Few days ago, we announced about our upcoming Excel for PMs course (here). Quite a few of emailed me and told that you are looking forward for this.
Today I want to share our preliminary agenda for this course and take your help in fine-tuning it.
Here is the rough course agenda
We have designed this course based on the programs both I and Paramdeep ran in various companies. We have tried to keep it intense, useful & easy to digest.
This course currently has 3 modules.
- Module1: Project Planning & Estimation
- Estimating an IT Services Project
- Planning for Projects using MS Excel (Gantt Charts, Work Break-down Structures)
- Budgeting & Forecasting for Projects
- Estimating Project Break-even
- Module 2: Tracking a Project
- Keeping Track of Resources
- Tracking & Monitoring Project Risk, Risk Analysis
- Tracking Project Expenses
- Tracking Project Changes
- Tracking Issues, To do items & more
- Module 3: Project Reporting
- Commercial Analysis of a Project
- Project Scope Burn-down, Project Timelines Reporting
- Project Status Reports
- Project Status Dashboard
We are also planning for a bonus module to help you understand certain things.
- Bonus Material
- Introduction to Financial Concepts
- Estimation in Other Industries
- Excel Concepts – Conditional Formatting, Tables & Formulas for PMs
Your help needed…
Although we ran quite a few training programs on Project Management, We want to make sure the Excel for PMs course makes you an awesome project manager. Hence, we need your help in fine tuning this course agenda. Just take a few minutes and tell us,
- What additional topics we should cover?
- How long this course should be? (we are planning to do it for 18 hours)
Go ahead and share your views
Please go ahead and leave a comment with your answers for above questions. I really appreciate your help in designing the best possible Excel for PMs course.
Thank you.
23 Responses
And Chandoo Hello everyone, I live in Brazil but I’m always watching the site and have got good stuff on it.
I would like to participate in this training because I work for Petrobras in the sector of planning and supervision of contracts and these concepts are my day to day.
I suggest a point of attention in this area suggests that the “Monitoring of deliverables” within a weekly or biweekly serving as points of analysis to contractual terms.
sds,
Hi Chandoo,
AFAIC, Everything seems nice here. I would like to add some Quality points in the summary sheet, combining Defects, Delays, and Documentation.
Regards
I believe Estimation in the Construction Industry would be a plus.
Great job and good luck 🙂
Hello Chandoo
Great topic and huge fan.
I work analyse sales for my company, how product is performing and mainly how the sales employees are faring to quota etc. I was wondering if you have a discussion on that topic. Thanks
hi, i guess i bought all your course, i`ll attend this too..
Timelines are really a key item – would be quite interested in a timeline with multiple items which includes dependencies. If item A slips by 2 weeks, all items dependent on Item A also slip two weeks, for example.
Earned Value is useful in any PM course. The calculations lend themselves nicely to Excel. Financial calculations such as internal rate of return, price verses cost (for product development).
Other topics could include risk profiling. The simple ones use just optimistic, pessimistic and most likely duration or cost estimates. More sophisticated estimates of duration or cost can have probability distributions other than a normal bell curve.
Statistical Process Controls stats, such as control charts, are useful and lend themselves nicely to Excel. Six sigma calcuations can also be introduced.
Testing is applicable to software developemnt and many other inductries. Statistics to monitor test results are helpful. For the PM, tracking the test phase is often the most difficult. Burn down charts help.
Hi Chandoo and everybody,
I think that others interesting topics for Excel for PM could be:
– Earned Value Management (and charts for it), at Module 3
– Risks Matrix
– Requeriments Matrix
– Traceability Matrix
– RACI Matrix, for project citizens
– Measurement (indicators, objectives,…) Analysis with charts
Great job and good luck
EVMS Calculation at sub task levels
You might also want to look at: http://www.projectmanagement.net.au/pmbok-math-formulas
I think the course would benefit from having a lesson on CRITICAL PATH analysis in module 2.
Hi Chandoo,
For project monitoring, basic requirements would be :
Estimates ( Hours (Labor), Material, Burdens & SGA )
Contract date, Contract shipment (completion) date,
Actual ( Hours (Labor), Material, Burdens & SGA )
Actual shipment date
Variance ( To Go or Left to Go )
If the shipment (completion) date is before the contract shipment (completion)date, then pay early completion bonus.
All these analytics should be represented by a graph and should have an app for smart phones.
Any drill down should be possible to a granular level
That would be awesome
‘What if Analysis’ could be included to compare the cost effects of changing variable resources.
Best.
Hello,
This is my work every day…. like to assist … if is possible…
Good job
Thanks..
@Luis
Chandoo is always looking for Posts on any topic related to Excel or the use of Excel.
You can send posts to Chandoo or myself.
Look forward to further details about the program. Would prefer the course contents be independent of a particular industry and not necessarily IT related. For persons like me working in the Oil & Gas industry the scope of PMgmt is wide and complex. This aspect may be noted.
Chandoo, Love your work! In Marketing we are asked to place project dashboards, charts and time lines on Power Point. Best way to transfer would be helpful.
Hi Chandoo,
As bonus feature or maybe future add-in – integration with MS Outlook. It would be a great feature to get forms from the field that may be pulled from the inbox to update time and resources on project(s) to avoid any manual entry. Integration could go the other direction as well for automating delivery of reports.
Sounds very interesting this course, i think for project to follow the critical path, and also to keep all the changes made during the projects .
I’d like to see some intergrations with OneNote, I use it almost everyday.
chandoo I appreciate your stuff. The feedback is very positive till now and I must suggest that you break this into two modules one for intermediate and other for experts as people are willing to learn more out of it. Secondly add lesson learned part as well.
Hi Chandoo – Do yall do any risk analysis/project management training with Microsoft Project. I know that Barbecana, a risk software company in Houston, is coming out with a Microsoft Project Add-In to replace Deltek’s Risk+. Just curious!
Anyways, thanks for sharing – Aly
Sounds very interesting this course, i think we can include:
Capacity planning, Grade vise budgeting i.e Proposed vs planned, Planned Vs Actual etc