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