Categories: Training

Project Management Using Microsoft Excel

Project management primarily involves planning, executing and monitoring/ controlling activities. While a project could be planned, monitored and controlled with pen and paper, it is really challenging, time consuming and might take away the time of valuable resources.

There are numerous software like MS Project or Oracle Primavera, available in the market that can help project managers achieve the above mentioned task easily. However, such software can be very expensive, tedious for smaller projects and may not be easily accessible to all the project team members. In this case what can we do?

This is where Microsoft Excel can come in very handy.

I will be conducting an one-day workshop at Chennai on behalf of Madras Management Association on 12 September 2019. This workshop covers how MS Excel can be used to plan small projects, update and monitor the project progress so that the team members can be enabled to act accordingly.

Workshop Contents

The workshop will cover the basics of project management and how MS-Excel can be used to create Gantt Charts, update and visualize the project progress, perform Earned Value Analysis, etc. The following topics will be discussed during the workshop:

Overview of Project Management
Triple constraints of project management
Work breakdown structure (WBS)
Activities, sequencing of activities and Critical Path Method
Creating a Gantt chart using Microsoft Excel
Updating the Gantt chart to reflect the progress of the project
Comparing the planned vs actual progress
Calculating the Schedule Variance and the Schedule Performance Index
Limitations of MS Excel in using for project management

Key Takeaways

At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

To understand the fundamentals of Project management
To understand the various relationships between activities, how to sequence activities, determine the duration of the project and identify the critical path
To utilize the power of MS-Excel to plan, update and monitor the projects