Facilitating Your Plan with Microsoft Project 2010

• Calculate the start and finish dates for you.

• Indicate whether assigned resources are actually available.

• Inform you if assigned resources are underallocated or overworked.

• Alert you if there’s an upcoming deadline.

• Understand how much material you’ve depleted or how much you’re spending on supplies and services.

• Calculate how much of the budget you’ve spent so far.

• Draw your project tasks as a Gantt chart or network diagram so you can visualize your project.

To do this and more, you can create a table in Project 2010. You can then use the project database, schedule calculation, and charting capabilities to help facilitate your project management processes, as shown in Figure 1.

Although Project 2010 can’t negotiate a more reasonable finish date, it can help you determine what you have to sacrifice to make that date. Although Project 2010 won’t complete a difficult and time-consuming task for your team, it will help you find extra time in the schedule or additional resources for that task. And although Project 2010 can’t motivate an uninspired team member, it can tell you if that team member is working on critical tasks that will affect the finish date of the entire project.

In short, Project 2010 can help you facilitate all processes in the project management life cycle, from developing your scope, modeling your project schedule, and tracking and communicating progress, to saving knowledge gained from the closed project. Furthermore, with Microsoft Project Professional 2010, project management standards can be established and disseminated throughout your enterprise.

1. Creating a Model of Your Project

You can use Project 2010 to create a model of your project. This model reflects the reality of your project. You enter your tasks, resources, assignments, and other project-related information into Project 2010. You can then organize and manage the copious and very detailed bits of project information that otherwise can be quite overwhelming.

With all the necessary information stored in Project 2010, the exact project information you need at any given time is always at your fingertips. You can manipulate and analyze this information in various ways to solve problems, make decisions, and communicate progress to successfully manage the project. As you take action and move forward in your project, you update information in Project 2010 so that it continues to reflect reality. (See Figure 2.)

1.1. Planning with Project 2010

Specifically, in the planning stage, you use Project 2010 to do the following:

• Create your project phases, milestones, and task list Project 2010 uses your task list as the basis for the project database it creates for you. You can organize tasks within phases or subtasks within summary tasks so that you can break your project down into manageable segments.

• Estimate task durations One task might take two hours to complete; another might take four days. Unless you’re scheduling manually, Project 2010 uses these durations to help build your schedule.

• Link tasks with their appropriate relationships to other tasks Often, a task cannot begin until a previous task has been completed. For example, for an office move project, you schedule the “Design office space” task before the “Order new furniture” task. The two tasks are linked because the second task cannot be done until the first task is complete. Unless you’re using manual scheduling, Project 2010 uses these task relationships to build your schedule. The durations and task relationships are also shown in the Gantt Chart and Network Diagram views of your project.

• Enter any imposed deadlines or other date constraints If you know that you must vacate your current office space by the end of August, for example, you work with that date as one of the important constraints of your project. Project 2010 can automatically schedule according to such constraints and inform you of a conflict between a constraint and the durations or task relationships you have also set.

• Set up the resources and assign them to tasks Resources can be employees, vendors, or equipment that are responsible for carrying out tasks. Not only does Project 2010 keep track of which resources are assigned to which tasks, it also schedules work on assignments according to the resource’s availability and lets you know whether a resource is overloaded with more tasks than can be accomplished in the resource’s available time. Resources can also include materials consumed or special costs incurred in the execution of a task, so you can plan for how much lumber you need, for example, or how much you’re going to have to spend on travel costs throughout the life of the project.

• Establish resource costs and task costs You can specify hourly, monthly, or peruse rates for the employees or equipment being used to complete tasks. You can specify the cost for consumable materials or other special costs for items such as trade show registration, printing, or travel. When your human, equipment, material, and cost resources are assigned to tasks, Project 2010 calculates and adds these costs so that you can get an accurate view of how much your project will cost to execute. You can often use this calculation as a basis for the project budget.

• Adjust the plan to achieve a targeted finish date or budget amount Suppose that your project plan initially shows a finish date that’s two months later than required or a cost that’s $10,000 more than the allocated budget. You can make adjustments to scope, schedule, cost, and resources to bring the project plan in line. While working through your inevitable project tradeoffs, Project 2010 can recalculate your schedule automatically until you have the result you need.
  

In the execution stage of the project, planning is complete and you give the green light for the project team members to start work on their assigned tasks. Communication is a huge part of the execution stage. Use Project 2010 to communicate in one or more of the following ways:

• Print to-do lists You can print a to-do list for each team member, or print a report of tasks coming due within the next month.
  

• Send e-mail messages containing task lists You can send task lists to team members over e-mail. If they use Microsoft Outlook or another MAPI-based e-mail program, they can integrate the items into their e-mail task list.
  

• Communicate task assignments and progress with your SharePoint workgroup Use Microsoft SharePoint 2010 to post task lists and updates for communication and collaboration among your team members.
  

• Communicate task information with Microsoft Project Server 2010 Use the power of enterprise project management and Microsoft Project Web App to exchange task and progress information with team members.
  

1.3. Monitoring and Controlling with Project 2010

In the execution and control stage of the project, use Project 2010 to do the following:

• Save the baseline plan For comparison and tracking purposes, you need to take a snapshot of what you consider your baseline project plan. As you update task progress through the life of the project, you can compare current progress with that snapshot of your original plan. These comparisons provide valuable information about whether you’re on track with the schedule and your budget.

• Update actual task progress With Project 2010, you can update task progress by entering percentage complete, work complete, work remaining, and more. As you enter actual progress, the schedule can be automatically recalculated.

• Compare variances between planned and actual task information Using the baseline information you saved, Project 2010 presents various views to show your baseline against actual and scheduled progress, along with any variances. For example, if your initial project plan shows that you had originally planned to finish a task on Thursday, but the resource actually finished it on Monday, you’d have a variance of three days in your favor.

• Review planned, actual, and scheduled costs In addition to seeing task progress variances, you can compare baseline costs against actual and currently scheduled costs and see the resulting cost variances. Project 2010 can also use your baseline and current schedule information for earned value calculations that you can use for more detailed analyses.

• Adjust the plan to respond to changes in scope, finish date, and budget What if you get a directive in the middle of the project to cut $10,000 from your budget? Or what if you learn that you must bring the project in a month earlier to catch a vital marketing window? Even in the midst of a project, you can adjust scope, schedule, cost, and resources in your project plan. With each change you make, Project 2010 can recalculate your schedule automatically.
  

Report on progress, costs, resource utilization, and more Using the database and calculation features of Project 2010, you can generate a number of text-based and visual reports. For example, reports can show the project summary, milestones, tasks starting soon, over-budget tasks, resource to-do lists, and other information. The visual reports send Project 2010 data to Microsoft Excel 2010 or Visio 2010, which lets you see the data as a column chart or flow diagram, for example. You can modify these built-in reports to suit your needs or create custom reports entirely from scratch.

1.4. Closing with Project 2010

In the closing stage of the project, use Project 2010 to accomplish the following tasks:

• Capture actual task duration metrics If you tracked task progress throughout the project, at the end of the project you have solid, tested data for how long certain tasks actually take.

• Capture successful task sequencing Sometimes, you’re not sure at the outset of a project whether a task should be performed sooner or later in the cycle. With the experience of the project behind you, you can see whether your sequencing worked well.

• Save a template for the next project of this kind Use your project plan as the boilerplate for the next project. You and other project managers will have a task list, milestones, deliverables, sequence, durations, and task relationships already in place, and this template can easily be modified to fit the requirements of the new project.You can also use Project 2010 to work with multiple projects—and even show the task or resource links among them. In the course of modeling your project in this way, Project 2010 serves as your project information system. Project 2010 arranges the thousands of bits of information in various ways so that you can work with it, analyze your data, and make decisions based on coherent and soundly calculated project management information. This project information system carries out three basic functions:

• It stores project information, including tasks, resources, assignments, durations, task relationships, task sequences, calendars, and more.

• If you so choose, it calculates information such as dates, schedules, costs, durations, critical path, earned value, variances, and more.

• It presents views of information you’re retrieving. You can specify the views, tables, filters, groups, fields, or reports, depending on what aspect of your project model you need to see.

2. Working with Your Team Through Project 2010

In addition to helping you create your project plan, Project 2010 helps with resource management, cost management, and team communications. With Project 2010 resource management features, you can perform the following tasks:

• Enter resources in the Project 2010 resource list.

• Enter resources from your organization’s e-mail address book, Active Directory service, or Project Server 2010 accounts.

• Maintain a reusable pool of resources available across multiple projects.

• Specify skills required for a task and have Project 2010 search for available resources with those skills.

• Schedule tasks according to the availability of assigned resources.

• See which assignments all resources are working on, and also identify resource overload or underutilization at a glance and make adjustments accordingly.

• Book a proposed resource in your project (using Project Professional 2010).
  

• Enter periodic or per-use costs for human, equipment, and material resources, including multiple rates for different task types.

• Enter costs for fees, supplies, or services that will be incurred on a task; for example, permit fees or travel costs.

• Enter fixed costs for tasks.

• Estimate costs for the project while the project is still in the planning process.

• Compare planned cost variances to actual cost variances.

• Compare planned, actual, or scheduled costs against your budget.

• View cost totals for tasks, resources, phases, and the entire project.

• Analyze earned value calculations, including budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP), schedule variance (SV), and earned value (EV).
  

With Project 2010, you can communicate with others in just the way you need, as follows:

• Print a view as it looks on your screen.

• Generate and print a predesigned text-based report.

• Generate and print a predesigned visual report by using Project 2010 data in Excel or Visio 2010.

• Create a custom view, text-based report, or visual report.

• Copy a project view as a static picture to another Microsoft Office application.
  

• Use SharePoint 2010 to collaborate with your team by posting and synchronizing task lists as well as making project updates.

• Exchange task assignments, updates, and status reports with your team members through Project Server and Project Web App.

• Allow team leads to delegate tasks to other team members.

• Track issues and documents through SharePoint Server, Project Server, and Project Web App.

• Publish the project through Project Server and Project Web App for review by team members, senior management, customers, and other stakeholders.
  

Through the use of Project Server, as accessed by Project Professional and Project Web App, an entire portfolio of projects can be standardized across your enterprise. Numerous Project 2010 elements, including views, filters, groups, fields, and formulas, can be designed and included in the enterprise global template that reflects your organization’s specific project management methodology. This customization and design is done by a project server administrator. This project server administrator is the person who sets up and manages the installation of Project 2010 for your organization. The project server administrator knows the requirements of project management and the features of Project 2010 well enough to design custom solutions and is often a programmer or other information technology professional. The project server administrator might also be a technically oriented lead project manager.

When your project server administrator designs a common enterprise project template, all project managers in the organization can then work with the same customized project elements that support organizational initiatives. In addition, senior managers can review summary information from multiple projects throughout the organization.

The project server administrator also sets up the enterprise resource pool, which contains all the resources available to the enterprise, and from which the various project managers draw to staff their projects. The enterprise resource pool includes key resource information such as cost, availability, and skill set.

Some organizations might divide the duties between a project server administrator and portfolio manager. The project server administrator can handle installation, server, network, and database issues, and the portfolio manager can be responsible for designing custom project elements, managing the enterprise resource pool, and setting up users and permissions.