Microsoft Office Project 2007 For Dummies E-Book

Nancy C. Muir

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 483

Beschreibung

Create project plans that make the most of your money andtime Get your projects on track, manage resources, and shareinformation online Project 2007 helps you keep your projects on track by providingsophisticated tools for building task outlines and important timingrelationships; efficiently assigning people, cost, and materialresources; and keeping everyone and everything on schedule. Get anoverview of the benefits of Project Server and Project Web Accessfor communicating with your team and managing your projectonline. All this on the bonus CD-ROM * Tools for creating enhanced graphics and reports * Strategic planning and brainstorming tools * Project add-ons that improve your time reporting and trackingcapabilities * For details and complete system requirements, see the CD-ROMappendix. Discover how to * Employ the powerful new features of Project 2007 * Track down problems with Task Drivers * Explore Project's new Visual Reports * Get tips for saving time and money on your projects Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials arenot included as part of eBook file.

Leseprobe

Microsoft® Project 2007 For Dummies®

by Nancy Muir

Microsoft® Project 2007 For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2007 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2006934842

ISBN-10: 0-470-03651-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-470-03651-8

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1B/RS/RS/QW/IN

About the Author

Nancy Muir has written dozens of books on topics ranging from desktop applications, project management, and distance learning, to an award-winning book on character education for middle-schoolers. Prior to her freelance writing career, Nancy taught workshops in project management to Fortune 500 companies and was a manager in both the computer and publishing industries. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Earl, with whom she has collaborated on three books, including Electronics Projects For Dummies.

Dedication

To Earl for putting up with my hectic book schedule in our first year of marriage. You’re the best! That long-promised cutting back on work time is almost here, my love.

Author’s Acknowledgments

First, many thanks to my friend Elaine Marmel, author of the Microsoft Project Bible from Wiley. Her advice and insight into the workings of Project always help me see the forest for the trees. Did the chocolate arrive okay, Elaine?

Second I thank the folks at Wiley, including Kyle Looper, my able acquisitions editor, and Blair Pottenger, the book’s project editor who was incredibly supportive and patient and helped me hold all the pieces together. Thanks also to development editor Linda Morris, copy editors Teresa Artman and Becky Whitney, and technical editor Jennifer Pendletonfor keeping the prose accurate and intelligible.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Blair J. Pottenger

Development Editor: Linda Morris

Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper

Senior Copy Editor: Teresa Artman

Copy Editor: Becky Whitney

Technical Editor: Jennifer Pendleton

Editorial Manager: Kevin Kirschner

Media Development Specialist: Steven Kudirka

Media Project Supervisor: Laura Moss

Media Development Manager: Laura VanWinkle

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth

Senior Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Ryan Steffen

Layout and Graphics: Carl Byers, Denny Hager, Stephanie D. Jumper, Barry Offringa, Lynsey Osborn, Alicia South

Proofreaders: Jessica Kramer, Techbooks

Indexer: Techbooks

Anniversary Logo Design: Richard Pacifico

Special Help

Jodi Jensen

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Contents

Title

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Conventions Used in This Book

How This Book Is Organized

What You’re Not to Read

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I : Setting the Stage for Project

Chapter 1: Project Management: What Is It, and Why Should You Care?

The ABCs of Project Management

The Role of the Project Manager

From To-Do List to Hard Drive

Getting Started

Saving a Project for Posterity

Getting Help from Project

Chapter 2: The Best-Laid Plans

Navigating Project

A Project with a View

Customizing Views

Chapter 3: Mark It on Your Calendar

Mastering Base, Project, Resource, and Task Calendars

Calendar Options and Working Times

Setting the Project calendar

Using Project Guide to Make Calendar Settings

Modifying Task Calendars

Making Resource Calendar Settings

Do It Yourself: Creating a Custom Calendar Template

Sharing Copies of Calendars

Chapter 4: A Tisket, a Task Kit

Tackling Your First Task

You’re in It for the Duration

Starting and Pausing Tasks

It’s Such an Effort: Effort-Driven Tasks

Constraints You Can Live With

Making a Task Note

Saving Your Project — and Your Tasks

Task Information in Action: Planning Your Next Space Launch

Chapter 5: Getting Your Outline in Line

Summary Tasks and Subtasks

The One-and-Only Project Summary Task

Structuring the Project’s Outline

Moving Tasks All around Your Outline

Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Collapsing and Expanding Tasks

Cracking the WBS Code

Chapter 6: Timing Is Everything

How Tasks Become Codependent

Making the Dependency Connection

Just Look at All These Task Dependencies!

Part II : People Who Need People

Chapter 7: Using Your Natural Resources

Resources: People, Places, and Things

Becoming Resource-full

The Birth of a Resource

Sharing Resources

Say, When Do These Guys Work?

Now That I’ve Got ’Em, How Do I Manage ’Em?

Chapter 8: What’s All This Gonna Cost?

Mary, Mary, How Do Your Costs Accrue?

Pay Day: Assigning Resources to Your Project

It’s an Availability Thing

Adding It Up: How Your Settings Affect Your Budget

Customizing Cost Fields

Working with Budgets

Chapter 9: Assigning Resources to Get Things Done

You’d Be Surprised What Assignments Can Do to Your Timing

Finding the Right Resource

A Useful Assignation

Communicating an Assignment to Your Team

Part III : Well, It Looks Good on Paper

Chapter 10: Fine-Tuning Your Plan

Everything Filters to the Bottom Line

Hanging Out in Groups

Figuring Out What’s Driving Your Project

It’s About Time

Getting It for Less

Your Resource Recourse

Mixing Solutions Up

Chapter 11: Making Your Project Look Good

Putting Your Best Foot Forward

Formatting Taskbars

Formatting Task Boxes

Adjusting the Layout

Modifying Gridlines

When a Picture Can Say It All

Part IV : Avoiding Disaster: Staying On Track

Chapter 12: It All Begins with a Baseline

All about Baselines

In the Interim

Chapter 13: On the Right Track

Gathering Your Data

Where Does All This Information Go?

Tracking your work for the record

Update Project: Sweeping Changes for Dummies

Tracking Materials Usage

Tracking More Than One: Consolidated Projects

Chapter 14: A Project with a View: Observing Progress

Look at What Tracking Did!

Learn by the Numbers

Acronym Soup: BCWP, ACWP, EAC, and CV

Calculations behind the Scenes

Chapter 15: You’re Behind: Now What?

Justifying Yourself: Notes, Baselines, and Interim Plans

What If?

Using the Analysis Toolbar

How Adding People or Time Affects Your Project

When All Else Fails

What Does Project Have to Say About This?

Chapter 16: Spreading the News: Reporting

Off the Rack: Standard Reports

A Custom Job

Get a New Perspective on Data with Visual Reports

Spiffing Things Up

Call the Printer!

So Let’s Print!

Chapter 17: Getting Better All the Time

Learning from Your Mistakes

Building on Your Success

Customizing Project Guide

Part V : Working with Enterprise Projects

Chapter 18: Project Web Access for the Project Manager

Figuring Out Whether Project Web Access Is for You

Getting a Handle on What You Can Do with Project Web Access

Planning to Use Project Server and Project Web Access

Looking Over the Project Web Access Tools

Working with the Gang Online

Chapter 19: Project Web Access for the End User

Seeing Project Web Access from the User’s Perspective

Reporting Work Completed

Viewing Project Information

Setting Up Alerts and Reminders

Viewing Information about Other Users

Part VI : The Part of Tens

Chapter 20: Ten Golden Rules of Project Management

Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Manage

Get Your Ducks in a Row

Plan for Murphy

Don’t Put Off Until Tomorrow

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!

CYA (Document!)

Keep Your Team in the Loop

Measure Success

Have a Flexible Strategy

Learn from Your Mistakes

Chapter 21: Ten Project Management Software Products to Explore

DecisionEdge Chart and Report Products Enhance Project’s Own Tools

Cobra Squeezes the Most from Cost/Earned Value

MindManuals Helps You Visualize Project Information

Innate Integrates Projects Large and Small

PlanView Models Your Workforce Capacity

Tenrox Streamlines Business Processes

Project KickStart Gives Your Project a Head Start

Project Manager’s Assistant Organizes Drawings for Construction Projects

TeamTrack Solves Mission-Critical Issues

EPK-Suite Eases Portfolio Mangement Chores

Part VII : Appendixes

Appendix A: On the CD

System Requirements

Using the CD

What You’ll Find on the CD

Troubleshooting

Appendix B: Glossary

Introduction

Project management probably started back when a few cave dwellers got together and figured out how to work as a team to bag a wooly mammoth for their Sunday dinner. Some fellow — I’ll call him Ogg — probably took the lead as the very first project manager. He drew things in the dirt with a stick to help his team members understand the strategy of the hunt, and communicated with them in ughs and grunts. Unlike you, he had no boss to report to, no budget, and no deadlines (lucky Ogg), but the fundamental spirit of a project was there.

Over the years, project management has evolved as a discipline that involves sophisticated analyses and techniques, projections, tracking of time and money, and reporting. 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 friend Ogg ughless.

About This Book

Microsoft Office Project 2007, the most recent incarnation of the world’s most popular project management software, offers a tremendous wealth of function-ality to users. However, it’s probably not like any other software you’ve ever used, so mastering it can seem a daunting process. One trick is to understand how its features relate to what you do every day as a project manager. Another is to get someone like me to tell you all about its features and how to use them.

In Microsoft Office Project 2007 For Dummies, my goal is to help you explore all that Project offers, providing information on relevant project management concepts while also offering specific procedures to build and track your Project plans. But more importantly, I 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.

Foolish Assumptions

I’ve made some assumptions about you, gentle reader. I figure that you are computer literate and know how to use a mouse, a keyboard, software menus, and toolbars. I assume you know how to use most common Windows functions (such as the Clipboard) as well as many basic software functions (such as selecting text and dragging and dropping things with your mouse).

I do not assume that you’ve used Project or any other project management software before. If you’re new to Project, you’ll find what you need to get up to speed, including information on how Project works, finding your way around, and building your first Project plan. If you’ve used an earlier version of Project, you’ll find out about Project 2007 and all the new features it provides.

Conventions Used in This Book

I should explain a few odds and ends to make using this book easier:

Web site addresses, known as URLs, are highlighted like this: www.microsoft.com.

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 to make it easier to identify them in sentences. For example, what appears as Show summary tasks in the Options dialog box will appear as Show Summary Tasks in this book.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is designed to help you begin to use Microsoft Office Project 2007 to plan, build, and track progress on projects, keeping in mind tried-and-true project management practices and principles. I divided the book into logical parts that follow the process of building and tracking a typical project plan.

Part I: Setting the Stage for Project

Part I explains what Project 2007 can do for you as well as what types of input you have to provide to use it successfully on your projects. You’ll get your first glimpse of Project views and discover how to navigate around them. You’ll begin to build Project plans by making calendar settings, building a task outline, and then entering timing and timing relationships for those tasks.

Part II: People Who Need People

Part II is the Project resources section: You discover all you need to know about creating and assigning work resources, material resources, and fixed costs to tasks in a project. You also discover how using resources on your project relates to the costs you accrue over time.

Part III: Well, It Looks Good on Paper

Up to now, you’ve been mapping out your project plan. Now it’s time to see whether that plan meets your needs in terms of budget and timing. Project offers a whole toolbox to help you modify resource assignments and task timing to trim your costs and meet your deadlines so you can finalize your plan. You also get briefed on how to modify the format of items in your project to make your plan look as polished as possible, both on-screen and in print.

Part IV: Avoiding Disaster: Staying on Track

As any experienced project manager knows, projects just about never happen the way you thought they would. In this part, you save a picture of your plan — a baseline — and then begin to track actual activity against your plan. You also take a look at methods of reporting your progress, and how to get back on track when you find yourself derailed. In the final chapter, I provide advice on how to use what you glean from your projects to make better planning choices going forward.

Part V: Working with Enterprise Projects

With all that Project Professional has to offer the enterprise via its Project Server and Project Web Access functionalities and SharePoint online services, you can share documents online with your project team, have your human resources report their work time, and even integrate Project information with Outlook. This part shows you the basics of what Project Server can do, and how to use Project Web Access from both the manager and users’ perspective.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Ten seems to be a handy number of items for humans to put into lists, so this part gives you two such lists: Ten Golden Rules of Project Management and Ten Project Management Software Products to Explore. The first of these chapters tells you about some dos and don’ts that can save you a lot of grief when you’re using Project for the first time (or the fifth time, for that matter). The second offers a look at some add-on products and complementary software products that bring even more functionality to Microsoft Office Project.

Part VII: Appendixes

This book is accompanied by a handy CD filled with project management goodies, including project management add-on software and Microsoft Project templates. Appendix A is where I explain how to work with the CD and exactly what you can find there.

Earned value? Budgeted cost of work performed? Work breakdown structure? I’m telling you, project management has more terminology than a medical textbook. That’s why I provide a Glossary that contains a lot of terms, some from the discipline of project management and some project-specific. Definitions of key terms are included throughout this book, but when you need a refresher course, look here.

What You’re Not to Read

First, you don’t have to read this book from front to back unless you really want to. If you want to just get information about a certain topic, you can open this book to any chapter and get the information you need.

That said, I have structured the book to move from some basic concepts that equip you to understand how Project works through the steps involved in building a typical project. If you have an overpowering need to find out the whole shebang, you can start at the beginning and work your way through the book to build your first Project plan.

Icons Used in This Book

One picture is worth . . . well, you know. That’s why For Dummies books use icons to give you a visual clue as to what’s going on. Essentially, icons call your attention to bits of special information that might very well make your life easier. Following are the icons used in this book.

Remember icons signal either a pertinent fact that relates to what you’re reading at the time (but is also mentioned elsewhere in the book), or a reiteration of a particularly important piece of information that’s, well, worth repeating.

Tips are the advice columns of computer books: They offer sage advice, a bit more information about a topic under discussion that might be of interest, or ways to do things a bit more efficiently.

Warning icons spell trouble with a capital T: When you see a Warning, read it. If you’re not careful, you might do something at this point that could cause disaster.

Where to Go from Here

Time to take what you’ve learned in the project management school of hard knocks and jump into the world of Microsoft Office Project 2007. When you do, you’ll be rewarded with a wealth of tools and information that help you to manage your projects much more efficiently.

Here’s where you step out of the world of cave-dweller project management and into the brave, new world of Microsoft Office Project 2007.

Part I

Setting the Stage for Project

In this part . . .

Part I explains the types of input you have to give Project to make best use of its capabilities. You get a briefing on using Project views, using calendar settings to build Project plans, creating task outlines, and then specifying the timing and relationships that organize your project’s tasks.

Chapter 1

Project Management: What Is It, and Why Should You Care?

In This Chapter

Discovering how traditional project management makes the move to software

Understanding what elements of a project are managed in Project

Understanding the project manager’s role

Exploring the role of the Internet in project management

Getting started using Project Guide

Using a template to start a new project

Saving a project file

Finding help in Project

Welcome to the world of computerized project management with Microsoft Project. If you’ve never used project management software, you’re entering a brave, new world. It’s like walking from the office of 25 years ago — with no fax, voicemail, or e-mail — into the office of today with its wealth of high-tech devices.

Everything you used to do with handwritten to-do lists, word processors, and spreadsheets all magically comes together in Project. However, this transition won’t come in a moment, and you need a basic understanding of what project management software can do to get you up to speed. If you’ve used previous versions of Project, this little overview can help you refresh your memory as well as ease you into a few of the new features of Project 2007.

So, even if you’re a seasoned project manager, take a minute to review this chapter. It provides the foundation for how you’ll work with Project from here on.