Preparing for the PMI Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP)^® Exam

Introduction

• Identifying key issues in successful scheduling
• Analyzing your scheduling approach
• Delivering a project

Building the Project Network Diagram

Identifying the work

• Deriving information from project scope and constraints
• Identifying manageable activities
• Building a deliverable-oriented WBS that defines the scope of the project
• Translating a WBS into an activity list

Establishing a sequence

• Choosing a scheduling method: CPM or critical chain
• Developing a schedule model
• Defining precedence relationships
• Establishing dependencies
• Determining lead and lag times

Developing Robust Schedule Estimates

Choosing the right estimating techniques

• Differentiating between estimating approaches
• Explaining the difference between effort and duration

Dealing with uncertainty

• Estimating for activity duration
• Differentiating between duration and resource usage
• Factoring in productivity to determine true duration

Integrating the Schedule and Critical Path

Computing the Critical Path

• Conducting a forward and a backward pass through the network diagram to determine activity start and end times
• Deriving float to identify areas of flexibility in the schedule
• Calculating the critical, near-critical, and noncritical path

Creating Gantt charts

• Establishing the project duration and end date
• Representing relative durations of activities graphically using a Gantt chart

Realistic Resourcing

Resource requirements

• Building a resource breakdown structure
• Identifying the project resource pool

Schedules that make sense

• Allocating resources effectively: resource aggregation, leveling and smoothing
• Addressing resource constraints: rescheduling and resourcing strategies
• Creating a baseline schedule

Controlling the Schedule

Developing scheduling procedures

• Establishing procedures for maintaining and updating the project schedule
• Evaluating the schedule against the Schedule Conformance Index
• Defining the frequency and sources of activity status reports

Updating and maintaining the plan

• Collecting activity status from activity owners
• Recording actual durations
• Updating the project schedule and the project resource pool

Communicating with Stakeholders

Identifying reporting needs

• Interfacing project information with organizational reporting needs
• Aligning project monitoring to project planning

Generating schedule reports

• Establishing standard project reports
• Reporting project status using EVA, milestones and Critical Path
• Running ad hoc reports

Measuring and Improving Performance

Performing schedule-based Earned Value Analysis (EVA)

• Determining the variance between planned and actual values
• Calculating schedule efficiency
• Forecasting the impact to the Critical Path and project duration

Responding to change

• Distinguishing between fast-tracking the project and crashing the critical path
• Creating parallel schedules in order to determine the feasibility of proposed changes