Microsoft Project 2003 Training Manual

© Learnit Computer Software Training 2004 – www.learnit.com

Microsoft Project 2003 Module 4 –Finalize the Plan Training Manual Courseware Provided by: Learnit Computer Software Training 250 Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94104 Tel: (415) 693-0250 Internet: http://www.Learnit.com/ © Learnit Computer Software Training 2004

Finalize the Plan ii Project 2003 – Module 4 Learn iT! Computer Software Training


Table of Contents

VIEW CRITICAL PATH...................................................................................................3

FILTER CRITICAL PATH ....................................................................................................3 HIGHLIGHT CRITICAL PATH..............................................................................................3 GANTT CHART CRITICAL BARS........................................................................................4

Add Critical Bars........................................................................................................4 Bar Styles....................................................................................................................5

VIEW PROJECT SUMMARY TASK.............................................................................7

SHORTEN THE PROJECT PLAN................................................................................8

EFFORT DRIVEN TASKS...................................................................................................8 TASK TYPE.......................................................................................................................8

Change Task Type options......................................................................................9

RESOURCE OVER ALLOCATION ............................................................................10

SAVE A BASELINE ......................................................................................................11

SAVE BASELINE .............................................................................................................11 Baseline Fields.........................................................................................................11 Variance....................................................................................................................12 Project Statistics ......................................................................................................12

CLEAR A BASELINE ........................................................................................................12 SAVE ADDITIONAL BASELINE PLANS .............................................................................13

INTERIM BASELINE.....................................................................................................15

SAVE AN INTERIM PLAN.................................................................................................15

PRINTING VIEWS .........................................................................................................17

PRINT AND PRINT PREVIEW...........................................................................................17 PAGE SETUP ..................................................................................................................19

Page Tab...................................................................................................................19 Margins Tab..............................................................................................................20 Header, Footer, and Legend..................................................................................20 View Tab ...................................................................................................................22

PRINT CALENDAR VIEW .................................................................................................24

Finalize the Plan 3 Project 2003 – Module 4 Learn iT! Computer Software Training


View Critical Path The Critical Path is a series of tasks that affect the end date of the project plan. If a critical task within the critical path series slips, the entire project slips. The Critical Path can change throughout the project life cycle. Always work with the Critical Path when shortening the project finish date.

Filter Critical Path A Filter option is available to view only the Critical Tasks.

1. Click on the drop down arrow in the Filter window on the formatting toolbar.

2. Choose Critical.

3. All tasks within the critical path will be displayed.

Highlight Critical Path The Critical Path can be highlighted with a font color. Typically, the Red font color is used to highlight the Critical Path.

1. Format Menu, Text Styles.

2. From the Item to change drop down menu, choose Critical Tasks.



3. From the Color drop down menu, choose Red.

4. OK.

Gantt Chart Critical Bars Add Critical Bars The Gantt chart view does not display critical bars by default. The Gantt Chart Wizard is the quickest method to add critical bars.

1. Click on the Gantt Chart Wizard button located on the formatting toolbar.

2. Click on the Next button.

3. Click on the radio button for Critical Path



4. Click on Finish, Format, Exit Wizard.

Bar Styles Bar Styles can be changed and text can be viewed on the Gantt chart.

1. Format Menu.

2. Bar Styles.



3. Click on the bar style to be changed in the top pane of the Bar Styles dialog box.

4. In the lower pane, choose the Bars or Text tab to make changes. Start and End shapes can be added to the bars as well as shape, pattern, and color of the bar.

5. Text can be added to the left, right, top, bottom, and inside of the bar.

6. Choose which field to view from the drop down menu.



View Project Summary Task The Project Summary task is available to assist when managing the project duration, start, and finish date. It is available through the options dialog box.

1. Tools Menu, Options.

2. Click on the box for Show project summary task in the lower right-hand corner of the View Tab.

3. The Project Summary task is inserted as the first row of the table.



Shorten the Project Plan In order to shorten the project plan, the Critical Path must be shortened. If a task is not critical, it will not affect the finish date of the project plan. There are many ways a task can be shortened as follows:

• Assign additional resources • Assign resource over time work • Add Lag or Lead time to tasks • Increase working time for resources through the calendar • Change the duration of critical tasks • Break up the critical path

While making changes to the critical path tasks, some tasks will change to non critical and non critical tasks may become critical.

Effort Driven Tasks Tasks are Effort Driven by default in MS Project. Effort Driven will recalculate the duration, work, and units when additional resources are assigned to tasks. MS Project bias is that it will first try to recalculate the duration (shorten), then work hours, and finally the units depending on the Task Type.

Task Type There are three options for task type. The default task type in MS Project is Fixed Units. What this means is that project cannot calculate the units. When additional resources are added to a task, the duration will be recalculated. Fixed Duration should be used if the duration should not be recalculated when adding additional resources. With Fixed Duration, the work hours will be recalculated unless hours are also added to a resource. If fixed duration is turned on and hours are added, then the units are calculated. When using the Fixed Work task type, the duration is calculated. The default settings for the Task Type can be changed in options.



Change Task Type options

1. Tools Menu, Options.

2. Schedule Tab.

3. Change the Default task type.

4. OK.



Resource Over Allocation When resources are over allocated in a project plan, the resource name will highlight in Red font in the resource views. To view the resource allocation to analyze and manage what changes should be made to the project plan, use the Resource Allocation view.

1. View Menu.

2. More Views.

3. Resource Allocation View.

4. Resource Allocation View opens two views on the screen. The top pane is the Resource Usage view, and the bottom pane is the Leveling Gantt.

5. Determine what changes should be made to eliminate over allocation.



Save a Baseline Setting a baseline creates a benchmark for future reference. The baseline should be set prior to the start of the project after all tasks, task durations, resource, cost, and dates have been entered in the plan.

Save Baseline

1. Tools Menu, Tracking, Save Baseline.

2. The save baseline radio button is selected for the Entire project.

3. OK. Baseline Fields Saving a baseline, copies specific fields into baseline fields as follows:

Current Field Name Baseline Field Name Start Baseline Start Finish Baseline Finish Duration Baseline Duration Work Baseline Work



Current Field Name Baseline Field Name Cost Baseline Cost

Variance As changes are made to the current plan, MS Project will calculate a variance for each field by subtracting the baseline field from the current field. This figure will be entered in the variance field – Variance Start, Variance Finish, Variance Duration, Variance Work, and Variance Cost. To manage and view the variance for the fields, open the table for that field. As an example, view the Work table for the baseline and variance information for each task. The variance table will view the fields for the Start and Finish baseline and variance. Project Statistics While each table will display the variance for each task, the project statistics will display the baseline, current, and variance for the entire project.

1. Project Menu, Project Information. 2. Statistics button located in the bottom of the dialog box.

Clear a Baseline If a baseline was set too early or if the project plan has changed so drastically since setting a baseline, then use the option to clear the baseline.



1. Tools Menu, Tracking.

2. Clear Baseline .

3. Choose which baseline plan to clear from the drop down menu.

4. OK.

Save Additional Baseline Plans

Up to 10 additional Baselines can be set for progress of all baseline fields.

1. Tools Menu, Tracking, Save Baseline .



2. Click in the drop down menu for the Save baseline option.

3. Choose which Baseline to save (dates are entered to right of saved baselines for easy tracking).

4. Click OK.



Interim Baseline The Interim plans are different from the Baseline plan and is used to save the current start and finish dates for a task that is in progress. There are ten Interim plan set of dates that can be set in a project file. Interim plans help compare current progress dates to the baseline dates.

Save an Interim Plan

1. Tools Menu, Tracking, Save Baseline .

2. Select Save Interim Plan radio button.

3. Leave the Copy box with the Start/Finish dates.

4. Leave the Into box with the Start1/Finish1 fields.

5. OK for Entire Project.



This process will now copy the information from the original baseline start and finish fields to the start1 and finish1 fields. These fields can now be used in views and reports to compare the baseline plan to the current plan.



Printing Views

Print and Print Preview When printing from Project, the current view is what will be sent to the printer. If the timeline has been changed on a view, you may get 200 pages of Gantt Chart bars accidentally. Take note that what you see is what you get. Never send a Project view to the printer before looking at the Print Preview. The Print Preview can be accessed from the button on the Standard toolbar or from the File Menu. A Project view can be sent to the printer using the Print button on the Standard toolbar or from the File Menu. When using the File Menu, Print, you receive the Print dialog box where you have various options as seen below:



From this dialog box, the printer can be changed, print range for specific number of pages rather than all pages, and a specific date range. For additional options, you will use the File, Page Set up dialog box.



Page Setup Additional print options are available through the Page Setup dialog box. To access Page Setup options for the current view:

1. File Menu, Page Setup.

Page Tab The Page Tab gives orientation options to change from Landscape (11 x 8 ½) to Portrait (8 ½ x 11). The Scaling option is a great way to scale down from normal size to fit the timeline on fewer pages. You can even force to fit so many pages wide by so many pages tall. Be sure to Print Preview before changing these settings. The Other area gives additional control over the paper size and if the first page should have the page number.



Margins Tab The margins are .5 (1/2”) by default and can be changed for top, bottom, left, and right. The Borders option is also available in this tab. The outer pages option is available with Network Diagram only. Header, Footer, and Legend There is a separate tab for the Header, Footer, and Legend but all offer the same options.

The alignment window lets you set what is on the left, center, and right side of the header, footer and legend. You can type in the alignment box or use some of the shortcut buttons and drop down menu for assistance. After choosing from the drop down menu, be sure to click on the Add button. The choice will be added to the alignment screen. The Preview window will show what the header and footer will look like on each page.



Following is a brief description of the different short cut buttons available.

Button Name Button Description

Format Text Font Font dialog box for size, style, color

Insert Page Number Inserts the number of the current page

Insert Total Page Count Inserts the total number of pages in the Project File

Insert Current Date Current Date

Insert Current Time Current Time

Insert File Name File Name

Insert Picture Can add a picture from the dialog box to the header or footer

The button options and the options in the drop down menu will add code to the Alignment area of the Setup window. However, you will see exactly how it is printed in the Preview window. The Legend Tab has additional options:



The right side of the dialog box offers options to place the legend on Every Page, a legend Page, or None where the legend will not display at all. you can also change the width of the legend and to format using the Legend Labels button. View Tab It is very easy to become very frustrated when attempting to print Project files. One of the least used tabs in Page Setup can help fix a lot of problems. Remember, that what you see is what you get so if you have a Gantt Chart view to print, and you moved the separator bar to show less or more of the Gantt Chart or the table, this is what you will see when you print.



Print all sheets columns can be turned on so this happens each and every time no matter the changes in the view. The first page will print with all columns. When printing views, the columns will print on the first page only. When there are several pages, it can be difficult to decide which task goes with which task bar on the Gantt chart as an example. Printing a specific number of columns will take care of this. When telling Project which columns, be sure to count the ID column as the first column. Enter a check box on the Print first columns option and be sure to enter the number of columns to print. Print Notes will print all notes on the last page. The note is printed under the ID and Task name for each task with a note. If you do not want Project to print blank pages, take this check mark off. Fit timescale reduces or expands to use all available space on the page.



Print Calendar View It is important to note that the Calendar view has a different View tab settings as follows:

Before printing a Calendar View, you should filter the specific information for the calendar such as Resource. The above options are available to you through File Page Set up as previously discussed.

Documents

Microsoft Project 2003 Training Manual