll learn how to identify essential competencies of an effective project manager, and how to establish a winning project team. You'll understand what it takes to recruit, evaluate, and select project team members. And you'll also learn about the concepts of a core team, extended team, and the overly important project team.

I believe a potent combination of a high-functioning project team and a capable project manager is essential for your success in project management. Effective project teams come together through careful planning and action. In today's lesson, we'll discuss work group theory, contrast formal and informal work groups, and identify informal work group characteristics. You'll learn about the stages of team development, understand why change is so important for your project, and find out why people are reluctant to change. You'll learn how to overcome resistance to change and empower your project team.

Today, we'll discuss fundamental organizational concepts. You'll discover the purpose of an organization chart and learn why a matrix organization is a common project management organizational structure. You'll understand key coordinating principles such as authority, responsibility, accountability, and power. And you'll gain insights into organizational culture by developing a deeper understanding of values and beliefs, the elements of successful delegation, and various theories of motivation and leadership.