by Elaine Marmel, Nancy C. Muir
Ten Quick Reference guides__One great price!
Book I: Project Management
Book II: Project Basics
Book III: Getting Your Plan in Order
Book IV: Establishing Task Timing
Book V: Working with Resources and Costs
Book VI: Communicating Project Information
Book VII: Resolving Problems in Your Plan
Book VIII: Tracking
Book IX: Advanced Project Topics
Book X: The Basics of Project Server
Book II: Project Basics
Book III: Getting Your Plan in Order
Book IV: Establishing Task Timing
Book V: Working with Resources and Costs
Book VI: Communicating Project Information
Book VII: Resolving Problems in Your Plan
Book VIII: Tracking
Book IX: Advanced Project Topics
Book X: The Basics of Project Server
 |
| Microsoft® Office Project 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies® |
About the Authors
Elaine Marmel is President of Marmel Enterprises, LLC, an organization thatspecializes in technical writing and software training. Elaine left her native
Chicago for the warmer climes of Arizona (by way of Cincinnati, Ohio;
Jerusalem, Israel; Ithaca, New York; Washington, D.C., and Tampa, Florida)
where she basks in the sun with her PC, her dog Josh, and her cats, Cato,
Watson, and Buddy, and sings barbershop harmony with the 2006 International
Championship Scottsdale Chorus. Elaine spends most of her time
writing; she has authored and co-authored over 50 books about Microsoft
Project, QuickBooks, Peachtree, Quicken, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word
for Windows, Microsoft Word for the Mac, Windows, 1-2-3 for Windows, and
Lotus Notes. From 1994 to 2006, she also was the contributing editor to
monthly publications Peachtree Extra and QuickBooks Extra.
Nancy C. Muir is the author of over 50 books on topics including project
management, desktop applications, the Internet, distance learning, and ecommerce.
She is the author of Microsoft Project For Dummies, and Microsoft
Project For Dummies Quick Reference. She has also written or contributed to
several textbooks for middle-school students. Her books have won awards
for excellence and have been translated into over a half-dozen languages.
Prior to her writing career, Ms. Muir trained Fortune 500 companies in project
management software, and taught technical writing at the university level.
Her company, The Publishing Studio, specializes in writing, editing, and consulting
services for the publishing industry.
Authors’ Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Kyle Looper for thinking up this project and trusting us to
take it on. Our editor, Blair Pottenger, has made this book a delight to work
on, as he always does. Thanks also to copy editor Virginia Sanders and technical
editor Thuy Le for making sure our work is accurate and literate. We
also want to acknowledge the Microsoft Project team and their product manager,
Adrian Jenkins, for the help they provided during the beta testing of
Microsoft Project 2007.
Introduction
Project management has been around as long as there have been people
coming together trying to get things done. Some ancient fellow with a
lot of ambition probably took the lead as the very first project manager. He
carved diagrams in stone tablets to help his team members understand his
strategy and actually talked to them to communicate progress (no e-mail in
those days!). Unlike you, this early project manager had no senior management
to report to, no formal budget, and no cubicle, but the fundamental
spirit of a project was there.
Over the years, project management has evolved into a sophisticated discipline
that involves standardized methodologies and techniques. Project managers
have a toolkit that includes detailed analyses and projections, tools to
track time and money, and highly visual reports to impress management.
Project management software — which has been around only about 25 years
or so — has brought a new face and functionality to project management that
would have left our ancient project managers speechless.
About This Book
Microsoft Office Project 2007, the most recent version of the world’s most
popular project management software, provides a treasure trove of functionality;
it makes the features of your average word processing software look
like child’s play in comparison.
All that functionality can be wonderful, but if you’ve never used project
management software, those features can also be a bit overwhelming. One
key to making the leap from your traditional project management methods
to project management software is to understand how its features relate to
what you do every day as a project manager. Another is to get a book like
this one that tells you all about Project’s features and how to use them. Even
if you have used project management software or Project itself before, this
book offers a wealth of advice and information on Project 2007 features that
can help you get productive right away.
In Microsoft Office Project 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, our
goal is to help you explore all that Project offers, providing information on
relevant project management concepts in handy modules (called minibooks)
while also offering specific procedures to build and track your Project plans.
But more importantly, we offer advice on how to make all these features and
procedures mesh with what you already know as a project manager to make
the transition easier.
coming together trying to get things done. Some ancient fellow with a
lot of ambition probably took the lead as the very first project manager. He
carved diagrams in stone tablets to help his team members understand his
strategy and actually talked to them to communicate progress (no e-mail in
those days!). Unlike you, this early project manager had no senior management
to report to, no formal budget, and no cubicle, but the fundamental
spirit of a project was there.
Over the years, project management has evolved into a sophisticated discipline
that involves standardized methodologies and techniques. Project managers
have a toolkit that includes detailed analyses and projections, tools to
track time and money, and highly visual reports to impress management.
Project management software — which has been around only about 25 years
or so — has brought a new face and functionality to project management that
would have left our ancient project managers speechless.
About This Book
Microsoft Office Project 2007, the most recent version of the world’s most
popular project management software, provides a treasure trove of functionality;
it makes the features of your average word processing software look
like child’s play in comparison.
All that functionality can be wonderful, but if you’ve never used project
management software, those features can also be a bit overwhelming. One
key to making the leap from your traditional project management methods
to project management software is to understand how its features relate to
what you do every day as a project manager. Another is to get a book like
this one that tells you all about Project’s features and how to use them. Even
if you have used project management software or Project itself before, this
book offers a wealth of advice and information on Project 2007 features that
can help you get productive right away.
In Microsoft Office Project 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, our
goal is to help you explore all that Project offers, providing information on
relevant project management concepts in handy modules (called minibooks)
while also offering specific procedures to build and track your Project plans.
But more importantly, we offer advice on how to make all these features and
procedures mesh with what you already know as a project manager to make
the transition easier.
How This Book Is Organized
This book is organized into digestible chunks of chapters contained in ten
minibooks. Each minibook covers an important topic you need in order to
use Project, such as basic project management concepts, resources, and
tracking. If you’re new to Project, you might want to read each book in
sequence, but if you’ve used Project before, you can simply refer to the minibook
that you need at the moment.
In addition, we include case studies throughout this book to help you see how
Project works in action. Files that go along with those case studies are on the
book’s companion Web site, located at www.dummies.com/go/project2007aiofd.
The following sections offer a quick synopsis of what each book contains.
Book I: Project Management
This book gives you a firm grounding in project management concepts and
the Microsoft Project 2007 environment. You discover what typical tasks go
into a project, as well as how using Project to manage your tasks and
resources can save you time and money. Finally, in Chapter 5, we explore
what’s new in Project 2007, particularly some neat features such as Change
Highlighting and Task Drivers.
Book II: Project Basics
Some of the basic building blocks of Project include the overall structure of a
project plan, which we discuss in Chapter 1, and the tasks that make up that
plan. It’s in this minibook that you create your first task and explore the
many views Project offers to help you review and analyze your project data.
In Chapter 4, we cover calendars, very important tools in building your project’s
timing. Finally, in Chapter 5, we explore Project’s help system so you
can use it to find topics of interest easily.
Book III: Getting Your Plan in Order
This is the minibook where you explore the outline structure of a Project
plan, made up of summary tasks and subtasks, and how to assign outline
codes. Chapter 3 introduces you to the work breakdown structure (WBS)
code, used by many organizations to uniquely identify tasks in a project
plan. Finally, in Chapter 4 you discover the ins and outs of inserting and linking
projects so that a task within one project can represent the timing of
another project.
Book IV: Establishing Task Timing
Task timing is determined by a number of factors, several of which are
reviewed in the chapters of this minibook. Chapter 1 explores the basics of
timing. Chapter 2 provides an introduction to what drives task timing, including
the start and finish dates of a project and the setting for how Project
schedules tasks. In Chapter 3, you explore dependencies, timing relationships
between tasks that control their timing in relation to each other. Finally,
Chapter 4 deals with constraints, settings such as Start No Later Than that
force a task’s timing in some fashion.
Book V: Working with Resources and Costs
Resources are the people, equipment, and materials that you use to get
things done on your project. There are various kinds of resources, which you
discover in Chapter 1, “Creating Resources.” Chapter 2 shows you how
resources relate to costs in your project. Chapter 3 is where you discover
how to assign resources you’ve created to tasks in your project. The last
chapter in this minibook explores how Project totals up costs resulting from
resource assignments.
Book VI: Communicating Project Information
When you input data about tasks and resources into Project, it returns a
wealth of information about your schedule and costs. In this minibook, you
look more closely at all the views Project offers for reviewing that information,
as well as tables of data you can display in those views and even customize.
This minibook ends with two chapters about reporting, one covering
traditional Project reports and one covering a Visual Reports feature
that’s new in Project 2007.
Book VII: Resolving Problems in Your Plan
When you have created a Project plan, before you put it into action it’s a
good idea to review it and fix any problems. In this minibook, we introduce
filters and groups that help you spot trends and problems. Chapter 2 helps
you through several methods for resolving resource conflicts, which might
include resources who are overbooked at some point during the life of your
project or whose assignments are causing delays in your schedule. Chapters
3 and 4 show you how to spot and resolve problems with timing in your project,
including how you can use Project to help you convince your management
that you need more time to get everything done.
Book VIII: Tracking
The project has started, tasks are being worked on, resource costs are tallying
up. Now comes the tracking phase, when you set a baseline against which you
can record progress. In this minibook, we discuss recording actual activity on
tasks and reviewing what that activity is doing to your budget.
Book IX: Advanced Project Topics
Project is a very sophisticated piece of software, and it provides you with
several more advanced tools to make your life easier. Book IX is where you
find out how to customize the interface that Project shows you and the look
of the various elements in your project plan. You also discover how to use
macros to automate procedures and how to both import and export data in Project.
Book X: The Basics of Project Server
Project Professional can be used in conjunction with Project Server to create
an enterprise-wide project management solution. Chapter 1 of this book
gives you an overview of Project used with Project Server. Chapters 2
through 4 approach enterprise project management using Project and
Project Server from the perspective of the Project Server administrator, the
project manager, and the project team member.
Glossary
Project management and Project itself involve a lot (and we mean a lot) of
terms and acronyms that you need to know to input and analyze data. This
glossary is a good place to go when an unfamiliar word or string of letters pops up.
Conventions Used in This Book
We use a few conventions in this book that you ought to know about.
Web site addresses, or URLs, and other items such as filenames are highlighted
like this: www.microsoft.com and IAmAFile.mpp.
Menu commands are given in the order in which you select them; for example,
Choose Tools➪Resource Sharing➪Share Resources.
Options in dialog boxes use initial caps even if they aren’t capitalized on
your screen. This makes it easier for you to identify them in sentences. For
example, what appears as “Show summary tasks” in the Options dialog box
appears as Show Summary Tasks in our chapters.
Foolish Assumptions
We’ve made some assumptions in writing this book. First, we’ve assumed
that you are computer literate — that you’ve used software and know what a
menu and dialog box are. We assume you know how to use a mouse to select
objects and text. We assume you have good file management skills and know
that you should keep copies of your files and save frequently.
We have not assumed that you have used Project before, though you might
have used a previous version and simply want to find out more about some
area of it.
We haven’t assumed that you manage multimillion dollar projects; whether
you deal with small projects or large projects, the information and concepts
in this book help you manage them better.
In case you’re new to project management, we’ve provided the first minibook
to give you a grounding in some key project management concepts.
Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................1
About This Book...............................................................................................1
How This Book Is Organized...........................................................................2
Book I: Project Management .................................................................2
Book II: Project Basics ...........................................................................2
Book III: Getting Your Plan in Order.....................................................2
Book IV: Establishing Task Timing .......................................................3
Book V: Working with Resources and Costs .......................................3
Book VI: Communicating Project Information ....................................3
Book VII: Resolving Problems in Your Plan.........................................3
Book VIII: Tracking .................................................................................4
Book IX: Advanced Project Topics .......................................................4
Book X: The Basics of Project Server ..................................................4
Glossary...................................................................................................4
Conventions Used in This Book .....................................................................4
Foolish Assumptions .......................................................................................5
Icons Used in This Book..................................................................................5
Where to Go from Here....................................................................................6
Book I: Project Management ..........................................7
Chapter 1: A Project Management Overview
The Life of a Project.........................................................................................9
So, just what is a project?......................................................................9
Taking a closer look at the project life cycle ....................................10
Everybody Plays a Role.................................................................................13
Stakeholders of all types .....................................................................14
Getting a Few Project Management Concepts under Your Belt ...............14
The dreaded triple constraint ............................................................15
Keeping on track: Critical path and slack .........................................15
Using tried-and-true methodologies ..................................................16
Resource Management Basics......................................................................18
How Project sees resources................................................................18
What it takes to manage people .........................................................19
Chapter 2: The Ins and Outs of Using Project
The Basics of Computerized Project Management....................................21
Making the leap to Project ..................................................................22
Connecting with your team online.....................................................23
What You Have to Put Into Project ..............................................................24
Tasks and their timing .........................................................................24
Lining up resources..............................................................................29
Keeping a Project on Track...........................................................................32
Keeping Others in the Loop..........................................................................33
Chapter 3: Just What Tasks Should You Include?
First Things First: Define the Business Need..............................................35
Target Practice: Project Goal Setting ...........................................................36
Getting your goal straight ...................................................................37
Writing a goal statement......................................................................37
Taking a Look at Your Project’s Scope ........................................................38
A scope is not a goal ............................................................................38
Writing a scope statement...................................................................38
Breaking Your Project into Phases...............................................................39
Thinking things through......................................................................39
It’s just a phase .....................................................................................40
Choosing how granular to make your tasks .....................................41
Chapter 4: Exploring the Project Environment
Exploring Menus and Toolbars in Project...................................................45
Menu basics ..........................................................................................46
Displaying and using toolbars ............................................................47
Navigating Project..........................................................................................48
Getting to a view...................................................................................48
Scrolling to get a better view ..............................................................49
Jumping to a particular point in time ................................................51
Finding Another View ....................................................................................52
A popular view: Gantt Chart ...............................................................52
Following the (work)flow: Network Diagram view...........................53
Controlling time with Calendar view .................................................54
Changing Views ..............................................................................................55
Modifying view panes ..........................................................................56
Changing tables ....................................................................................60
Displaying task panes ..........................................................................61
Displaying and Hiding Project Guide...........................................................61
Chapter 5: What’s New in Project 2007
Exploring the Many Versions of Project......................................................63
Getting out of Hot Water with Multiple Undo.............................................64
Spotting Changes with Change Highlighting...............................................66
Knowing What’s Driving Your Tasks ............................................................67
Making Reports More Visual.........................................................................68
A New Resource: Cost....................................................................................70
Working with Budgets....................................................................................71
Book II: Project Basics ................................................73
Chapter 1: Building a Project Plan
Creating That First Project............................................................................75
Starting from scratch ...........................................................................75
Getting a head start with templates...................................................76
Making Global Project Settings.....................................................................79
Entering settings...................................................................................79
Using start and finish dates ................................................................81
Save That Project! ..........................................................................................83
Saving a project ....................................................................................83
Saving in other formats .......................................................................84
Chapter 2: Creating That First Task
Tackling Task Basics ......................................................................................85
Identifying what makes up a task .......................................................86
What task settings control ..................................................................87
The Many Different Ways to Create a Task .................................................88
Creating a task in Gantt Chart view ...................................................88
Going the Task Information dialog box route ...................................89
Importing tasks from Outlook.............................................................91
Getting your tasks from Excel.............................................................92
Creating a task that represents another project ..............................94
Chapter 3: Exploring Task Views
A View for Every Need...................................................................................97
Finding Just the Right View for You.............................................................99
Discovering Various Task Views.................................................................100
What Resource Views Tell You ...................................................................103
The Best Views for Tracking Progress on Your Project ..........................106
Displaying Combination Views...................................................................108
Chapter 4: Working with Calendars
The Big 4: Base, Project, Resource, and Task Calendars ........................111
How calendars work ..........................................................................112
How does one calendar relate to another? .....................................114
Understanding Calendar Options and Working Times............................114
Setting calendar options....................................................................115
Making exceptions .............................................................................116
Getting the Project Calendar Set Up ..........................................................118
Letting Project Guide Make Calendar Settings For You...........................119
Making Changes to Task Calendars ...........................................................121
Setting Up Resource Calendars ..................................................................122
Calendars for different types of resources......................................123
Making changes to Resource calendars ..........................................123
Creating Your Own Custom Calendar Template.......................................125
Sharing Calendars with Other Projects.....................................................126
Chapter 5: Getting Help
Entering the Universe of Project Help .......................................................129
Exploring Microsoft Office Project Help....................................................130
Browsing topics ..................................................................................131
Using the Table of Contents ..............................................................132
Searching for Help ..............................................................................132
Going Online to Find the Answer ...............................................................134
Running Diagnostics ....................................................................................136
Putting Project Guide to Work....................................................................137
Where Project Guide can lead you...................................................137
Getting to work with Project Guide..................................................138
Book III: Getting Your Plan in Order ...........................141
Chapter 1: Organizing the Structure of a Project Plan
A To-Do List . . . or a Project Schedule?.....................................................143
Building an outline .............................................................................145
“I’ve got a little list . . .”......................................................................145
A typical project outline ....................................................................146
Summary tasks are special................................................................146
The most special task of them all — the project
summary task..................................................................................147
Creating Structure in the Schedule............................................................149
Selecting tasks ....................................................................................149
Promoting and demoting tasks.........................................................149
Expanding and collapsing the outline .............................................150
So, What Happens When You Reorganize the Outline?...........................152
Adding tasks........................................................................................152
Deleting tasks......................................................................................153
“Doing it over and over again . . .”....................................................154
Moving tasks .......................................................................................155
Copying tasks......................................................................................158
Chapter 2: Assigning Outline Codes to Tasks
Understanding Outline Numbers ...............................................................163
Letting Project Assign Outline Numbers...................................................164
Understanding Outline Codes ....................................................................165
Designing Your Own Outline Numbers......................................................166
Selecting an outline code to define ..................................................166
Defining the code mask .....................................................................168
Defining values for the lookup table ................................................169
Entering outline codes.......................................................................171
Outline Numbers and Codes and Renumbering.......................................172
Chapter 3: Using WBS Coding
What’s a WBS Code? ....................................................................................177
Creating WBS Codes ....................................................................................178
Creating a WBS Chart ..................................................................................179
Customizing WBS Codes .............................................................................183
WBS Codes and Renumbering ....................................................................186
Chapter 4: Linking and Consolidating Projects
Connecting Projects with Hyperlinks ........................................................191
Creating a hyperlink...........................................................................191
What happened? My hyperlinks don’t work...................................193
Editing hyperlinks ..............................................................................194
Moving or copying hyperlinks..........................................................195
Consolidating Projects ................................................................................195
What is consolidation? ......................................................................195
Do I need to use consolidation? .......................................................196
Creating subprojects..........................................................................198
Creating a consolidated project .......................................................201
Inserted projects and the outline.....................................................204
Moving subprojects within a consolidated project .......................208
Dependencies in Consolidated Projects ...................................................209
Creating dependencies across projects ..........................................209
Changing cross-project dependencies.............................................212
Saving a consolidated project...........................................................213
The Critical Path in a Consolidated Project .............................................215
Sharing Resources Using a Resource Pool................................................218
Creating a resource pool ...................................................................218
Sharing resources...............................................................................218
Opening a project ...............................................................................220
Updating the resource pool ..............................................................221
Viewing resource assignments when you share resources ..........222
Stop sharing resources......................................................................224
Book IV: Establishing Task Timing ..............................227
Chapter 1: Looking at Timing
Understanding What Drives Timing ..........................................................229
Timing factors.....................................................................................229
Your first look at your project’s timing............................................231
Scheduling Backwards or Forwards ..........................................................231
How scheduling works.......................................................................232
A word of warning about backward scheduling.............................233
Surviving Schedule Shock...........................................................................234
Chapter 2: Defining What Drives Task Timing
Finding Just the Right Task Type ...............................................................237
The big three: Task types ..................................................................238
Specifying task type ...........................................................................238
Task types in practice........................................................................239
Setting Task Duration ..................................................................................241
Determining the right duration ........................................................241
Entering duration ...............................................................................242
Working with tasks with no duration: Milestones..........................243
They keep showing up: Recurring tasks..........................................244
Starting and Pausing Tasks .........................................................................246
Entering the task start date ..............................................................246
Taking a break: Splitting tasks ..........................................................247
Understanding Effort-Driven Tasks............................................................249
How effort-driven tasks work............................................................249
When effort rules timing....................................................................249
Chapter 3: Adding Dependencies
Why Dependencies Are Needed.................................................................251
Understanding Dependencies ....................................................................252
Identifying the players in a dependency relationship ...................252
When to set a dependency and when to leave
well enough alone...........................................................................252
All types of dependencies .................................................................254
More complex dependencies: Lag and lead time ...........................256
Setting Dependencies ..................................................................................256
Setting up dependency links.............................................................257
Connecting to other projects with external dependencies ..........260
Things change: Deleting dependencies ...........................................260
Visualizing Task Dependencies ..................................................................262
Chapter 4: Working with Constraints and Deadlines
Beginning with the Start and Finish Dates................................................267
Understanding How Constraints Work......................................................268
Default constraints.............................................................................268
Constraint types .................................................................................269
Flexible versus inflexible constraints ..............................................269
Constraints and dependencies .........................................................270
Establishing Constraints .............................................................................271
Setting a Deadline.........................................................................................272
Book V: Working with Resources and Costs .................275
Chapter 1: Creating Resources
What Exactly Is a Resource? .......................................................................277
All Kinds of Resources.................................................................................278
Understanding resources ..................................................................278
Resource types: Work, Material, and Cost ......................................280
Estimating your resource requirements..........................................282
Committed versus proposed resources ..........................................283
Creating Resources ......................................................................................283
Creating one resource at a time........................................................283
Identifying resources you don’t know .............................................285
Resources that work in groups.........................................................286
Chapter 2: Understanding Costs
Accruing Costs All Over the Place .............................................................289
Tallying costs ......................................................................................290
The sound of costs hitting the bottom line ....................................290
Assigning Costs to Resources.....................................................................291
Fixed costs you can count on ...........................................................291
Paying per hour ..................................................................................293
Setting alternative rates ....................................................................294
The cost-per-use scenario.................................................................295
Oops . . . you’re into overtime! .........................................................296
Chapter 3: Assigning Resources to Tasks
Locating the Right Resource for the Job...................................................299
Finding resources ...............................................................................300
Creating custom fields .......................................................................302
Acquiring the right resources...........................................................303
Keeping resource workload balanced .............................................303
Your Assignment Is . . . ................................................................................305
How resources affect task timing .....................................................305
Determining Work, Material, and Cost resource
assignment units.............................................................................305
Making assignments...........................................................................306
Contours set the level of work..........................................................309
Making Sure of Availability..........................................................................311
Setting availability..............................................................................311
When resources appear and disappear...........................................312
Sharing Resources........................................................................................313
When Do My Resources Work?...................................................................315
E-mailing an Assignment to Your Team.....................................................317
Chapter 4: Tallying Costs
How Your Settings Affect Your Budget ......................................................321
How Project Calculates Costs.....................................................................323
Letting Project calculate or doing it yourself?................................323
Earned-value options .........................................................................324
Examining Cost Data....................................................................................325
Viewing cost information ..................................................................326
Customizing cost fields......................................................................327
The Value of a Project Summary Task .......................................................329
Book VI: Communicating Project Information ..............333
Chapter 1: Working with Views
What’s a View?..............................................................................................335
Selecting the Startup View ..........................................................................339
Making a View Handy to Display................................................................339
Sorting Tasks in a View................................................................................341
Filtering a View .............................................................................................343
Applying a filter to a view..................................................................346
Creating custom filters ......................................................................348
Using AutoFilters ................................................................................349
Grouping Information ..................................................................................351
Using a predefined group ..................................................................351
Grouping and usage views ................................................................352
Do-it-yourself groups..........................................................................354
Using Combination Views ...........................................................................356
Customizing a View......................................................................................360
Creating a New Combination View.............................................................361
Printing Your Project ...................................................................................363
Chapter 2: Working with Tables
Understanding Tables..................................................................................369
Understanding Indicators ...........................................................................373
Making Changes to a Table .........................................................................376
Inserting and hiding table fields.......................................................376
Changing column width.....................................................................378
Changing row height ..........................................................................379
Customizing Tables......................................................................................381
Working with the Details of Usage Views..................................................383
Adding new fields to the Details section .........................................385
Hiding fields in the Details section...................................................386
Chapter 3: Preparing Traditional Reports
Preparing and Printing Reports .................................................................389
Preparing Big Picture Reports....................................................................392
Reporting on Task Status ............................................................................394
Reporting on Costs ......................................................................................395
Reporting on Assignments..........................................................................396
Preparing Workload Reports ......................................................................398
Viewing Custom Reports.............................................................................398
Adapting Reports to Suit Your Needs........................................................401
Chapter 4: Creating Visual Reports
Preparing a Visual Report ...........................................................................407
Working with an Excel visual report ................................................408
Working with a Visio visual report ...................................................410
Visually Reporting on Task Usage..............................................................411
Visually Reporting on Resource Usage .....................................................411
Visually Reporting on Assignment Usage .................................................413
Preparing Visual Task Summary Reports..................................................414
Preparing Visual Resource Summary Reports .........................................415
Preparing Visual Assignment Summary Reports .....................................415
Customizing Visual Reports........................................................................417
Book VII: Resolving Problems in Your Plan..................423
Chapter 1: Working with Filters
Filtering to Spot Resource and Schedule Problems.................................425
How filters work .................................................................................426
Applying filters ...................................................................................426
Letting AutoFilters do the work........................................................428
Creating your own filters...................................................................429
Filtering in Action.........................................................................................431
Discovering some very useful filters ...............................................431
Identifying the critical path...............................................................432
Working with Groups ...................................................................................433
Applying predefined groups..............................................................434
Coming up with your own groups....................................................435
Chapter 2: Solving Resource Conflicts
Keeping Resources in Line..........................................................................437
Checking resource availability..........................................................438
Picking a method to resolve the conflict.........................................440
Finding someone to help ...................................................................441
Using task drivers to resolve problems...........................................442
Change Highlighting...........................................................................442
Undoing again and again ...................................................................444
Leveling to fix resource problems....................................................446
Combining Solutions....................................................................................448
Chapter 3: Reviewing Timing and Costs
Timing is Everything....................................................................................451
Doing It All in Less Time..............................................................................452
Check your dependencies.................................................................454
Rethinking your resource needs.......................................................454
Modifying task constraints................................................................455
Delete the tasks you don’t need .......................................................455
Getting It for Less .........................................................................................456
Making Your Project Timing Realistic........................................................456
Reviewing the critical path ...............................................................457
How many critical paths are enough? .............................................458
Giving yourself some slack................................................................458
Chapter 4: Putting Final Changes into Place
Getting to a Final Project Plan ....................................................................463
Redefining the scope of your project ..............................................463
Product scope versus project scope ...............................................464
Selling Changes to Shareholders................................................................466
Using Project’s tools to close the “sale”..........................................466
Creating a compression table ...........................................................469
Book VIII: Tracking ...................................................471
Chapter 1: Working with Baselines and Interim Plans
Understanding Baselines and Interim Plans.............................................473
Setting a Baseline .........................................................................................474
Saving an Interim Plan .................................................................................477
Changing a Baseline or Interim Plan..........................................................478
Clearing Baselines and Interim Plans ........................................................480
Viewing the Critical Path.............................................................................481
Chapter 2: Entering Actuals
What’s Involved in Tracking?......................................................................487
Collecting Tracking Information.................................................................488
Setting Up to Track ......................................................................................489
Checking calculation options ...........................................................490
Setting the status date .......................................................................492
Selecting a tracking view ...................................................................493
Ways to Record Actuals...............................................................................496
Estimating the Percent Complete.....................................................497
Using start or finish dates .................................................................499
Recording actual and remaining durations.....................................500
Recording Actual Work ......................................................................501
Speeding up recording actuals .........................................................504
Tracking materials usage...................................................................505
Viewing Progress..........................................................................................506
Using progress lines...........................................................................507
Using Tracking Gantt view ................................................................509
Using tables to review progress .......................................................510
Chapter 3: Reviewing Your Budget
The Basics of Earned Value Fields .............................................................517
Examining Cost Variance.............................................................................519
Physical % Complete Versus % Complete.................................................522
Calculating BCWP using Physical % Complete ...............................523
Using Physical % Complete selectively ...........................................524
Entering Physical % Complete values..............................................525
Book IX: Advanced Project Topics...............................527
Chapter 1: Working Your Own Way
Controlling the Project Guide’s Behavior .................................................529
How Many Times Can You Undo? ..............................................................531
Switching Between Open Projects .............................................................532
Customizing the Way You Open .................................................................534
Customizing the Way You Save...................................................................536
Customizing the Toolbars ...........................................................................538
One line or two?..................................................................................538
Creating your own toolbar ................................................................539
Modifying a toolbar............................................................................540
Messing with button images .............................................................543
Customizing the Menus...............................................................................545
Personalizing menu behavior ...........................................................546
Creating your own menu ...................................................................547
Naming a new menu you created .....................................................549
Adding commands to a menu ...........................................................550
Deleting commands and menus .......................................................550
Using the Organizer to Share Project Elements .......................................551
Chapter 2: Changing the Look of a Project
Changing Fonts.............................................................................................555
Changing fonts for selected tasks ....................................................556
Changing fonts for a task category ..................................................557
Applying Special Formatting to Gantt Chart View ...................................558
Using the Gantt Chart Wizard...........................................................559
Changing individual taskbars ...........................................................562
Changing taskbar styles for categories of tasks.............................563
Changing the Gantt chart layout ......................................................566
Changing Gantt chart gridlines.........................................................567
Working with the Network Diagram...........................................................569
Controlling the layout of Network Diagram view ...........................570
Controlling the appearance of Network Diagram boxes ...............572
Controlling the content in Network Diagram boxes ......................575
Modifying Calendar View ............................................................................578
Changing the time period displayed in Calendar view..................579
Changing Calendar view layout ........................................................580
Formatting Calendar view entries ....................................................581
Chapter 3: Using Macros
Understanding Macros ................................................................................585
Creating a Macro ..........................................................................................585
Knowing your macro’s steps.............................................................586
Recording the macro..........................................................................586
Using a Macro ...............................................................................................589
Running a macro from the Macros dialog box................................589
Using a keyboard shortcut to run a macro .....................................590
Using a menu command to run a macro .........................................591
Using a toolbar button to run a macro............................................595
Chapter 4: Importing Information into Project
Using Graphic Objects in Project...............................................................603
Getting Tasks from Outlook ........................................................................605
Importing Excel and Access Information into Project.............................607
Changing Project’s security settings................................................607
Using an import map..........................................................................608
Creating a Task List in Excel using a Project-related template.....611
Importing the Excel Task List into Project ......................................613
Importing Project Exchange Files into Project.........................................616
Importing Text or Comma-Separated Files into Project..........................616
Chapter 5: Exporting Project Information
Copying Pictures into Office Programs .....................................................619
Saving Visual Reporting Information.........................................................625
Exporting Project Data to Excel .................................................................628
Exporting Project Data to Text Files ..........................................................630
Book X: The Basics of Project Server ...........................635
Chapter 1: Understanding Project Server
What is Project Server? ...............................................................................637
Do You Need Project Server?......................................................................640
Planning the Implementation of Project Server .......................................640
Defining requirements .......................................................................641
Designing the system.........................................................................642
Developing an implementation strategy .........................................643
Reviewing software needs.................................................................644
Reviewing hardware needs ...............................................................644
Considering software and hardware configurations......................645
Chapter 2: The Project Server Administrator
Understanding the Structure of the Project Server Database................647
Reviewing Defaults.......................................................................................648
Working with Users......................................................................................650
Working with Views......................................................................................651
Working with the Enterprise Global Template .........................................652
Creating Enterprise Custom Fields ............................................................653
Establishing Enterprise Calendars.............................................................654
Working with Enterprise Resources ..........................................................655
Loading Projects into the Project Server Database.................................657
Managing Timesheet and Task Settings ....................................................658
Customizing Project Web Access...............................................................659
Checking in Enterprise Projects and Resources ......................................661
Managing Information in the Project Server Database ...........................662
Backing Up and Restoring...........................................................................662
Managing the Queue ....................................................................................664
Chapter 3: Project Server and the Project Manager
Logging onto Project Server .......................................................................665
Working with Web-based Projects .............................................................667
Opening and closing a project ..........................................................670
Managing the local cache..................................................................672
Adding Enterprise resources to a project .......................................674
Replacing generic resources with real resources ..........................675
Using the Resource Substitution Wizard.........................................676
Assigning resources using Project Web Access .............................676
Creating Status Report Layouts .................................................................678
Receiving Task Updates from Team Members .........................................679
Chapter 4: Project Server and the Team Member
Understanding the Project Web Access Home Page ...............................683
Customizing the Home Page.......................................................................685
Working with Your Tasks.............................................................................687
Recording time....................................................................................688
Adding a task ......................................................................................689
Working with Your Timesheet ....................................................................690
Integrating the Outlook Calendar with Project Web Access ..................693
Enabling integration...........................................................................694
Sending Project Web Access assignments to Outlook...................695
Sending Outlook information to Project Web Access....................695
Reporting Status...........................................................................................696
Glossary ...................................................................699
Index........................................................................709
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Product details
Price
|
|
|---|---|
Pages
| 771 p |
File Size
|
36,394 KB |
File Type
|
PDF format |
ISBN
| 978-0-470-13767-3 |
Copyright
| 2007 by Wiley Publishing, Inc |
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