Getting Started

[Karen]

Hello,

The company I work for insists that we use Microsoft
Project. For what we need it for you can create an Excel
spreadsheet just as well.

I went to a seminar on Project and it was very
interesting. What I did learn was that this application
is best used when one has a HUGE project.

I work in an office and the projects may last 2 weeks and
they may last 2 months.
But they are nothing of huge proportion.

The only fields my boss wants is:
Task Name
Duration
Actual Start
Baseline Start
Start Date
Actual Finish
Baseline Finish
Status
Percent Complete
Resource Names

We are not tracking any cost at all. I already set up my
columns. Besides my resource list and my calendar, what
else do I have to set up?

Is it important to group resources? I'm wondering if I
should even go that far? If I'm missing something, please
let me know.

Thank you ALL!

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Karen,

First: if you know better what the company needs that the company
management, that's an awkward situation...
The difference between Project and Excel is essentially that Project
CALCULATES dates nd Excel doesn't. This has nothing to do with huge or small
projects (that's like saying you don't need Excel unless you have a
calculation involving a huge number of figures)

Now to your question.

- Specific Resource Calendars maybe?
- Verify that Tools, Options, Calendar is compatible with the prohject
calendar (they do NOT update each other)

There are at least 100 things you can usefully do before thinking of
grouping resources. That is definitely not a first priority.

Thinking of task types may be...

HTH

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Grouping resources is strictly an optional convenience, nothing more. I may
have 25 people listed and choose to group them into Admin, Sales,
Engineering, Maintainance in the resource group column. Then at some point
in the future I could report on tasks to be done by each department or costs
by department (if we're tracking costs), tasks to be done by people from
Admin next week, that sort of thing.

There's no reason you can't use Project to plan and track smaller projects
as well as the big ones. Good management is good management, regardless of
whether the project is 50 tasks over 2 months or 1500 tasks over 2 years.
You should of course set up the task list, with the task durations and link
them to see the predecessor/successor realtionships. Let Project do its job
and calculate the schedule for you to communicate to the resources so
they'll know when the need to be doing their thing.