Who’s Going to Do the Work?
People are any project’s greatest resource. It’s the people and
their availability (when folks are assigned to work, and when they’re
scheduled to take vacation) that ultimately controls when tasks get
done and how long the project takes. In Project, resources are any people, equipment, or materials needed to complete tasks in your project
List the people on your project
Work could still be up for grabs when you create your schedule. Even
if you don’t know resource names, you probably know what skills are
required to do the work. You can use a person’s name if you have a
lucky team member lined up, or fill in generic names when all you know
is the type of work or skill required.
Project provides a view—the Resource Sheet—specifically for listing your resources. Here’s how to fill it in:
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Choose Resource→View→Resource Sheet.
A new spreadsheet-like view appears with fields for recording information about your resources, as shown in Figure 8.
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To create the first resource in Project for the best friend you’ve corralled into helping, in the first Resource Name cell, type Enrique, and then press Enter.
Repeat this step for your other friends.
Assign resources to tasks
At this point, you have a list of all of the people who are pitching
in. If you handed them your schedule now and told them to get to work,
you’d have a free-for-all. To get the work done on time with a minimum
of chaos, all team members need to know which tasks are theirs to do.
Here’s how to connect your project’s resources to tasks:
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Choose Task→View→Gantt Chart.
The left side of the Gantt Chart view lists project tasks with
fields for details, such as Duration, Start, Finish, Predecessors, and
Resource Names. The right side is the Gantt Chart timescale.
Make sure you see the Resource Names column. If necessary, adjust
the Gantt Chart’s two panes to display it. Position the mouse pointer
over the vertical bar between the panes. When the pointer changes to
double arrows, drag the divider bar to the right until the Resource
Names column is visible.
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To assign Enrique to a task, click the Resource Names field for the “Buy drink fixings” task.
Project displays a box around the cell and displays a down arrow for the resource drop-down list.
Note
Summary tasks don’t get resource assignments, because the resources
are already assigned to the individual tasks that belong to the summary
tasks. Likewise, don’t assign resources to milestones, because the zero
duration means there’s no work to perform.
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To select a name, click the down arrow, turn on the checkbox for a name in the list, and then press Enter.
Your selected victim appears in the Resource Names cell next to the
task. It also shows up in the Gantt Chart above the task’s task bar (Figure 9).
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Repeat steps 2 and 3 until your friends are all appointed to tasks.
Or not. If you don’t know who to assign and can’t determine a
generic resource, then leave the resource name blank. You can come back
and assign resources later.
You’re ready to proceed to the last step of the test drive.
