Week 3 - Project
This week’s assignment is Chapter 5, 6, and parts of 7 and 8.
Up to this point, you should have a good basic project plan. I am including a few additional resources for this week. In case you did not get the book and are using the PDF copy, the links below are the project plan starting point for chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8. Note starting with chapter 5, the book adds a few additional tasks to the end point of the previous chapter.
Chapter 5 – Formatting and Printing Your Plan
This chapter is about printing and creating a custom Gantt view. This is basically cosmetic and will not affect the timeline. A personally like to print using print preview and find that I can customize that easily. It also gives me more flexibility that the standard reports.
Also on my web site, I attached two print examples to this posting. The first is the way I normally print (File àPrint). In the second example, I adjusted the column view on the left pane to include duration, start and finish. I find this to be a bit redundant because that information is already the Gantt. Try different Gantt views and then print preview them. Note the page set-up option within print preview is similar to Excel, but includes a legend and view tab.
Chapter 6 – Tracking Progress on Tasks
This chapter starts with creating a baseline. That is the point to which you will compare actual work completed. Note that Project can save up to 10 baselines. Completed work can be tracked a few ways. The first is marking work completed as scheduled. This is an easy way to do it if things are going according to plan. The second way is entering a task completion percentage. This is a good way to track progress but has limitations. You cannot enter more than 100% completed and this limits you from entering tasks that are longer than plan. Finally, there is entering work as actual values. This gives you the ability to enter 2 weeks, for example, for a task originally planned for 1 week. It will expand the timeline accordingly. Also note the progress bar that appears within the Gantt task.
After you enter actuals, switch to “Tracking Gantt” view. This shows the percentage completed by task and phase. Up to this point, you will have completed section 1 – Managing a Simple Project.
Complete and submit the exercises from Chapter 6 showing the completed tasks through task 9. Due Monday, April 19.
Section 2 – Advanced Project Scheduling
Note that there are no assignments due for this section of the book. You are asked to read the sections and work on the associated exercises. The topics presented in this section relate to real world experience in project management – projects rarely go according to plan. This section will help you make those adjustments as the project progresses.
Chapter 7 – Fine-Tuning Task Details
Read the sections on Adjusting Task Relationships, Setting Task Constraints and Viewing the Project’s Critical path. Work through those examples.
Lag Time
I think including lag time is an important part of project management. Project allows for both lag and lead time to be entered in the task information predecessors tab. A negative value is lead time and a positive value is lag time. I’m not sure why there aren’t two columns here. But that is the way Microsoft does it.
When you define a task duration, keep in mind that this is elapsed time and not actual work required. You do not want to inflate the estimate to cover yourself. Use lag time for that. It’s better. Tasks will slip for a variety of reasons and lag time will help you to meet the project end date.
Task Constraints
The book project plan through chapter 6 is ideal, with every task starting as soon as the previous task completes. This also gives the scheduling engine the most flexibility in changing the plan as task durations change. But task constraints are often a fact of life and should be entered when they are known. This will cause the scheduling engine to flag tasks that cause conflict within the schedule. Giving you time to make an adjustment.
Critical Path
This is an overused term in MS Project and project management in general. I think people like to throw it around because it makes things sound important. It simply means that that project end date will be delayed if a task on the critical path goes beyond schedule. Through chapter 6, all tasks were on the critical path. A delay on any task would affect the project end date.
Chapter 8 – Fine-Tuning Resources and Assignment Details
Read the section on Setting Up Resource Availability to Apply at Different Times. This is a good way to show resource availability. The book example is changing the number of electricians from 2 to 3 during one of the weeks. A more realistic way to use this is to allocate a percentage of resource availability for the project week. Instead of using the project calendar, I find making changes here easier for people on the project team. For example, I can allocate a person by percentage throughout different weeks. They may be available 50% for the first month, 25% for the next and 100% afterwards.
To download, right click on the link and choose "save target as".
Chapter 5 Print Preview
Example 1: Wingtip_5a_PrintPreview_Example1.pdf
Example 2:
Wingtip_5a_PrintPreview_Example2.pdf
Chapter 5 Project Start: Wingtip_Toys_Commercial_5a.mpp
Chapter 5 Logo: Logo.jpg
Chapter 6 Project Start: Wingtip_Toys_Commercial_6a.mpp
Chapter 7 Project Start: Short_Film_Project_7a.mpp
Chapter 8 Project Start: Short_Film_Project_8a.mpp