Before we suggest you the best online Microsoft Project Courses, we give you a general overview of the Microsoft project at a glance:

■ WHAT IS PROJECT?

A project is a temporary group activity planned to produce a unique product, service, or result. From a Project point of view, a project is the plan that you simply create which details how you, or your organization, will go about creating the desired outcome.

The project plan is constituted of a set of tasks. A single task represents a single “thing” that must be accomplished; the entire list of tasks completely defines what needs to be done in order to achieve the result. Subsequently, if all the tasks are completed successfully, the project result will be achieved. So a task offers a single “thing” to complete, and the list of tasks offers the full list of “things to do”.

In order to complete the tasks, you have to have one or more resources. From a Project perspective, a useful resource is one thing you employ to get tasks done, so resources can be individuals, machinery, materials, or money.

■ WHAT IS MICROSOFT PROJECT?

Microsoft Project is a useful and powerful program that helps you plan and manage a wide variety of projects and tasks. If the projects meet important deadlines and budgets for selecting the right resources, Microsoft Project offers easier and more intuitive experiences that will help you be more productive and realize better results.

■ WHY DO YOU USE MICROSOFT PROJECT?

Microsoft Project is extremely helpful for organizing, scheduling, recording, calculating, monitoring, reporting, and analyzing schedule data for any project. The tools will assist you to achieve your project goals on time and within budget. However, using Microsoft Project does not guarantee you a successful project plan or project execution. When you spend time to find out how to organize your schedule and optimize the features of the tool, you will find that the Microsoft Project can assist you in numerous ways, as follows:

➢ Microsoft Project helps you create a better project plan and schedule—

Microsoft Project forces you to think thoroughly about the details of your project because you must accurately input all tasks necessary for successfully completing the project as defined in the scope statement. Thus, you establish a better schedule and overall project plan because you can easily monitor the activity and communicate information.

➢ Microsoft Project helps you organize your project—

Dozens of screen views, tables, and reports are contained within Microsoft Project that organizes your project data in various ways. The Microsoft Project tool makes it easy for you to visualize, organize, and adjust the project plan and schedule accordingly as work progresses.

All of these screens are customizable, and you have the ability to establish your own if none of the existing ones completely fulfill your requirements.

➢ Microsoft Project accurately performs calculations—

Project calculates an accurate schedule based on the data you enter that illustrates when each task should initiate and end. In addition, if you input cost data, Microsoft Project makes budget calculations and provides schedule data for a variety of reporting needs.

➢ Microsoft Project makes it easy to search for the best possible project schedule and plan—

You can experiment with different situations by creating mock schedules for all possible circumstantial data for your project, and select to work with whatever situation produces the most desirable outcome.

➢ Microsoft Project helps to identify problems or discrepancies in the schedule—

Microsoft Project easily identifies when resources are over-allocated (appointed more work than their schedule allows). Resources may be the individuals, materials, and facilities used to work on the project. Microsoft Project also identifies the situations when the Project deadlines are impossible to meet due to any constraints you have included in the schedule. The Microsoft project tool assists you to resolve resource over-allocation and deadline issues.

➢ Microsoft Project helps communicate project data and the schedule to stakeholders and team members—

Poor communication is one of the primary causes of project failure. Use Project to help you communicate better. You can produce explanatory text and visual reports with ease to explain any aspect of our project to clients, stakeholders, partners (associates), team members, or anyone else who might be interested in project information of any kind. This makes it easier for you to get approval from supervisors and keep clients convinced and informed with correct, professional reporting data.

➢ Microsoft Project helps you track progress and detect deviations from the plan—

After the schedule is created and approved and work begins on a project based on schedule, you should input actual data into the project file based on the progress. Microsoft Project compares this data to what was planned and calculates any difference or variance. You can then adjust (or modify) accordingly to compensate for any discrepancy from the plan. Microsoft Project also reschedules any balance tasks and amends the finish date for the project based on the actual data.

➢ Microsoft Project helps adjust the schedule when the situation changes—

Very rarely it is observed that a project executed exactly as it is planned. Situations will develop when you need to adjust what was planned, sometimes quickly, and adapt to the new conditions. Team members or associates might leave the organization (or company), work takes longer than expected, the scope of work changes, costs increase, and so on. Microsoft Project helps to adjust and adapt to the changes.

The latest version of Microsoft Project provides highly effective project management tools than previous versions.

Project management is a broadly practiced artwork and science. Project management is a combination of skills and tools that assist you to predict and control the outcomes of endeavors undertaken by your organization.

Good project management does not assure the success of each project, however poor project management typically results in failure.

In Microsoft Project, you may interlink the risk tracking spreadsheet or risk response document to the corresponding tasks, but that’s about it.

● Track all projects in one place: When a project is ready for prime time, you publish it to Project Server to add it to the overall project portfolio. Thereafter the status of all projects appears in a single window.

● Share resources enterprise-wide: When resources are available, the Project Server keeps track of all resources and gives the status when they work on which project. You possibly can search for the proper resources utilizing multilevel resource skill characteristics, after which you can see who is available for your projects.

● Communicate with resources: Project Web App makes it straightforward and easy for you to communicate with your team, requesting status, sending messages, and so forth. Additionally, it also helpful for your team to communicate with you, replying with status, accepting assignments, or offering time worked.

● Timesheets: Team members (or associates) can fill out timesheets for project work. The time they submit shoots instantly into the Project Server database to update progression on your projects.

● Track issues, risks, and documents. Projects are more than schedules. Issues crop up that must be resolved; risks lurk that you need to watch and manage; and there’s no end to the additional documents produced, like specifications, plans, work packages, and so on. Using SharePoint websites and Project Web App, team members (or associates) can cooperate on all these elements online.

In this tutorial, we’ve discussed the benefits of using Microsoft Project and give a suggestion of 30 premium best online Microsoft Access courses from reputed online platforms like ed2go, Coursera, and Udemy. Hope that these courses help you a lot in your career.