Ins and Outs of Microsoft Project Washington, DC MPUG January 10, 2002 Sheri Young Claridian Technology Consulting.

Ins and Outs of Microsoft Project

Washington, DC MPUGWashington, DC MPUGJanuary 10, 2002January 10, 2002

Sheri YoungClaridian Technology Consulting

MPUG DC Chapter Meeting - January 10, 2002

Agenda

Introductions Microsoft Project Good Practices Tips on “Ins” Tips in the middle Tips on “Outs” Q&A


Introductions Who am I? Who are you?

Project Experience Survey

1 2 3 4 5

Expert on all functionality

Not a hands on user

Use it in your job – beyond the Gantt


Why are we here?

Adding to your Project “knowledgebase”Best practices learned on the front linesTips and tricks picked up along the wayWar stories Live demonstrations when helpfulYour questions


Think Before You Click…

Is it a picture or a project? Do you plan to ‘manage’ it with Project?

Is this project related to other projects? Use same resources? Reported to same managers / customers? Edited by some of the same people? Dependent on work in other projects?

Do you have relevant history? A template to use to kick off your project? A similar project with actual durations and workloads?

What level of detail do you need? At what level will you assign “responsibility”? At what level will you track costs? Do you depend on others?


Is it a picture or a project? For quickly consumed “MacProjects”, disregard

all that best practices stuff Use constraints with wild abandon – type your dates and drag

those bars! Link to make visual points not calculations Use Fixed Duration Tasks only Type your headers and footers directly into the Page Setup Call your resources any names you want Freely modify the Gantt View’s table and bar styles

Microsoft Project is a GREAT schedule picture drawing tool too!


Is this project related to other projects?

Use same resources… Use a shared resource pool so you can forecast workloads

across projects Call ASpade ASpade – standardized resource names

Reported to same managers / customers… Share Views to standardize Gantt bar styles, keep columns in

same places, use same custom codes for same purposes Edited by some of the same people…

Use a standard template to store standard Options settings Dependent on work in other projects…

Keep projects co-located to manage inter-project dependencies


Do you have relevant history?

A template… Can make you look like a fast planner – kick start your

project with “typical” schedule content

A similar project with actual durations and workloads… Can be used to make you look like a planning genius

– with a more accurate plan from the beginning


What level of detail do you need?

At what level will you assign “responsibility”? That’s the right level for your tasks – trust your staff to task it out

below that level Add milestones for more information on detailed level progress

At what level will you track costs? Keep your schedule level of detail close to the cost tracking level

– or one level lower Do you depend on others?

Show all external dependencies as a communication tool and CY device!


Design before you click… What fields you will use

What custom code fields are needed? Standard values for code fields

Drop down lists, formulas, graphical indicators

What bar styles you will use What do you want to highlight for this project?

What resources you will use Shared resource pool or other naming convention

What Microsoft Project “options” settings you will use

Organizational standards and templates can go a long way to minimize project manager time


Some tips on the way “In”

Tools - Options Menu Note “global” and “local project” options Turn on project summary task Consider default task type Check Calendar settings

Use File – Properties for header/footer text Prepare Project Calendar in Tools – Working

Time


Tips for the middle

Creating a plan Resources Tracking Costs


Creating a plan

Use a template for options settings Project Start Date is the first predecessor Enter tasks column by column instead of

row by row Use nouns for summary tasks and action

verbs for tasks Use Notes for long descriptions


Planning - Cool Stuff

Use Deadlines not constraints – and manually rework the plan to meet them

Use mouse to split tasks to show periods of inactivity

Elapsed duration ignores the calendar working time settings (1eday=24 hours)

Links can have positive or negative lag In duration units or %


Planning - User tips

Go To Selected Task toolbar button to slide Gantt window timeframe

Mass changes:Fill down handleSelect multiple tasks and bring up Task

Information dialog Use collapse and expand outline to

navigate large projects


Planning with Project Central

Use Project Central as collaboration tool to build new scheduleProject manager creates a summary task and

assigns team members to taskTeam members submit their tasks to project

manager via web


Assigning Resources

If resources are shared with other projects, use a shared resource pool If projects cannot be co-located, at least use standard resource

names to ensure they can be analyzed together Protect yourself from typos by turning off Automatically

add new resources and tasks option Don’t include repetitive, operational or overhead type

non-project task line items unless somebody makes you


Resources - Cool Stuff

The shared resource pool is a communication tool between project managers and resource managers With the pool file open and connected to your file, you can see

all of a person’s assignments on every project Your assignments get copied to the pool file so other project

managers can see how busy you are keeping that person A Resource Pool operates like a consolidated project file for

assignment data – great for a resource manager Note that performance issues can keep the pool from being an

industrial strength solution for large numbers of projects and resources

Use the Resource Graph to see how busy (and how free) a single resource or a group of resources are


Resources - User tips

You MUST understand “the equation” to effectively work with resource-loaded schedules Equation: Work = Duration x Resource Units Examples

40 hours=5 days x 100% 20 hours=5 days x 50% 80 hours=5 days x 2

The equation is always on The equation’s behavior is affected by task types: Fixed Units,

Fixed Duration, and Fixed Work And by the Effort-driven setting

For in-progress tasks, the equation applies to Remaining Duration and Remaining Work


Resources with Project Central

Use Project Central to communicate task assignments to resources

An alternative is using email-based workgroup to notify resources by email


Tracking

Use a baseline to store your original plan for comparison purposes

Updating task status updates resource status option setting marries or divorces “% complete” and “% work complete”

If you are using resources,Use a Usage view to revise/update your planDo not enter status at task level!


Tracking - Cool Stuff

Use Tracking Gantt View and Variance tables to easily get a picture of current status


Tracking - User tips

Note that updating the baseline on selected subtasks will not update the summary task baseline


Tracking with Project Central

Collect status via Project Central instead of hand-typing itTeam members fill in one web-based

timesheet for task assignmentsStatus routed to appropriate project managersProject managers are gateway for updating

the project plan automatically


Costs

Costs may be entered by you or calculated by Microsoft Project Set the Actual costs are always calculated by

Microsoft Project option setting Calculated costs are Actual Work * Rate

Resources may have multiple rates, changing over time

Fixed costs are entered by user and added to calculated costs


Costs with Project Central

Report current cost information to web users with Project CentralControl access by limiting access of

Categories to Views containing cost information


Tips on the way “Out” - Reporting

Use nearly WYSIWYG Views instead of “Reports”Create views for each report you need to printViews include table, bar styles, filters, groups


Veporting - Cool Stuff Use Rollup formatting for condensed schedules or highlighting

milestones Set Bar Colors automatically with meaningful Flags instead of

manually Take it a step further and set flags from a code field with a formula or

VBA macro Limited to only 20 flags Precedence in bar styles list affects style of each individual bar

Time-phased Network Diagrams Use Analyze Timescaled Data in Excel wizard to dump period-

based data to Excel and graph Snapshots of project for web

HTML via File – Save As Web Page GIF via Copy Picture toolbar button PDF using Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer utility


Reporting - User tips

Make re-usable report formatsSet File – Properties values and insert them

into headers and footers instead of typing text


Reporting with Project Central

Web users get access-controlled real-time information Create individualized views

Resource Managers view assignments of their resources Cost managers see cost information Customers see only high level information about only their

projects Use Text-based status reports to format, remind,

collect, and collate written status reports on projects


Q&A

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Ins and Outs of Microsoft Project Washington, DC MPUG January 10, 2002 Sheri Young Claridian Technology Consulting.

Documents

dc mpug

mpug dc chapter meeting

similar project

schedule level

level lower

right level

interproject dependencies

gantt slide