Project Planning: All You Need to Know

Project management is no longer only for mega projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Small projects can benefit from project management tools. Statements of Work, Work and Resource Breakdown Structures and Project Planning documents can help you to get that small project done well, under budget, and on time. This workshop is not intended for those looking to be certified as project managers but rather for those who complete projects at work from time to time.

In this course, we will gain experience using the most common project management planning tools and will completely plan a case study project from Statement of Work through Work and Resource Breakdown, Scheduling and end up with a completed Project Planning Worksheet. Your small projects will be more successful than ever!

• Understand what is meant by a project
• Distinguish between a Project Charter and Statement of Work (SOW)
• Use a SOW to begin project planning
• Create a Work Breakdown Structure to determine tasks needed to complete a small project
• Create a project schedule based on project tasks and resources
• Create a Resource Breakdown Structure to determine specific resources needed to complete a small project
• Complete a Project Planning Worksheet to act as a touchstone for project completion

We will spend the first part of the day getting to know other participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

This session gives students a look at the Project Life Cycle, which is a common factor in any project, regardless of the size. Also considered in this session is the definition of a project manager and the role and skills of a project manager.

In this session, students are given the chance to develop a Project Charter from a case study and will also create a Statement of Work (SOW) for creating a commercial vegetable garden.

Here, students will learn about Work Breakdown Structures (WBS). They will use the commercial vegetable garden SOW to create a WBW of all the necessary tasks for that project.

This session looks at creating a basic schedule and how to use that skill to develop a schedule for the commercial garden project using the WBS that was previously developed.

Resource Breakdown Structures (RBS) are the focus in this session. Students will build upon their skills that were acquired earlier in the course to create an RBS for the commercial garden project.

This final session gets your students to use information from the SOW, WBS, RBS and schedule to created Project Planning Worksheet.

At the end of the course, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.