Let’s say you are a supremely multitasking product specialist for a small startup company. You handle research, development, material procurement, marketing, and staff development. On top of all this, you have just been assigned the responsibility of managing the project for the launch of your company’s newest product.
On the other hand, we could say that you are an accomplished project management professional who manages projects for several departments in your organization at any given time. You’re responsible for managing thousands of tasks, hitting hundreds of deadlines, and assigning scores of resources. You need to plan and monitor each project, work with different managers, and make the best use of resources—some of whom might work on only one project and others who might be shared among several of your projects.
As these two scenarios illustrate, project management is a process and a discipline that can be the full focus of your career or one of many aspects of your job description.
Numerous industries rely on sound project management for their success. Here are just a handful:
Construction
Filmmaking
Computer system deployment
Logistics
Engineering
Publishing
Events planning
Software development
Regardless of the size of your organization, the scope of your projects, or even the number of projects you find yourself managing simultaneously, effective project management is vital at the start of a project. This is when you’re determining what needs to be done, when, by whom, and for how much money. Effective project management is also essential after you kick off the project, when you are continually controlling and managing the project details. You frequently analyze the project—tracking the schedule, the budget, resource requirements, and the scope of tasks. In addition, you’re managing the level of quality in the project, planning for risks and contingencies, and communicating with the members of the project team as well as upper management or customers.
Throughout this intricate process of planning and tracking your project, Microsoft Office Project 2007 is a smart and trustworthy assistant that can help you manage the many responsibilities associated with your project. Many software applications can help you work toward producing a specific result that you can print, publish, or post. And it’s true that you use Office Project 2007 to set up a project schedule and print reports that reflect that schedule. However, Microsoft Project goes far beyond just the printed outcome. This is a tool that helps you brainstorm, organize, and assign your tasks as you create your schedule in the planning phase. Microsoft Project then helps you track progress and manage the schedule, resources, and budget during the execution phase. All this so you can achieve your real objective—to successfully achieve the goals of your project on schedule and under budget.
This book is designed for intermediate to advanced computer users who manage projects. Even if you have never used Microsoft Project or managed a project before, this book assumes you have experience with Microsoft Windows and at least a couple of programs in Microsoft Office, for example, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, or Microsoft Office Outlook. Depending on where you are along the spectrum of project management experience, this book can help you in the following ways:
If you are completely new to project management and Microsoft Project, this book will give you a solid grounding in the use of Microsoft Project as well as basic project management practices and methodologies. It will help you understand the phases of project management, including the controlling factors in the project life cycle.
If you’re an experienced project manager, this book integrates common project management practices with the use of the software tool. This helps you see how you can use Microsoft Project to carry out the project management functions you’re accustomed to.
If you’re already an experienced Microsoft Project user, this book will help you better understand the inner workings of Microsoft Project so that you can use it more effectively to do what you need it to do. This book also introduces the new features of Project 2007, giving you ideas and tips as to whether and how you can use those features.
Regardless of your previous experience, this book will help you work with Microsoft Project as a facilitator for your project’s processes and phases. Read the chapters and parts you feel are appropriate for your needs right now. Familiarize yourself with the topics available in the other chapters. Then, as you continue to manage your projects with Microsoft Project, keep the book within arm’s reach so that you can quickly find the answers to questions and problems as they come up. As you achieve mastery in one level of knowledge, use this book to help you attain the next level, whether it’s working with multiple projects at one time, customizing Microsoft Project, or programming Microsoft Project functions to automate repetitive activities. This book is your comprehensive Microsoft Project reference, in which you can quickly find answers and then get back to work on your project plan. The book is organized into the following parts:
Part I. If you want a primer on project management in general or Microsoft Project in particular, read the chapters in this part. Here, you find an overview of Microsoft Project, including what’s new in Project 2007. There’s an overview of project management processes and how Microsoft Project facilitates those processes. You also find a discussion of the various kinds of people involved in your project, as well as some keys to successful project management.
Part II. Everything you need to know about starting a new project and creating a new project plan is found here. You get details about working with the Microsoft Project workspace, scheduling tasks, setting up resources, assigning resources to tasks, establishing costs, and adjusting the project plan to be an accurate model of your project’s reality.
Part III. After you create the perfect project plan, you’re ready to execute it. To keep the project plan working for you, it needs to be up to date. This part provides details about setting and working with baselines so you can track and compare your progress toward deadlines. It covers important aspects of updating and tracking costs as well as adjusting the schedule, resource workload, and costs to reflect ongoing changes in your project.
Part IV. Microsoft Project provides a wide range of options for setting up and printing views and reports. This part outlines these methods—from simply printing your current view to generating a built-in report to designing and running your own custom report. This part also describes how you can export data to Office Excel or Microsoft Office Visio to generate visual reports for analysis, as well as how you can use earned value data to analyze progress and costs.
Part V. As a project manager, it’s likely that you’re managing more than one project at a time. This part explains the concepts and practices of master projects, subprojects, and resource pools. It also explains how you can exchange information between different project plans; copy or link information; and leverage customized views, reports, groups, and other Microsoft Project elements you might have created.
Part VI. Microsoft Project is designed to work seamlessly with other programs. You can copy, embed, link, hyperlink, import, and export information. This part describes these methods in detail and also devotes chapters to the specific integration techniques for working with Excel, Office Outlook, and Office Visio.
Part VII. Microsoft Project helps to facilitate collaboration in project teams across your enterprise. If you’re using Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Project Web Access, you and your organization have access to robust project team collaboration and enterprise project management features. In this part, you see how you can assign tasks, obtain task progress updates, and receive status reports. This part also describes how you can set up and use the enterprise features to standardize and customize Microsoft Project and project management throughout your organization. A chapter each is devoted to the duties and capabilities of different stakeholders in the enterprise project management structure: the project server administrator or portfolio manager, the team member or team lead, and the executive or other managing stakeholder.
Part VIII. With Microsoft Project, you can create and customize your own views, tables, groups, reports, formulas, toolbars, dialog boxes, macros, and more. This part covers the details of these custom elements. This part also discusses methods for closing a project at the end of its life cycle and continuing to use what you learn by creating templates that can become the basis for the next project of its kind. Along these lines, this part details project file management issues, including file locations, backups, and multiple versions.
Part 9: Appendixes. This part includes ancillary information you’ll find useful in your work with Microsoft Project. For example, there are installation guidelines and a list of online resources to expand your knowledge of Microsoft Project and project management. Also included is a handy keyboard shortcut reference.
Throughout the book, you’ll find tips that provide shortcuts or alternate methods for doing certain tasks. The Inside Out tips give you information about known issues or idiosyncrasies with Microsoft Project and possible methods of working around them.
There are also Troubleshooting tips, which alert you to common problems and how to avoid or recover from them.
This book is designed to be referenceable so that you can quickly find the answers you need at the time you have the question. The comprehensive table of contents is a good starting point. Another excellent place to start finding your solution is in one of the two indexes at the end of the book. Use the special Troubleshooting index to solve specific problems. Use the master index to help you find the topics you’re looking for when you need them.