Because a project involves a myriad of tasks, resources, assignments, dates, and more, it’s clear that you need some kind of tool to help you keep track of the details. By using a spreadsheet or word processing program, you could create a table that lists your tasks, durations, start and finish dates, and assigned resources. In fact, that might very well get you started. But it’s likely that you’ll end up working harder than you have to in an attempt to make the tool work right. Such a table would not be able to perform the following functions:
Calculate the start and finish dates for you
Indicate whether assigned resources are actually available
Inform you if assigned resources are underallocated or overworked
Alert you if there’s an upcoming deadline
Understand how much material you’ve depleted or how much you’re spending on supplies and services
Calculate how much of the budget you’ve spent so far
Draw your project tasks as a Gantt chart or network diagram so you can get a visual of your project
To do this and more, you can create a table in Microsoft Project instead. You can then use the project database, schedule calculation, and charting capabilities to help facilitate your project management processes (see Figure 2-2).
Although Microsoft Project can’t negotiate a more reasonable finish date, it can help you determine what you have to sacrifice to make that date. Although Microsoft Project won’t complete a difficult and time-consuming task for your team, it will help you find extra time in the schedule or additional resources for that task. And although Microsoft Project can’t motivate an uninspired team member, it can tell you if that team member is working on critical tasks that will affect the finish date of the entire project.
In short, Microsoft Project can help you facilitate all processes in the project management life cycle, from developing your scope, modeling your project schedule, and tracking and communicating progress to saving knowledge gained from the closed project. Furthermore, with Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007, project management standards can be established and disseminated throughout your enterprise.
You can use Microsoft Project to create a model of your project. This model reflects the reality of your project. You enter your tasks, resources, assignments, and other project-related information into Microsoft Project. You can then organize and manage the copious and very detailed bits of project information that otherwise can be quite overwhelming.
With all the necessary information stored in Microsoft Project, the exact project information you need at any given time is always at your fingertips. You can manipulate and analyze this information in various ways to solve problems and make decisions to successfully manage the project. As you take action and move forward in your project, you update information in Microsoft Project so that it continues to reflect reality (see Figure 2-3).
Specifically, in the planning process, you use Microsoft Project to do the following:
Create your project phases, milestones, and task list. Microsoft Project uses your task list as the basis for the project database it creates for you. You can organize tasks within phases, or subtasks within summary tasks, so you can break your project down into manageable segments.
Estimate task durations. One task might take 2 hours to complete; another might take 4 days. Microsoft Project uses these durations to help build your schedule.
Link tasks with their appropriate relationships to other tasks. Often, a task cannot begin until a previous task has been completed. For example, for an office move project, you schedule the "Design office space" task before the "Order new furniture" task. The two tasks are linked because the second task cannot be done until the first task is complete. Microsoft Project uses these task relationships to build your schedule. The durations and task relationships are also shown in the Gantt Chart and Network Diagram views of your project.
Enter any imposed deadlines or other date constraints. If you know that you must vacate your current office space by the end of August, for example, you work with that date as one of the important constraints of your project. Microsoft Project schedules according to such constraints and informs you if there’s a conflict between a constraint and the durations or task relationships you have also set.
Set up the resources and assign them to tasks. Resources can be employees, vendors, or equipment that are responsible for carrying out the task. Not only does Microsoft Project keep track of which resources are assigned to which tasks, it also schedules work on assignments according to the resource’s availability and lets you know if a resource is overloaded with more tasks than can be accomplished in the resource’s available time. Resources can also include materials consumed or special costs incurred in the execution of a task, so you can plan for how much lumber you need, for example, or how much you’re going to have to spend on travel costs throughout the life of the project.
Establish resource costs and task costs. You can specify hourly, monthly, or per-use rates for the employees or equipment being used to complete tasks. You can specify the cost for consumable materials or other special costs for items such as trade show registration, printing, or travel. When your human, equipment, material, and cost resources are assigned to tasks, Microsoft Project calculates and adds these costs, so you can get an accurate view of how much your project will cost to execute. You can often use this calculation as a basis for the project budget.
Adjust the plan to achieve a targeted finish date or budget amount. Suppose that your project plan initially shows a finish date that’s two months later than required or a cost that’s $10,000 more than the allocated budget. You can make adjustments to scope, schedule, cost, and resources to bring the project plan in line. While working through your inevitable project tradeoffs, Microsoft Project recalculates your schedule automatically until you have the result you need.
Note
For more information about using Microsoft Project to plan your project, see the chapters in Part II.
In the execution and control process of the project, use Microsoft Project to do the following:
Save the baseline plan. For comparison and tracking purposes, you need to take a snapshot of what you consider your baseline project plan. As you update task progress through the life of the project, you can compare current progress with your original plan. These comparisons provide valuable information about whether you’re on track with the schedule and your budget.
Update actual task progress. With Microsoft Project, you can update task progress by entering percentage complete, work complete, work remaining, and more. As you enter actual progress, the schedule is automatically recalculated.
Compare variances between planned and actual task information. Using the baseline information you saved, Microsoft Project presents various views to show your baseline against actual and scheduled progress, along with the resulting variances. For example, if your initial project plan shows that you had originally planned to finish a task on Thursday, but the resource actually finished it on Monday, you’d have a variance of 3 days in your favor.
Review planned, actual, and scheduled costs. In addition to seeing task progress variances, you can compare baseline costs against actual and currently scheduled costs and see the resulting cost variances. Microsoft Project can also use your baseline and current schedule information for earned value calculations you can use for more detailed analyses.
Adjust the plan to respond to changes in scope, finish date, and budget. What if you get a directive in the middle of the project to cut $10,000 from your budget? Or what if you learn that you must bring the project in a month earlier to catch a vital marketing window? Even in the midst of a project, you can adjust scope, schedule, cost, and resources in your project plan. With each change you make, Microsoft Project recalculates your schedule automatically.
Note
For more information about using Microsoft Project to track and control your project, see the chapters in Part III.
Report on progress, costs, resource utilization, and more. Using the database and calculation features of Microsoft Project, you can generate a number of text-based and visual reports. For example, there are reports for project summary, milestones, tasks starting soon, over-budget tasks, resource to-do lists, and many more. The visual reports send Microsoft Project data to Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or Office Visio 2007 so you can see the data as a column chart or flow diagram, for example. You can modify these built-in reports to suit your own needs or create custom reports entirely from scratch.
Note
For more information about using Microsoft Project to report progress, see Chapter 12.
In the closing process of the project, use Microsoft Project to accomplish the following tasks:
Capture actual task duration metrics. If you tracked task progress throughout the project, at the end of the project you have solid, tested data for how long certain tasks actually take.
Capture successful task sequencing. Sometimes, you’re not sure at the outset of a project whether a task should be done sooner or later in the cycle. With the experience of the project behind you, you can see whether your sequencing worked well.
Save a template for the next project of this kind. Use your project plan as the boilerplate for the next project. You and other project managers will have a task list, milestones, deliverables, sequence, durations, and task relationships already in place that can be easily modified to fit the requirements of the new project.
Note
For more information about closing the project and creating templates, see Chapter 28.
You can also use Microsoft Project to work with multiple projects, and even show the task or resource links among them. In the course of modeling your project in this way, Microsoft Project serves as your project information system. Microsoft Project arranges the thousands of bits of information in various ways so you can work with it, analyze your data, and make decisions based on coherent and soundly calculated project management information. This project information system carries out three basic functions:
It stores project information including tasks, resources, assignments, durations, task relationships, task sequences, calendars, and more.
It calculates information including dates, schedules, costs, durations, critical path, earned value, variances, and more.
It presents views of information you’re retrieving. You can specify the views, tables, filters, groups, fields, or reports, depending on what aspect of your project model you need to see.
In addition to helping you create your project plan, Microsoft Project helps with resource management, cost management, and team communications. With Microsoft Project resource management features, you can perform the following tasks:
Enter resources in the Microsoft Project resource list.
Enter resources from your organization’s e-mail address book, Active Directory directory service, or Project Server accounts.
Maintain a reusable pool of resources available across multiple projects.
Specify skills required for a task and have Microsoft Project search for available resources with those skills.
Schedule tasks according to assigned resources’ availability.
Check for resource overload or underutilization and make adjustments accordingly.
Book a proposed resource in your project (using Office Project Professional 2007).
With the cost management features of Microsoft Project, you can do the following:
Enter periodic or per-use costs for human, equipment, and material resources, including multiple rates for different task types.
Enter costs for fees, supplies, or services that will be incurred on a task, for example, permit fees or travel costs.
Enter fixed costs for tasks.
Estimate costs for the project while you’re still in the planning process.
Compare planned cost variances to actual cost variances.
Compare planned, actual, or scheduled costs against your budget.
View cost totals for tasks, resources, phases, and the entire project.
Analyze earned value calculations including budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP), schedule variance (SV), and cost variance percent (CV%).
Note
For more information about setting and managing costs, see Chapter 8, and Chapter 11. For information about working with earned value, see Chapter 13.
Your communications requirements might be as simple as printing a Gantt chart or resource list for a weekly status meeting. Or, you might prefer to electronically exchange task updates with your resources every day and publish high-level project information to your company’s intranet.
With Microsoft Project, you can communicate with others in just the way you need, as follows:
Print a view as it looks on your screen
Generate and print a predesigned text-based report
Generate and print a predesigned visual report using Microsoft Project data in Excel or Office Visio 2007
Create a custom view, text-based report, or visual report
Copy a project view as a static picture in another Microsoft Office application
Note
For more information about working with views and reports, see Chapter 12.
Exchange task assignments, updates, and status reports with your team members through Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Web Access
Allow team leads to delegate tasks to other team members
Track issues and documents through Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, Office Project Server 2007, and Office Project Web Access
Publish the project through Project Server and Project Web Access for review by team members, senior management, customers, and other stakeholders
Note
For more information about working with resources across an enterprise, see Chapter 22.
Through the use of Project Server, as accessed by Project Professional and Project Web Access, an entire portfolio of projects can be standardized across your enterprise. Numerous Microsoft Project elements including views, filters, groups, fields, and formulas, can be designed and included in the enterprise global template that reflects your organization’s specific project management methodology. This customization and design is done by a project server administrator. This project server administrator is the person who sets up and manages the installation of Microsoft Project for your organization. The project server administrator knows the requirements of project management and the features of Microsoft Project well enough to design custom solutions and is often a programmer or other information technology professional. The project server administrator might also be a technically oriented lead project manager.
When your project server administrator designs a common enterprise project template, all project managers in the organization can then work with the same customized project elements that support organizational initiatives. In addition, senior managers can review summary information from multiple projects throughout the organization.
The project server administrator also sets up the enterprise resource pool, which contains all the resources available to the enterprise, from which the various project managers can draw to staff their projects. The enterprise resource pool includes key resource information such as cost, availability, and skill set.
Some organizations might divide the duties between a project server administrator and portfolio manager. The project server administrator can handle installation, server, network, and database issues, and the portfolio manager can be responsible for designing custom project elements, managing the enterprise resource pool, and setting up users and permissions.
Note
For more information about enterprise capabilities, see Part VII.