Microsoft Project 2013 - 74-343

Microsoft Project 2013 is the latest offering by Microsoft into the software realm of PMIS (Project Management Information Systems).  This type of tool is used to help a project manager consolidate the number of tools they may use (e.g.  Calendar systems, email, contacts and some budgeting software and reporting software) into a single software tool for initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and even closing a project.  Within a single tool, a project manager can manage a project’s triple constraints:  Cost, Scope and Time.  This series covers every exam objective to help a viewer to prepare for the Microsoft exam 74-343 —Managing Projects with Microsoft Project 2013.

[SOUND] In this video, we're gonna take a minute to talk about the Microsoft Project certification. In particular, we will get a little detail here. The 74-343 exam which, for those of you that are wanting to learn how to use the Microsoft Project software, it really is a great place to start. You can jump right in, you can get a great certification out of it. Once you've learned the material and you've passed the exam, you get the Microsoft Certified Professional, or MCP certification. So I mean, this is really a great thing. Not just for project managers, but anybody who works in a project environment. To be able to learn the software and get a certification at the same time. I really enjoy this one. >> Yeah, with Microsoft Project 2013, we can actually go ahead and take a look at their exam objectives. On my screen I went ahead and pulled up the exam objectives from Microsoft's site itself. And you can see that it gives you a lot of information right here at the top, most importantly for me normally is gonna be, of course, the cost. >> [LAUGH] >> The cost has gone up a little bit over time. About $150, US dollars of course, is what you can do. And if you have Microsoft Project 2013, they have the certification for that. You may still see that there's still Microsoft Project 2010 as a possibility, but the older editions have pretty much gone away, they've been deprecated at this point. So those exams will no longer count. But if you scroll down, from this point here you can actually then see the skills measured. And this is what we really wanna focus in on, is to take a look at some of these different exam objectives to help us to be able to understand what they're gonna ask us about. As well as to help us did it to figure out how a project actually works in the betterment of actually doing project management. So, the first field that we're actually taking a look at in the exam objectives here is going to be initializing a project. Now a project really wants you to actually know how to get a project that you've already got all the information for and get started as soon as you can. So in that project initialization, we're going to talk about things like just how do we actually get the project started in order to show some of the different ways to do so. And the basic information that we need just so that we can begin. >> Yeah, and I really like the way Microsoft's arranged the objectives on this one. Because you'll notice where it starts with is just creating a blank project. They're not expecting you to have any prior knowledge of Microsoft Project, you don't have to have worked with it for years to jump in and do this one. So if you've never used Project even a single time, well we're gonna start out right there at that beginning. Opening the program, creating that first project, and getting moving forward, so really, really useful stuff. And for the rest of the objectives, Microsoft really stayed true to the stuff you're really gonna use type topics. Not the esoteric, weird features that most people don't work with, but the features that are really important to everybody who serves as a project manager or just works within a project environment. So, for example, the very second objective is well, scheduling, right? Which is really important, it's a key piece of what a project manager does for a living, but it's also important for anybody who participates in that project. A project is broken up into multiple tasks. And how do we make sure those tasks are occurring on time, you know at completion? How do we know if we're getting behind schedule or if we're ahead of schedule? We need to be able to understand that and Microsoft Project can help us do that. >> All right, it's a great place for us to at least get all of the tasks that we have ready to go and put it in one place. Then that way we can see it. And we'll end up seeing that once we talk about creating a basic, a task based schedule. We'll then be able to start manipulating it and changing it into the information that we really need. So they go into simple things like setting up some basic information that we need for the overall project, and even setting up what we'll call the project task structure, and then logically structuring everything the way that it needs to be done. The nice thing about Project is you can just throw stuff in it, and then later on work with it and massage it into what you actually would like to see. >> Yeah, now, the third objective is our resource management. Once you've created all these tasks, somebody has to actually do the work, right? So we need to assign people to the tasks to do it, or maybe it's not people. Maybe it's equipment, machinery, other things, other resources that we have to manage. We need to keep track of that to make sure that we don't do any kind of over allocation. I don't want to book Ronnie to do two things at the same time. So we gotta make sure that we can have that in an easy to see environment, that helps us to locate area's where we've got problems. Where we don't have enough resources, or we've over allocated somebody and created an issue. So, that's what the third objective is all about. As we scroll down I can see that the fourth objective takes a look at tracking and analyzing a project itself. Once we get everything in place inside the project, we know actually start seeing the power of Microsoft project to display what we need to. So that what we can do is we can take the information out of Project, be able to create the reports that we need, be able to analyze the information, and that way keep our project on schedule in the way that it needs to go. >> Now the fifth objective, and the final objective, is probably my favorite because all this good information inside of Microsoft Project is all designed for project managers. Microsoft knows that it's project managers that are gonna be using this software the most. And so the terminology that's used, the tools, it's all built around what we do as a project manager. But the rest of your company needs to be able to benefit from this information, and they don't know what a BCWP is. They don't understand planned value or an SPI. That stuff doesn't mean anything to them. So we've gotta have some way to take the information in project and get that out in a way that's meaningful to the other people in our company, right? If I give somebody a calendar, they know what a calendar is. They can read that. They go, this is Tuesday, I'm supposed to be here at this time. They understand that, right? Or here's a pie chart that shows tasks that are completed, and tasks that aren't. That's the kind of information people understand. And Project has a ton of ways to output data and translate it from our project management language into regular English, or well whatever language you speak in your country. Into regular easily understandable charts, diagrams, lists, just all sorts of different formats. It's really powerful. >> It really is. So, those are the five objectives that we're taking a look at when we go through our show here, for the 74-343 show, and there's a lot for us to cover, Don. >> Yeah, so if that sounds exciting and fun to you you're in the right place. Stay tuned for it. Also keep in mind that this is using a tool to manage projects. If you want to learn more about actually doing project management, just the concepts and theory behind it, we do have other training here on ITProTV like the project management professional training that we did. So check that out, too. Now, the order doesn't really matter. You can learn the tool first and then learn the fundamentals later, or the other way around. But I find it is pretty beneficial to already understand the fundamentals, if we're doing task scheduling, you should probably understand the concepts behind duration, resource allocation, and so on. So if you haven't already, be sure to check out the project management professionals series. It's a great one. It was you and I Ronnie, right? We did that one. So, [LAUGH] filmed it a few months ago. So definitely it's something worth checking out. But as far as Microsoft Project, this is the place to be. So stay tuned, we got Microsoft Project coming up next. [SOUND]