Resource Menu

Resource Menu toolbar

As the name suggest the toolbar is more useful with the Resource related views. As we seen earlier the view group can help to quickly switch between different views.

“Assignment group” useful when we start assigning resources to respective task. The Resource pool is quite interesting tool which will be useful when you are working with multiple projects and the resources are shared between the different projects.

Share Resources 

We will see this in more details when we try to see managing multiple projects/program in latter sessions.

Add resource can help you to add resources of respective types, it creates entry in resource sheet when you click on any one of the type of resource (“Work”, “Material” or “Cost”).

Add Resources

You can import resource from your companies Active Directory or from Address Book. This is useful if you don’t want to maintain the details separately.

In Microsoft Project Professional 2010, you can add resources to the list of enterprise resources that are contained within Project Server using last option “Import Resources to Enterprise” this will be only available if you are working with Project Server.

The property group, as the name on buttons shown can be used to see or edit more details of resources.

We will work with resources in detailed way in future when we work on scenario.

The last group is leveling, this is useful when we over allocate any resource and we want Project to take care of resource time adjustment.

Task Menu

Task Menu toolbar

The view button can be used to change quickly different view.

Clipboard group contains common formatting of task, you can change font, size of the task.
Schedule group and tasks group used for manipulation of task we will see in details in future sessions.
Insert group can be used task, recurring task, Summary and Milestones.  You can even import task from outlook into project.
The Deliverable option is used with Microsoft Server and SharePoint.

Properties group used to access more details of task.
The new feature is Timeline view, the “Add to Timeline” can quickly add task, summary task to Timeline view. The button is only visible when you have task name, duration start and end date available.

Editing task is most important and useful group.

“Scroll to” Task is very useful button when you have lot of task and want to view the specific task into the Gantt chart.
Example below, the task “Some Task” is not visible on Gantt chart.

On clicking “Scroll to Task”

The Find button can be used to find task quickly also it can be used to replace task.

The clear button can be used to clear the hyperlink, notes, formatting from task.

Fill button can be used to copy the task details quickly this comes handy as  Microsoft Project doesn't let you paste a value into a range of cells like Excel, thus instead of manually typing in durations or pasting one at a time, there is a "Fill Down" menu option. Select the cell that contains the value you want, select the range and select "Fill Down." This will copy all selected cell values in other selected cells.

Ribbon toolbar

The ribbon toolbar are most simple but most important feature of MS project.

Project Toolbar

The ribbon toolbar buttons changes with relevant views.  For example when you are in Gantt view in resource menu some button disabled as soon as you change the view to resource sheet the buttons are visible.

Menu toolbar changes with View

In next few post we will see each menu toolbar in detail.

Understand the Product! - Available views

Enough Theory! Let’s be Practical…

The golden rule is to understand the product before you jump and start using it to improve your productivity. I am sure you are already aware of different features but it will be good if you spend minute to review it again.

Initial View 

When you launch the MS project you will see following  view  (3) it is distributed in different areas like new ribbon toolbar , timeline, data entry area to add task and Gantt chart view at right-side.

Quick Access Toolbar

I am sure you are aware of Quick Access toolbar (1); it will be good idea to select the options you use frequently. Other than this I sure you know how to minimize the tool bar to get more view space (2).

The view bar (4) is great way to switch between different views, just right click the bar and you will see different available views, you can select More views to get even more views.

You can click on “More views” to see all the available views and you can select the desired view from selection, it can also allow you to create your custom views.

If you right click and select the “view bar” you get iconic view of all available views.  Some people find this visual toolbar to quickly change the view.

You can save many values for single task or resources however all this values are not available at a single place , but they are group together and made available this is called table views.

For example In Gantt chart with “Entry” table view you can enter or view Task name, Duration, Start, finish date, predecessors and resource names.  If you select Cost table view you can see all the relevant cost related details to same view.

We will see this in more details in future sessions.

Lastly at the bottom right corner you can see zoom slider that can be used to zoom the Gantt view quickly.  The button next to zoom bar can be used to quickly switch between different views.

Why MS Project

Why MS Project

Microsoft Project is the world's most popular project management software developed and sold by Microsoft.
The application is designed to assist project managers in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets and analyzing workloads. This software builds to assist us in managing the triple constraints or Project Triangle.

Let us see how it can help

Scope: It can help us create and manage the work break down structure by providing the ability to create task, activities, milestones etc.

Time: It can help us to understand and control the timeline of project. It can automatically assist us in arriving the expected duration of project by taking care of holidays, leaves and shifts of resources. Also you can keep track of critical path of your project.

Cost: It can help us managing the resources costs like humans and material. You can use different situational costing for same resource based on respective situation (e.g. If resource is doing overtime it can help us to take care of its overtime rate). It can easily help us to maintain the fixed cost or for calculating cost of material based on usage of respective material. It can help us to visualize the cost variance from our actual plan in case we started to over budget.

Resources: MS Project great way help us to manage resources, we can track and manage different type of resources. In case it is human resources we can manage the workload so our people can have great work to life balance.

Risk: It can help us to visualize critical path and can assist us in tracking our progress against it to avoid possible delays. Also the different type of resource can help us to identify issues like over budgeting etc.

Quality: Well MS Project can’t directly help you to control quality of your product or the outcomes of project however it cans great way help you maintain your project execution quality. (Off course considering you are using the tool effectively and you will by end of training?)
Considering typical phases of any project, MS project can help us in Planning, Executing, Monitoring and controlling and at end closing.

Managing Project

Figure 1: Project Triple Constrains.

When we talk about managing project we actually mean managing the respective project constrains.
The popular “Buzz word” in project management community is The Project Management Triangle also referred as Triple Constraint or the Iron Triangle.

The three important constraints considered are Scope, Time and Cost.  There is vast debate in Project management community on triple constrains as some also claim Quality, Risk, most importantly “Resources” are also key element of any project success.

All this constraints have impact on each other for example Resources, if we not able to manage resources it can affect any or all of the other constrains.

Introduction

There are many causes of project failure and every failed project will have its own set of issues, however below are common reasons why project fails in most of cases.

#1 - Lack of Visibility of all Projects
#2 - Unclear Project Objectives
#3 - No Visibility into Resource Workload
#4 - Gaps in Communication

Above situations can be managed easily by tools like Microsoft Project, however many project manager procrastinate to use tool like MS project. When I discussed same with my colleagues and friends it is observed that many of them never got trained on this tool and find same as complex to use.

Many books available in market to educate MS project but many of them are more theoretical thus many project manager find it difficult to understand and stop themselves from getting familiar with this great tool.

I had many request from friends to educate them on this tool thus I am writing this blog to help out those who are interested in learning MS project by example.
In coming weeks we will understand the product by learning more about the tool and by working on one scenario that will resemble to real life project scenario.