PROJECT SERVER 2010 ONLINE TRAINING

COURSE OUTLINES
 

Here is an overview of the four courses that come with our Project Server 2010 Online training, which is followed by an explanation of the cycle of using the four programs together. (Click on an item above or scroll below.)

1. ESTABLISH THE ENTERPRISE
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Target Audience of Course

This course "Establish the Enterprise" is intended for an individual(s) in charge of establishing the main feature set of using Project Server in the enterprise. We call such a person the "enterprise leader." (The tasks include many of the duties ordinarily associated with the "administrator" of Project Server information.)

Prerequisites of Course

This course assumes that the enterprise leader is already familiar with basic and intermediate Microsoft Project 2010 Professional desktop functionality. (I.e. knows how to add tasks, link them, assign resources to tasks, view reports, track completed tasks, customize tables, views, etc. This is important!) (It would also be helpful if the Administrator goes through Course 2 for project managers, Course 3 for team members, and Course 4, particularly as it relates to project proposal workflow and proposal portfolio analysis.)

Assumptions of Course

This courses assumes that Project Server has been purchased by your organization, is already installed at your location, is running Windows SharePoint Services, is attached to a SQL Server database, and has a URL established that enables user to log onto Project Web App (PWA), the web view of data in Internet Explorer in Project Server. Project Professional 2010 and Excel 2010 should also be available to be used in tandem with Project Server.

What is Covered in the Establish the Enterprise Course

This course instructs the administrator how to:

  • Start up Project Professional and create a connection to Project Server

  • Customize the enterprise global file so that standardized fields, tables, company calendar, etc. are established to meet organizational needs when enterprise projects are created by project managers in Project Pro

  • Populate the enterprise resource pool with resources, making them available for enterprise projects created by project managers in Project Pro Professional

  • Establish some of the basic settings for use of Project Web App, including how team members enter their assignment completions.

  • Set up administrative time categories for team members submittal of sick leave, vacation time, and the like through Timesheets

  • Establish security by creating user accounts and permissions for log on to Project Web App

  • Build one or more enterprise project templates that can be the starting points and basis of new enterprise projects that are created by project managers in Project Pro

  • Customize PWA views, including modifying existing or creating new subviews

  • Build custom Business Intelligence Dashboards of high-level enterprise project data viewed through graphic and tabular formats

  • Work with others to create strategic goals for the organization or business units that will be used to determine viability of proposed projects.

  • Customize the structure, methodology, and workflow for project proposals.

  • Work with a variety of other features that control the look and feel of PWA, and control the functioning of Project Server

  • And much more

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2. PROJECT MANAGER TASKS
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Target Audience of Course

This course "Project Manager Tasks" is intended for an individual(s) in charge of building enterprise-based projects and interacting with team members and others on these projects.

Prerequisites of Course

This course assumes that the project manager is already familiar with basic and some intermediate level use of Microsoft Project 2010 Professional functionality. (I.e. knows how to add tasks, link them, assign resources, view reports, track completed tasks, etc. This is important!)

Assumptions of the Course

This course assumes that Project Server has been purchased by your organization, is already installed at your location using SharePoint server 2010, is attached to a SQL Server 2005, 8+ database, and has a URL established that enables potential users to log onto Project Web App (PWA) though the Internet Explorer 7+ browser. Project Professional 2010 desktop application should be made available to any user of the course. Also, Microsoft Excel 2010 should be available, at least on a request basis.

What is Covered in the Project Manager Course

This course instructs the project manager how to:

  • Start up Project Professional and create a connection to Project Server.

  • Use an enterprise template to build and save an enterprise-based project in Project Professional.

  • Assign enterprise resources to the enterprise project using Team Builder in Project Pro.

  • Publish the enterprise project to Project Server so it can be accessed by others through Project Web App (PWA), the web-based interface.

  • Open an enterprise project in Project Pro and work offline with it.

  • Play the role of a team member and enter actual completion of assignments, and submit it to the manager (yourself) through PWA.

  • As project manager accept or reject team member assignments.

  • Create status reports for team members to fill out, play the role of team member to fill out a report, and review the information,

  • Work with a workspace for a project, including use of project documents, issues, and risks associated with a project.

  • Make inquiries of team members of their progress on completion of tasks.

  • Establish team member settings such as email-notifications and accepting updates, and modify status report rules.
  • Create a project proposal, and have it be evaluated and accepted or rejected by higher ups.
  • Create a project directly in Project Web App (PWA) (without using Project Pro)
  • Become familiar with other aspects of PWA, including the Project Center and the Resource Center.
  • And more.

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3. TEAM MEMBER TASKS
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Target Audience of Course

This course "Team Member Tasks" is intended for individual team members (i.e. "resources") who need to interact through the Internet Explorer browser with task assignment and other data in projects developed in Microsoft Project.

Prerequisites of Course

This course assumes that the team member has a basic knowledge of how to use the Internet Explorer browser, and some basic knowledge of the fundamental capabilities if not the features of Microsoft Project.

Assumptions of Course

This course assumes that Project Server has been purchased by your organization, is already installed at your location using SharePoint server 2010, is attached to a SQL Server 2005, 8+ database, and has a URL established that enables potential users to log onto Project Web App (PWA) though the Internet Explorer 7+ browser. 

What is Covered in the Team Member Course

This course instructs the team member how to:

  • Log onto Project Web App (PWA) via the Internet Explorer browser and see data that relates to you, such as new tasks that you have been assigned to, new report requests solicited by a project manager, project manager acceptance or rejection of change requests you make, and others.

  • View a personal Gantt Chart of all tasks you are assigned to across multiple projects.

  • Enter actual work done on task assignments and submit it to project manager for approval.

  • Enter completion of task assignments and administrative time (such as sick leave) through the Timesheets system.

  • Fill out requested status reports from the project manager and send it to the project manager for review.

  • Use Microsoft Outlook to see all assignments across multiple projects, and assignment completions there as well (if permissions are given by project manager, and this feature is enabled).

  • View existing, published documents (e.g. Word, Excel, etc. files) that relate to individual projects, or are of a general, public concern that others can see and collaborate with you on.

  • Create, view problematic issues and risks entries for a project that others can view and collaborate with you on to solve.

  • Establish email notifications to determine when and what material generated from Project Server should be reported to you.

  • Create your own ad hoc, unsolicited report of information and send it to the project manger for review.

  • And more.

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4. OTHER
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Target Audience of Course

This course "Other Functionality" is divided in functionality for use by resource managers, executives, and portfolio analysts/PMO members.

Potential Users of Course

The main users of this course are resource managers, executives, portfolio analyzers/PMO members, though other stakeholders can use it as well. Unlike the first three courses for Administrators, Project managers, and Team members, this course does not follow a standard flow of progressive exercises. Rather it contains links to important Project Server and Project Web App (PWA) features and tasks that are critical to one's own particular involvement with this enterprise project management solution.

E.g. functions that resource managers are likely to be interested in are listed so that when they have to participate in a Project Server function they will be able to click on the relevant link and get immediate information on that subject matter. So in that sense this 4th course is more of an index of relevant topics that the particular user (project manager, executive, portfolio analyst/PMO member can immediately go to.)

Prerequisite of Course

There are no absolute prerequisites for this course, however it should also be pointed out that it would be helpful, actually quite necessary for resource managers and PMO members in particular to have a solid understanding of the Microsoft Project Professional desktop application. The more that is understood at the fundamentals and advanced level, the more easily it will be to work with Project Server and its PWA interface, which is really a superset of Project Pro. This is no requirement for executives, though a basic knowledge of MS Project 2010 would be helpful.

It would also be very helpful if resource managers and portfolio analysis/PMO members go through the Project Manager and Team Member course of this training so they are familiar with that functionality. In tandem with going through the parts of this Other course (Course 4) functionality specific to their needs, going though the earlier Course 2 (Project Managers) and Course 3 (Team Members) will make their understanding of the system that much more comprehensive.

Assumptions of the Course

This course assumes that Project Server has been purchased by your organization, is already installed at your location using SharePoint Server 2010, is attached to a SQL Server 2005, 8+ database, and has a URL established that enables potential users to log onto Project Web App (PWA) though the Internet Explorer 7+ browser. Microsoft Excel 2010 should be available to any user of the course, and the Project Professional 2010 desktop application should be made available on a request-only basis.

This Course Contents

This course ("Other," Course 4) instructs the resource manager how to:

  • Learn the basic of making your way around Project Web App (PWA)
  • View all of the resources in the enterprise, including their assignments and availability in order to consider how these resources can be redistributed or balanced across projects, whether additional resources are needed, how to deal with overallocations (PWA)
  • Analyze the state of resources booking, capacity, and availability through high level Business Intelligence dashboard graphical and tabular views.
  • Work with the Project Server administrator to customize the Project Server environment, such as creating custom Views and Business Intelligence dashboards that meet the organization's needs.
  • Examine Project Site data including Documents, Issues, and Risks associated with individual projects.
  • Work with the Project Server administrator to determine views, settings, and work completion methodology for resource/team members assigned to project tasks.
  • And more.

This course instructs the executive how to:

  • Learn the basic of making your way around Project Web App (PWA)

  • View the status of all enterprise projects to see their current status, including whether they are ahead or behind schedule, are greater or lesser than expected cost in Project Web App (PWA).

  • Analyze the state of projects across the enterprise through high level Business Intelligence dashboard graphical and tabular views. See project cost, capacity, scheduling, progress, etc. in every conceivable way, enabling high level understanding of all data in Project Server, enabling right decisions making about current and future projects.

  • Examine Project Site data including Documents, Issues, and Risks associated with actual running projects.

  • And more.

This course instructs the portfolio manager/PMO member how to:

  • Develop strategic goals (aka "Business drivers") that be used to determine the viability of new project proposals.
  • Evaluate all incoming project proposals in terms of their importance, their ability to meet strategic goals; as well as their cost, resource requirements, and other factors. From these make a determination of which projects are to be given the go-ahead.
  • Analyze the state of project proposals, and their status in their workflow through high level Business Intelligence dashboard graphical and tabular views.
  • Determine the approval process for project proposals, and work with the administrator to incorporate it into the system.
  • Work with the Project Server administrator to customize the Project Server environment, such as creating custom Views and Business Intelligence dashboards that meet the organization's needs.
  • Examine Project Site data including Documents, Issues, and Risks associated with actual running projects.
  • And more.

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Overview of the 4-Course Cycle

The Project Management Cycle

The process of what is learned in the 4-course Project Server training essentially flows like this:

After Project Server is fully installed at your end, one (or more) of your employees (whom we will refer to as "the administrator") develops a base of users who are given various levels of permission -- as project managers, team members, executives, etc. -- to interact with the Project Server system.  In addition, a shared enterprise pool of resources is developed in Project Server by the administrator/enterprise leader so that projects created by project managers have a common pool of resources to assign to tasks in the enterprise projects they create. The administrator also customizes the "enterprise global file" residing on Project Server so that all projects created by project managers in Project Pro contain the necessary fields, views, reports, and information place holders that meet the needs of the organization. Finally, standardized enterprise project templates are developed so that projects have a common starting point for all enterprise projects created by project managers; an optional feature. This is essentially covered in the Admin course ("Establish the Enterprise").

Thereafter, project managers and others use the Project Professional client to create their own enterprise projects based on enterprise templates utilizing resources in the shared enterprise resource pool. This and many other features are covered in the "Project Manager Tasks" course.

Once enterprise projects are created and posted on Project Server by project managers, team members can use Internet Explorer to log onto the company's version of Project Server (with an appropriate Project Web App (PWA) license) to view scheduled and enter completed assignments across multiple projects. This is and more is covered in the "Team Member Tasks" course.

As project unfold, resource managers can continually evaluate the capacity of resources/team members to meet the demands of the portfolio of in-progress projects

Also stakeholders, particularly executives will also be able to use PWA web interface to Project Server to view Business Intelligence dashboards that provide powerful and comprehensive analytical views of all project-related data across the organization in easy to use graphical and tabular views. This can help greatly in dealing with current and future projects, either on the board or in the proposal stage.

 

The Demand & Portfolio Management Cycle

Finally, Project Server 2010 integrates a full Demand Management and Portfolio Analysis system. This enables project managers or others to create proposals for new projects, and enables portfolio analyzers and PMO members to determine which project should be given the go-ahead. That determination is based on a number of factors, including whether the project proposals meet the strategic goals of the organization, whether it meets cost constraints, the availability of resources in the enterprise, which future projects are absolutely essential, the risk of each proposed projects, and so forth.

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