Estimating & Scheduling Made Easy with MS Project

Master the estimation lifecycle from team establishment to project plan and price. Build WBS-driven roadmaps, conduct reviews, and leverage templates for accurate estimates.

Align estimation with quality and accuracy to form a solid project plan by detailing organizational location, technology, data, processes, testing, training, and infrastructure considerations.

Navigate the estimation workbook from program matrix (WBS) through drivers, assumptions, and resource abbreviations to the summary and budget, and convert outputs to an RMS project.

Learn how the driver worksheet drives program metrics, assumptions, and budget, with update buttons calculating unit and total estimates from drivers and complexity, and supporting WBS and RMS export.

Create and review the work breakdown structure for XYZ, add assumptions, assign resources and drivers, adjust hours and rates, and update milestones to feed the summary and budget.

Explore how to structure a WBS with milestones, activities, and tasks, assign drivers and FTEs, apply complexity ratings to derive total estimates, and capture assumptions such as out-of-scope environments.

Learn to model task estimation in a wbs using drivers such as fte, documents, and meetings, assign complexity ratings, and compute total hours with a program matrix.

Learn how to allocate management effort across meetings, set phase subtotals, and adjust total estimate hours using drivers like FTE and time box, with PM task considerations and report specifications.

Use the update button to refresh the resource summary, populating program metrics with resource names, total and budgeted hours, duration estimates, start and end dates, and budget margins.

Update the hourly billing rate to refresh the summary sheet and estimating dollars; adjust driver resources and complexity to compute total estimate hours across phase measure activity and detail view.

Explore phase major activities and measure hours and percentages. See how phase activities allocate total hours across kickoff, initiation, execution, and closure, with detailed views and project metrics.

Export to MS Project from the mid-project tab, converting line items into the project format. Update metrics and budget sheets, then add resources for a bottom up estimate.

Explore how the MS Project output converts a workbook into a task plan with tasks, milestones, dependencies, and start–finish dates, aligning hours with budgets and enabling date shifts through predecessors.

Master predecessors in MS Project to align start and finish dates for kickoff, initiation, procurement, and execution. Apply resource data and hours for accurate cost management.

Learn to use the MS Project resource sheet, showing baseline, actual and remaining work, and standard rate. Identify over allocated resources and monitor utilization in the Gantt chart.

Explore the MS Project scheduling formulas, covering duration and work calculations, resource units, fixed unit/work/duration tasks, overallocation, and leveling to optimize resource usage and estimation.

Explore top-down and bottom-up budgeting, their advantages and disadvantages, and how negotiation shapes project budgets, then learn to read Gantt charts, resource sheets, and task duration estimates.

Apply the eight divided by eight rule to size tasks between 8 and 80 hours, avoid granule tasks or overly long tasks, and learn planning and relationships in MS Project.

Explore resources and their types, including work, cost, and material resources. Learn to set availability and capacity, track costs and baselines, and estimate allocations using hourly rates and durations.

Manage project resources with the resource sheet and resource form tools in MS Project, setting 100% max units, monitoring over allocations, and applying standard and cost per use rates.

Adjust resource availability by setting working times, shifts, and standard rates, then link milestones in the Gantt chart to monitor timing and cost.

Learn how effort driven scheduling controls work when you add or remove resources and how to enable it on tasks, affecting cost resources, budgets, and tracking through resource pools.

Set a baseline for the entire project, compare actual start and finish to baseline start and finish, and analyze work and cost variance across reports.

Master linking milestones, resource allocation, and cost tracking in MS Project. Analyze variances, generate reports, and use dashboards to monitor project cost and overallocations.

Learn how to build a bottom-up estimate in Excel by entering resource, role, rate, and hours to calculate total cost, then compare with bid models.

Define projects and classify costs as one-time and ongoing, including labor, time, materials, and overhead, while mastering workbook and rms project estimation aligned with bid models.

Explore how to model a project in MS Project, set resources with rates and calendars, link tasks, track baselines, and analyze variances and costs.

Explore resource overallocation, cost overview, and cash flow alongside network diagrams, milestones, and Gantt charts to support budgeting and cost management through bottom-up and top-up estimates.

Define and assign drivers to tasks to drive estimates, solidify scope with minimal information using WBS, and develop cost and effort with bottom-up and top-down approaches in RMS project.