Spreading the news

I’m one of those people who need instant gratification. One of the first things I ask about learning to use any new software product is, “What’s in it for me?” Until now, I’ve told you about the type of information you have to put into Project: information about tasks, task dependencies, and resources. But isn’t it about time you got something back from Project? Of course it is.

You finally reached one of the big payoffs for entering all that information: reporting. After you enter your information, Project offers a wealth of report- ing options to help you view your project and communicate your  progress to your project team, clients, and management

You can generate predesigned reports based on information in your schedule or simply print any of the views you can display in Project. Project 2007 offers a set of Basic Reports and Visual Reports. (You must have the Microsoft .NET Framework installed in order to use Visual Reports, which is free and down- loadable from www.microsoft.com/downloads.) Figures 1-5 and 1-6 show
you just two of the reporting options available in Project.

Planning to keep things on track

Projects aren’t frozen in amber like some organizational mosquito: They go through more changes than a politician’s platform in a campaign year. That’s where Project’s capability to make changes to your project data comes in handy.

After you build all your tasks, give them durations and dependencies, and assign all your resources and costs, you set a baseline. A baseline is a snap- shot of your project at the moment you feel your plan is final and you’re ready to proceed with the project. After you set a baseline, you record some
activity on your tasks. Then you can compare that actual activity with your baseline because Project saves both sets of data in your schedule.

Tracking activity in your project involves recording the actual timing of tasks and recording the time that your resources have spent on those tasks, as well as entering any actual costs that accrue. You can then display Project views that show you how far off you are at any time (compared with your baseline) in terms of the actual timing of tasks and cost of your project.

Whether you have good news or bad, you can use reports to show your boss how things are going compared with how you thought they would go. Then, after you peel your boss off the ceiling, you can use many more Project tools to make adjustments to get everything back on track.

Angham Yanayer

Lining up your resources

 

When people first use Project, some get a bit confused about resources.

Resources aren’t just people: A resource can be a piece of equipment you

rent, a meeting room that you have to pay an hourly fee to use, or a box of

nails or a software program you have to buy.

Project allows for three kinds of resources: work resources, material

resources, and cost resources. A work resource is charged by how many

hours or days the resource (often human) works on a task. A material

resource, such as sewing supplies or steel, is charged by a per-use cost or by

a unit of measurement (such as square yards or linear feet or tons). A cost

resource has a set cost, such as a conference fee of $250; this cost doesn’t

vary by how much time you spend at the conference or how many people

attend.

Some resources, such as people, perform their work according to a working

calendar. If a person works an 8-hour day and you assign him to a task that

takes 24 hours to complete, that person has to put in three workdays to

complete the task. In comparison, someone with a 12-hour workday takes

only two days to complete the same task. In addition, you can set working

and nonworking days for your human resources, which accommodates varia-

tions such as 4-day weeks or shift work.

You can set different rates for resources, such as a standard hourly rate and an

overtime rate. Project applies the appropriate rate based on each resource’s cal-endar and work assigned. For more about resources and costs,

Here’s one other important thing you should know about resources: They

tend to have conflicts. No, I’m not talking about conference room brawls

(although that happens). These conflicts have to do with assigned resources

that become overallocated for their available work time. For example, if you

assign one poor soul to three 8-hour tasks that must all happen on the same

day — and in the same eight hours — Project has features that do everything

but jump up on your desk and turn on an alarm to warn you of the conflict.

(Luckily, Project also provides tools that help you resolve those conflicts.)

The ABCs of Project Management

welcome to the world of computerized project management with
Microsoft Project. If you’ve never used project management software,
you’re entering a brave, new world. It’s like walking from the office of 25 years
ago — with no fax, voicemail, or e-mail — into the office of today with its
wealth of high-tech devices


Everything you used to do with handwritten to-do lists, word processors, and
spreadsheets all magically comes together in Project. However, this transi-
tion won’t come in a moment, and you need a basic understanding of what
project management software can do to get you up to speed. If you’ve used
previous versions of Project, this little overview can help you refresh your
memory as well as ease you into a few of the new features of Project 2007.

You probably handle projects day in and day out. Some are obvious, because
your boss named them so that any fool would know that they’re projects: the
Acme Drilling Project or the Network Expansion IT Project, for example.
Others are less obvious, such as that speech thing you have to do on
Saturday for your professional association or washing the dog

If you need to organize a company holiday party, it’s a project. If you were
handed a three-year Earth-exploration initiative to find oil in Iowa, coordinate
subcontractors and government permits, and work with a team of 300 people,
that’s definitely a project. Yes, even that speech you have to present is a
project because it has certain characteristics.

As Lewis Carroll said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get
you there.” So, first things first: You have to understand the goal of your project
so you can begin to build the tasks that have to be performed to get you there.


A task is simply one of those items you used to scribble on your handwritten
to-do lists, such as Write final report or Apply for permits. Tasks are typically
organized into phases (appropriate stages) in Project, arranged in an outline-
like structure, Because timing
is essential in any project, Project helps you set up and view the timing rela-tionships among tasks


Becoming a task master:


A task can be as broad or as detailed as you like. For example, you can create
a single task to research your competition, or you can create a project phase
that consists of a summary task and subtasks below it. For example, the sum-
mary task might be Competitive Research, with the subtasks Researching
Online Business Databases, Assembling Company Annual Reports, and
Reviewing Competitive Product Lines.


All in the timing:


They say that timing is everything: Rome wasn’t built in a day, a stitch in time
saves nine, and don’t even ask me about choosing exactly when to sell your
high-tech stocks. The importance of timing applies to Project tasks, too.
Almost all tasks have timing — referred to as duration — which is the amount
of time needed to complete the task