From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

What you need to know - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

What you need to know

- [Instructor] Before you start this course, there are a few things you should be familiar with. In this course, I provide some background on projects, project management and the factors that affect project schedules. If you're new to managing projects, consider taking my course on Project Management Foundations first, and then come back to this course. So we're on the same page, let's start by talking about what a project is. A project is a unique endeavor to achieve a specific goal. A project is also temporary. It has a definite beginning and end. And chances are, the project will also have a budget. The example I'll use in this course is a project to publish a training guide and companion website. Performing the same work day after day does not qualify as a project, such as publishing blog posts every week after the training guide is available. Unlike projects, the process for producing each post is the same and the work goes on indefinitely. And there might not be a specific budget. It's helpful to understand the terminology that project managers use. For example, things like scope, stakeholders and the critical path. Several factors contribute to making a project successful; scope, time, cost, resources and quality. You should know what these factors are and how they contribute to a project's success. That's because the choices you make as you build and manage your project schedule depend on the priority of these factors. There are many different project management and scheduling tools available. For that reason, I'll focus on scheduling concepts and techniques in this course without referencing a specific scheduling tool. If you're ready, let's get into managing project schedules.

Contents