Learn Excel: Executive Summary & Scope

This is the second book in the “Build-A-Tool’ series of books for learning Microsoft® Excel while creating fully functional Project Management tools (which, with a little ingenuity, can be applied to other fields of study). The process of this book will start with blank worksheets and develop them into sophisticated Project Management tools called the ‘Executive Summary” and Scope” documents. There are three bonus tools included in this module: “The Cover Sheet”, the “Charter’, and the “Cost Baseline”. Together, these five documents provide the foundation for the Prospectus package to be presented to executive management for project approval.
Do not be alarmed if you are not a Project Manager, these tools can be used in other realms, limited only by your imagination. At the very least, this exercise will illustrate the capabilities of Excel and teach some valuable techniques in the process. There is no need to learn Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) or macro programming; everything is accomplished with readily available Excel functions.
The book assumes the reader knows little or nothing about Excel and progressively elaborates upon each exercise and technique, building knowledge while providing insights into how to make Excel work for you. It will not overpower you with advanced techniques and vague tips that you may never use.
Each subsequent chapter will build on previous work so that by the end of the book, you will have a fully functional (and modifiable) Cover Sheet, Executive Summary, Scope, Charter, and Cost Baseline and an understanding of how they work.
The concepts learned here will be valuable in any context.
The final chapter will be a discussion of how to combine other “Build-A-Tool” modules into a ‘master’ template