Course Overview

Advanced Project Scheduling is a comprehensive course designed to develop advanced skills in planning, developing, analyzing, and controlling complex project schedules. Participants learn advanced scheduling techniques, critical path analysis, resource optimization, schedule risk management, schedule compression, performance monitoring, and recovery planning.

Target Participants

• Project managers and project directors
• Programme and portfolio managers
• Project planners and schedulers
• Project coordinators and team leaders
• Senior managers and supervisors
• Government and public-sector professionals
• NGO and development professionals
• Consultants and project controls professionals

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Apply advanced project scheduling principles and techniques.
• Develop integrated schedules for complex projects.
• Analyze activity dependencies, constraints, and critical paths.
• Apply advanced duration and resource estimation techniques.
• Optimize resources and project timelines.
• Apply schedule compression techniques such as crashing and fast tracking.
• Identify and manage schedule-related risks and uncertainty.
• Monitor schedule performance using appropriate indicators.
• Develop schedule recovery and corrective action plans.
• Produce professional project schedules and performance reports.

Course Outline

1. Advanced Project Scheduling Principles

• Advanced scheduling concepts
• Scheduling complex projects
• Integrated project schedules
• Scheduling standards and best practices

2. Advanced Activity Planning and Sequencing

• Detailed activity definition
• Logical relationships and dependencies
• Network scheduling
• Constraints and schedule assumptions

3. Advanced Duration Estimation

• Estimating complex activities
• Three-point estimation
• Expert judgment and historical data
• Schedule uncertainty

4. Critical Path and Network Analysis

• Critical Path Method (CPM)
• Critical and near-critical paths
• Float and slack analysis
• Network optimization

5. Resource-Constrained Scheduling

• Resource loading
• Resource allocation
• Resource leveling and smoothing
• Managing resource constraints

6. Schedule Compression and Optimization

• Crashing
• Fast tracking
• Time-cost trade-offs
• Schedule optimization

7. Schedule Risk and Uncertainty Management

• Schedule risk identification
• Risk analysis
• Schedule contingency
• Scenario and sensitivity analysis

8. Schedule Monitoring and Performance Control

• Schedule baselines
• Planned versus actual progress
• Schedule variance
• Earned Value Management (EVM)
• Schedule Performance Index (SPI)

9. Schedule Recovery and Change Management

• Identifying schedule delays
• Recovery strategies
• Schedule changes and re-baselining
• Corrective and preventive actions