Project 2010 For Dummies E-Book

Nancy C. Muir

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 519

Beschreibung

A friendly reference guide to Microsoft Project, the leading enterprise project management software As project management software, Microsoft Project allows you to oversee your business activities effectively. You can manage resources, share project info, perform modeling and scenario analysis, and standardize reporting processes. This easy-to-understand guide is completely updated to cover the latest changes and newest enhancements to Project 2010 and shows you how to get Project 2010 to work for you. After an introduction to basic project management concepts, you'll discover the mechanics of using Project software to create and manage projects. Other topics covered include working with calendars, using and sharing resources, budgeting, formatting taskbars, gathering and tracking data, working with reports, and creating templates. * Microsoft Project allows you to manage resources, share project information, perform scenario analysis, and standardize reporting processes * Offers completely updated coverage of the new Project 2010, which is expected to implement the Office Ribbon * Reviews formatting taskbars, gathering and tracking data, and working with reports * Addresses using and sharing resources, creating templates, and managing projects Let the friendly For Dummies writing style guide you through maximizing the new features of Project 2010.

Leseprobe

Project 2010 For Dummies®

Project 2010 For Dummies®

by Nancy Muir

Project 2010 For Dummies®

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

Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Author

Nancy Muir has written dozens of books on business and technology topics ranging from desktop applications, project management, and distance learning, to an award-winning book on character education for middle-schoolers and a textbook on computer science for community colleges. 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 Nanotechnology For Dummies. She writes a column on computers and the Internet for retirenet.com, and has authored three books about computing for seniors: Computers For Seniors For Dummies, Laptops For Seniors For Dummies, and Using the Internet Safely For Seniors For Dummies (with co-author Linda Criddle).

Dedication

To my husband Earl who puts up with my work schedule and makes every minute away from work fabulous.

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.

Second I thank the folks at Wiley, including Kyle Looper, my able acquisitions editor, and Blair Pottenger, the book’s project editor who is always incredibly supportive and patient and helps me hold all the pieces together. Thanks also to copy editor John Edwards and technical editor Thuy Le for keeping my humble 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

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Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

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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 2010, the most recent incarnation of the world’s most popular project management software, offers a tremendous wealth of functionality 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 2010 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 that 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 Project’s interface, and building your first Project plan. If you’ve used an earlier version of Project, you’ll find out about Project 2010 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 shown in monofont, like this: www.microsoft.com.

Ribbon commands are given in the order in which you select the tab and command (without the group), for example, “Choose Project⇒Project Information.” (For more on Project’s new Ribbon, see Chapter 2.)

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 2010 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 2010 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 that 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 App (also called Project Web Application; formerly called Project Web Access) functionalities and SharePoint online services, you can share documents online with your project team, have team members 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 App from both the managers’ 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.

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 may 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 may 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

It’s time to take what you’ve learned in the project management school of hard knocks and jump into the world of Microsoft Office Project 2010. 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 2010.

This book is accompanied by a companion Web site filled with project management goodies, including links to project management add-on software and some example Microsoft Project files that you can experiment with. To access this book’s Web site, point your Web browser to www.dummies.com/go/project2010.

Part I

Setting the Stage for Project

In this part . . .

Part I explains the types of input you have to give Project to make the best use of its capabilities. You get a briefing on using Project views, using calendar and scheduling 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 It Is, and Why You Should 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

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 2010.

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.

The ABCs of Project Management

You probably handle projects day in and day out. Some are obvious, because your boss named them so that any fool would know that they’re projects: the Acme Drilling Project or the Network Expansion IT Project, for example.Others are less obvious, such as that speech thing you have to do on Saturday for your professional association or washing the dog.

If you need to organize a company holiday party, it’s a project. If you were handed a three-year Earth-exploration initiative to find oil in Iowa, coordinate subcontractors and government permits, and work with a team of 300 people, that’s definitely a project. Yes, even that speech you have to present is a project because it has certain characteristics.

Understanding what your projects, large or small, have in common is the basis of understanding what Project can do for you. All projects have

An overall goal and unique deliverables

A project manager

Individual tasks to be performed between a specific starting point and ending point

Timing for those tasks to be completed (such as three hours, three days, or three months)

Timing relationships between those tasks (for example, you can’t put a new manufacturing process in place until you train people in how to use the process)

Resources (people, equipment, facilities, and supplies, for example) to accomplish the work

A budget (the costs associated with those people, equipment, facilities, and supplies)

Project management is simply the process of managing all the elements of a project, whether that project is large or small.

The three Ts: Tasks, timing, and dependencies (well, two Ts and a D)

As Lewis Carroll said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” So, first things first: You have to understand the goal of your project so that you can begin to build the tasks that have to be performed to get you there.

A task is simply one of those items you used to scribble on your handwritten to-do lists, such as Write final report or Apply for permits. Tasks are typically organized into phases (appropriate stages) in Project, arranged in an outline-like structure, as you can see in the project shown in Figure 1-1. Because timing is essential in any project, Project helps you set up and view the timing relationships among tasks.

Figure 1-1: You’ll probably spend most of your time in Project in outline-like Gantt Chart view.

Becoming a task master

A task can be as broad or as detailed as you like. For example, you can create a single task to research your competition, or you can create a project phase that consists of a summary task and subtasks below it. For example, the summary task may be Competitive Research, with the subtasks Researching Online Business Databases, Assembling Company Annual Reports, and Reviewing Competitive Product Lines.

Adding tasks to a Project file doesn’t cost you a thing (except a nanobit of memory), so a project can have as many tasks and as many phases as you like. You simply use the outlining structure in Project to indent various levels of tasks. The more deeply indented in an outline a task is, the more detailed the task.

One handy thing about this outlining structure is that you can roll up all the timing and cost data from the subtasks within your phases into summary-level tasks. Three sequential subtasks that take a day each to complete and cost you $200 apiece result in a summary task that spans three days and costs $600. You can view your project at various levels of detail or get automatic tallies of timing and costs if you prefer to simply view the summary level of tasks.

For more about defining and creating tasks, check out Chapter 4.

All in the timing

They say that timing is everything: Rome wasn’t built in a day, a stitch in time saves nine, and don’t even ask me about how long it takes to get to retirement. The importance of timing applies to Project tasks, too. Almost all tasks have timing — referred to as duration — which is the amount of time needed to complete the task.

The only tasks without duration are milestones. A milestone — in most cases — is a task of zero duration. In essence, it simply marks a moment in time that must be reflected in your Project outline. Typical milestones are the approval of a brochure design and flipping the switch to start up an assembly line. Such tasks don’t involve any real work or effort, but they must be completed for the project to move ahead.

Project doesn’t provide magic formulas for duration: You assign duration based on your own experience and judgment. Does designing a product package take three days or three weeks? Will obtaining a building permit happen in a day or a month? (Remember that you’re dealing with city hall, so think before you answer!) Project isn’t an oracle: You have to provide facts, figures, and educated guesses to build your Project schedule. After that information is entered, though, Project can do some wonderful things to help you maintain your schedule and monitor your progress.

Task dependencies

The final piece in the puzzle of how long your project will take is the concept of dependencies, or the timing relationships among tasks. If you have a schedule that includes ten tasks that all begin at the same time, your entire project will take as long as the longest task (see Figure 1-2).

After you define and implement timing relationships among tasks, your schedule can stretch over time like a long rubber band. For example, one task may begin only after another is finished. Another task can start halfway through the preceding task. The second task cannot start until a week after the first task is finished. Only after you start to assign these relationships can you begin to see a project’s timing as related to not just each task’s duration but also the specific ways in which the tasks relate to each other.

Figure 1-2: This schedule includes tasks with timing but no dependencies.

Here are some examples of dependencies:

You can’t begin to use a new piece of equipment until you install it.

You must wait for a freshly poured concrete foundation to dry before you can begin to build on it.

You can’t start to ship a new drug product until the FDA approves it.

Figure 1-3 shows a project plan where each task’s duration and the dependencies among tasks have been established, enabling Project to calculate the resulting overall timing of the project.

One other brief note about the timing of tasks: In addition to applying dependencies to tasks, you can apply constraints. For example, say that you don’t want to start shipping your new cake flavor until you get the ad for it in your holiday catalog, so you set a dependency between those two events. You can also set a constraint that says that you must start producing the cakes no later than November 3. In this case, if you don’t make the catalog deadline, the product will still ship on November 3; that task will not be allowed to slip its constraint because of this dependency relationship.

Figure 1-3: This schedule includes tasks with both timing and dependencies.

You can find out more about constraints in Chapter 4 and about the fine art of managing dependencies in Chapter 6.

Lining up your resources

When people first use Project, some get a bit confused about resources. Resources aren’t just people: A resource can be a piece of equipment you rent, a meeting room that you have to pay an hourly fee to use, or a box of nails or a software program you have to buy.

Project allows three kinds of resources: work resources, material resources, and cost resources. A work resource is charged by how many hours or days the resource (often human) works on a task. A material resource, such as sewing supplies or steel, is charged by a per-use cost or by a unit of measurement (such as square yards or linear feet or tons). A cost resource has a specific cost each time you use it. That may vary from task to task. For example, a professional conference pass for one event may be $250, and a pass for the next conference may be $500. This cost doesn’t vary by how much time you spend at the conference, but it may vary depending on other external factors. So you can create a resource named Conference Pass and assign it to different tasks at different amounts.

Some resources, such as people, perform their work according to a working calendar. If a person works an 8-hour day and you assign him to a task that takes 24 hours to complete, that person has to put in three workdays to complete the task. In comparison, someone with a 12-hour workday takes only two days to complete the same task. In addition, you can set working and nonworking days for your human resources, which accommodates variations such as 4-day weeks or shift work.

You can set different rates for resources, such as a standard hourly rate. Project applies the appropriate rate based on each resource’s calendar and work assigned. For more about resources and costs, see Chapter 7.

Several views in Project let you see information about resources and how their assignments to tasks have an effect on project costs. Figure 1-4 shows you the Resource sheet, which has columns of information about resources and their costs.

Figure 1-4: Resources charged at a rate per hour are the basis of how Project tallies costs.

Here’s one other important thing you should know about resources: They tend to have conflicts. No, I’m not talking about conference room brawls (although that happens). These conflicts have to do with assigned resources that become overallocated for their available work time. For example, if you assign one poor soul to three 8-hour tasks that must all happen on the same day — and in the same eight hours — Project has features that do everything but jump up on your desk and set off an alarm to warn you of the conflict. (Luckily, Project also provides tools that help you resolve those conflicts.)

Spreading the news

I’m one of those people who need instant gratification. One of the first things I ask about learning how to use any new software product is, “What’s in it for me?” Until now, I’ve told you about the type of information you have to put into Project: information about tasks, task dependencies, and resources. But isn’t it about time you got something back from Project? Of course it is.

You finally reached one of the big payoffs for entering all that information: reporting. After you enter your information, Project offers a wealth of viewing and reporting options to help you review your project and communicate your progress to your project team, clients, and management.

You can generate predesigned reports based on information in your schedule or simply print any of the views you can display in Project. Project 2010 offers a set of basic reports and visual reports. Figures 1-5 and 1-6 show you just two of the reporting options available in Project.

Figure 1-5: Study resource usage with the graphical Resource Graph view.

Figure 1-6: An Unstarted Tasks report.

Planning to keep things on track

Projects aren’t frozen in amber like some organizational mosquito: They go through more changes than a politician’s platform in a campaign year. That’s where Project’s capability to make changes to your project data comes in handy.

After you build all your tasks, give them durations and dependencies, and assign all your resources and costs, you set a baseline. A baseline is a snapshot of your project at the moment you feel your plan is final, you’ve gotten all the required approvals, and you’re ready to proceed with the project. After you set a baseline, you record some activity on your tasks. Then you can compare that actual activity with your baseline because Project saves both sets of data in your schedule.

Tracking activity in your project involves recording the actual timing of tasks and recording the time that your resources have spent on those tasks, as well as recording actual costs. You can then display Project views that show you how far off you are at any time (compared with your baseline) in terms of the actual timing of tasks and the cost of your project.

Whether you have good news or bad, you can use reports to show your boss how things are going compared with how you thought they would go. Then, after you peel your boss off the ceiling, you can use many more Project tools to make adjustments to get everything back on track.

The Role of the Project Manager

Although understanding the role (let alone the usefulness) of some managers isn’t always easy, it’s always easy to spot the value of a project manager. This person creates the master plan for a project and tries to ensure that it gets implemented successfully. Along the way, this key person uses skills and methods that have evolved over time, always seeking to manage how things get done and generally keeping schedules on track.

A real pro project manager may have a degree in project management or a professional certification. For example, if you see the initials PMP beside someone’s name, that person has achieved the Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute, the leading global organization establishing project management standards and credentials and offering educational and other resources in the field.

What exactly does a project manager do?

A project manager isn’t always the highest authority in a project; often that role belongs to whomever manages the project manager, up to and including members of senior management. Rather, the project manager is the person on the front lines who makes sure that the parts of the project come together and assumes hands-on responsibility for successes as well as failures.

In project management parlance, the person who champions (and has the ultimate responsibility for) a project is the project sponsor.

A project manager manages these essential pieces of a project:

The project plan or schedule: This is what you create with Microsoft Project. It includes the estimated steps and associated timing and costs involved in reaching the project goal.

Resources: Managing resources involves resolving resource conflicts and building consensus as well as assigning resources and tracking their activities on the project. This part of the job also involves managing nonhuman resources, such as materials and equipment.

Communication with the project team, management, and customers: Communicating the project’s status to everyone who has a legitimate stake in its success (stakeholders) is a key responsibility.

Although a project manager may work for a project sponsor, the project often also has a customer for whom the end product is produced. That customer can be outside the project manager’s own company, or within.

Understanding the dreaded triple constraint

You’ve seen the signs at the copy store or the auto repair place: You can have it fast, cheap, or done well; pick two. That, my friend, is the triple constraint of project management in a nutshell.

In a project, you have timing, resources (which are essentially costs), and quality of the product or service produced at the end of the project. Microsoft Project helps you manage the resources and timing of your project. The quality of your project is often affected directly by how well you manage them. If you add time, costs increase because resources are working longer hours at a certain wage. If you take away resources, you save money, but this can affect quality — and so on.

Coming to a logical balance of time, money, and quality is at the core of what a good project manager does throughout the life of a project.

Applying tried-and-true methodologies

Microsoft Project incorporates some scheduling and tracking tools that are the result of many years of developing project management methods. A few of these are worth noting:

The Gantt chart (shown in Gantt Chart view of Figure 1-7), which is the main view of Project, shows you a spreadsheet with columns of data along with a graphical representation of the tasks in the project arranged along a horizontal timeline. By reviewing the data in the columns (such as task name, start date, finish date, and resources assigned to tasks), you can understand the parameters of each task and see its timing in the graphical area. Being able to view all this information on one page helps you understand what’s happening in your project in terms of time and costs.

The Network Diagram (also called a logic diagram), shown in Figure 1-8, is essentially the Microsoft version of a PERT chart. PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) was developed during the construction of the Polaris submarine in the 1950s. This mostly graphical representation of the tasks in your project reflects the flow of work in your project rather than the literal timing of tasks. This view helps you to see how one task flows into another and to get a sense of where you are — not so much in time, but rather in terms of the work you have to accomplish.

Figure 1-7: The Gantt chart method of project scheduling as it appears in Microsoft Project.

Figure 1-8: A kissin’ cousin to the original PERT chart, the Network Diagram focuses on work, not on time.

Risk management is a central part of project management because, frankly, projects are chock-full of risk. You run the risk that your resources won’t perform, that materials will arrive late, that your customer will change all the parameters of the project halfway through — well, you get the picture.

Risk management is the art of anticipating risks, ranking them from most to least likely, and determining strategies to prevent the most likely ones from occurring. Project helps you with risk management by allowing you to try out what-if scenarios: You can change the start date or length of a task or phase of tasks (for example) and see just what that change does to your schedule, such as the delays, cost overruns, and resource conflicts that might occur in such a scenario, down to the last hour and penny. Having this kind of information at your fingertips makes risk management easier and (almost) painless.

Resource management consists of using resources wisely. A good project manager finds the right resource for the job, assigns that person a reasonable workload, stays alert for shifts in the schedule that cause that resource to be overbooked, and during the life of the project makes adjustments that keep all resources most productive. In Project, tools are available, such as a resource graph (traditionally called a histogram) and the resource usage chart (shown in Figure 1-9), which reflects resource workload.

Figure 1-9: A resource usage chart helps you spot resource-scheduling problems.

Figure 1-9 also shows an exclamation point icon (indicator) that tells you that one resource needs help, which might involve using resource leveling, a calculation that automatically reschedules resources to resolve overbooking. Resource leveling can enable you to manage resources much more effectively. You can see how overbooked the PR Manager is on two dates.

You can use codes for resources that designate skill levels or abilities so that finding the right resource for each job is as simple as performing a search.

From To-Do List to Hard Drive

If you’re reading from start to finish in this chapter, you’re probably shaking your head and saying, “Boy, handwritten to-do lists look pretty good right now. Beats creating hundreds of tasks, assigning them durations, establishing dependencies among them, creating resources, entering resource calendar and rate information, assigning resources and costs to tasks, entering activity performed on tasks . . .” and so on.

Well, you’re right and wrong about that. You do have to enter a lot of information into Project to get the benefit of its features. But you can also get a lot out of Project.

Getting up to speed with Project

Take a moment to look at some of the wonderful things Project can do for you. This list describes why you (or your company) bought it and why you’re investing your time to read this book.

With Project, you enjoy the following benefits:

Project automatically calculates costs and timing for you based on your input. You can quickly recalculate what-if scenarios to solve resource conflicts, get your costs within budget, or meet your final deadline.

Project offers views and reports that, with the click of a button, make a wealth of information available to you and those you report to. You no longer have to manually build a report on total costs to date to meet a last-minute request from your boss. If she wants to know total costs to date, you can just print your Tracking Gantt view with the Cost table displayed or print the Budget report. See Chapter 16 for information about reporting.

You can use built-in templates to get a head start on your project. Project templates are prebuilt plans for a typical business project, such as commercial construction, an engineering project, a new product rollout, software development, or an office move. See the section “Starting with templates,” later in this chapter, for more about this time-saving feature.

You likely do similar types of projects all the time. After you create one project, you use it as a template for future projects.

You can create resources for your project according to information you already created in your Outlook Address Book. You can even create one set of company resources and give access to every project manager in the company (see Chapters 18 and 19 for how to set up centralized enterprise resources).

A number of tools in Project use complex algorithms (that you couldn’t even begin to figure out) to do such tasks as level resource assignments to solve resource conflicts, filter tasks by various criteria, model what-if scenarios, and calculate in dollars the value of work performed to date.

Collaborating with your project team online

You can take advantage of all the Internet has to offer by using Project features to collaborate with others. In fact, Project is part of the world of Enterprise Project Management (EPM), where easily sharing ideas, information, and documents across your enterprise becomes possible.

For example, Project allows you to e-mail a project plan to team members and others, either as a Project file or as PDF document. You can post documents to online server locations and ask for team input.

The Professional version of Project offers the ability to work with Project Server and Project Web App (also called Project Web Application; formerly known as Project Web Access), which enhance workgroup collaboration. You can take advantage of an online project center and resource center with areas for discussions, progress tracking, document exchange, and more.

Part V of this book, “Working with Enterprise Projects,” looks at how to take advantage of the enterprise-wide features of Project Server and Project Web App.

Getting Started

As Shakespeare said, “In delay there lies no plenty.” I don’t know about you, but I need all the plenty I can get, so it’s time to jump in and start using Project.

You have two choices when starting a new project. You can build a project from scratch by entering individual task and resource details, or you can use a project template that already contains data related to your industry or the type of project you’re doing.

Starting from scratch

When you open Project 2010, you see a blank project file on-screen. You can start building your new project directly in this blank schedule. Starting to create a new project usually involves entering some general project information and then adding some task information.

You can open a new, blank project schedule at any time by choosing File⇒New, clicking the Blank Project icon under Available Templates, and then clicking Create. (The File tab is located in the upper-left corner of the Project screen.)

You need to enter much more information in addition to general project information and tasks to build a complete project, as you discover in the next few chapters. Entering general project information and task information is your usual starting point, however.

Tell Project about your project

With a blank project open, a logical first step is to enter some general project information, such as the project start date. To do so, click the Project tab on the Ribbon and click Project Information in the Properties group. (You find out more about the Ribbon in the next chapter.) The Project Information dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 1-10.

Here’s what you can do in this dialog box:

Set the start date for the project. Good project managers always plan in advance. If you’re not sure when the project will start, set the start date about a month from today. Then, after you build some tasks and have a better handle on the entire length of your project, you can come back and set a real start date. Project automatically recalculates dates for all tasks with dependencies when you do.

Figure 1-10: Use the Project Information dialog box for some basic project settings.

Set the finish date for the project. Especially if you have a drop-deaddate (an attention-getting term!) beyond which the project cannot wander and still reach on-time completion, you can set the finish date. In such a case, be sure to look at the next setting in this list — and change it accordingly.

Schedule from the start or finish of the project. Most projects work forward from the start date. However, if you have an absolute drop-dead date for the end of your project (for example, if you’re organizing a sports event that must occur on New Year’s Day next year), you may want to set the finish date and then work backward to fit all your tasks into the allotted length of time. (Because under certain circumstances this method schedules tasks as late as possible, it can be tricky to use it and get an accurate schedule.) If you change this setting to Project Finish Date, the Finish Date field becomes available.

Set the current date. Project can fill in the current date according to your computer calendar. Or, you can choose another date if you like, but that usually doesn’t make much sense unless you’re in a different time zone from where the project will occur.

Set a status date. By default, no status date is set for the project. You use a status date when you’re tracking the progress of your project at regular intervals. If you set a status date, your computer assumes that any activity you record in your project is being tracked as of this date. (This is particularly important to ensure Project accurately calculates some values, such as the ultra-wonky earned value, a statistic I explain to you in Chapter 14.) You can find out more about this feature in Chapters 12, 13, and 14.

Set the working calendar for your project. You have three default choices: Standard, Night Shift, and 24 Hours. Base your choice on the working habits of your organization. For example, if your company uses resources in three shifts per day — a total of 24 hours of straight working time — and all those shifts would contribute work to your project, choose 24 Hours. If you use a day shift and a night shift, choose Night Shift. If you work a standard 8-hour day, choose Standard. (Most projects use a standard calendar with a typical 8-hour workday.)

Calendars can get a little confusing. A project calendar that you set in this dialog box indicates what the usual workday is like in your company, but you can set up individual calendars for each resource you create. You can then more easily accommodate both shift workers and nine-to-fivers in the same schedule. See Chapter 3 for more about resource calendars.

Assign a priority to your project. Assigning a priority (such as 500 for high priority or 100 for a lower priority) can be especially useful if you use the same resources across several projects. With your priorities set on all projects, Project tools can then automatically reallocate resources.

You can also create custom project information fields for your organization in the Enterprise Custom Fields section of this dialog box. For example, you may want a field that explains which department in the company is running the project.

Clicking the Statistics button in this dialog box presents an overview of your project, as shown in Figure 1-11.

Figure 1-11: You can view a summary of calculations about the project.

Perusing the project schedule

After you choose settings in the Project Information dialog box and then click the OK button, you’re faced with a blank Project schedule, as shown in Figure 1-12. As a writer, I can tell you that nothing is as daunting — or as inspiring — as facing a blank page. It’s the canvas on which you create your Project plan.

Figure 1-12: Begin with a new Project schedule.

In Figure 1-12, you see Gantt Chart view. You discover more about various views in Chapter 2. For now, note the following:

File tab, Ribbon, and Timeline: These tools are part of the new interface for Project 2010. You find out more about using them in Chapter 2.

Sheet: The left side of the view is the sheet or sheet pane. You can use this spreadsheet interface to enter, edit, and view information about your project.

Chart area: The chart area on the right reflects your task information graphically as soon as you begin to add tasks:

• Gantt bars in this area indicate the duration and timing of tasks in addition to the progress you record on them.

• The timescale — the indications of time increments across the top of the chart area — helps you interpret the timing of each task bar. You can adjust the increments to show your project in larger or smaller increments of time. Figure 1-12, for example, shows increments in days.

You start building a project by entering tasks. Simply click a cell in the Task Name column of the sheet section and then type the name. You can enter and edit details of a task by entering information directly into various columns (which you can display in many views) or by double-clicking the task name in the sheet to access the Task Information dialog box (see Figure 1-13). I get into more detail about entering task information in Chapter 2.

Figure 1-13: The various tabs in this dialog box hold a wealth of information about a single task in your project.

Starting with templates

Reinventing the wheel has never been one of my favorite sports, so I’m grateful that Microsoft provides some convenient project templates through the online site Office.com. These include projects by type, for example, an engineering project or office move. Templates already have many tasks appropriate to the task type created for you.

Templates typically contain sample tasks broken into logical phases, with task durations and dependencies in place. The templates from Microsoft often include resources, but you can create your own resources as well as use, edit, or delete the ones provided.

You can open a template from the Backstage view, a new location in Project 2010 where you create and manage Project files. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Choose File⇒New.

The Available Templates screen appears, as shown in Figure 1-14.

2. Click the a category icon in the Office.com Templates section, then click a category icon if necessary. Or, click More Templates and then click a category.

The templates in that category appear.

Figure 1-14: Open a template from the Available Templates screen in the Backstage.

3. Click a template to display a preview.

As shown in Figure 1-15, a preview of the selected template appears at the far right.

4. When you find the template you want to use, click Download.

The template opens in Project template format (MPT). You can then use the Save As command on the File tab to save the file as a regular Project file (the correct type will be selected automatically) with a new name. From there, you can delete tasks, move tasks around, or add tasks as necessary for your project.

After opening a template, be sure to check its project information (choose Project⇒Project Information) to make sure that the Start Date and Calendar options are set as you want.

If you modify a file and think that you might use that set of tasks again for future projects, consider saving the file as a custom template. Just choose File⇒Save As, and then select Project Template in the Save as Type list.

Note that after you download a template, you can select it without downloading it again. To do so, choose File⇒New, click My Templates at the top of the Available Templates screen, and then double-click the template in the Personal Templates tab of the New dialog box.

Figure 1-15: The Backstage view previews the selected template.

Saving a Project for Posterity

Saving Project files works just as saving does in most other software you’ve used. Here’s a reminder.

To save a Project file that you haven’t saved before, follow these steps:

1. Choose File⇒Save As.

You can choose Save instead if you created the project from scratch rather than from a template.

2. Use the navigation pane at the left (Windows 7 and Vista) or the Save In list (Windows XP) to locate the folder where you want to save the file; then click to select it.

3. In the File Name text box, type a name for the project.

4. Click the Save button.

It’s good organizational practice to create a folder for your project where you save in one place not only your Project files but also supporting documents, e-mails, and other items. You can create a new folder from within the Save As dialog box by clicking the New Folder button.

Getting Help from Project