Microsoft Project Fundamentals. Teresa S. Stover
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planning, and executingPlanning, executing, and monitoringPlanning, controlling, and monitoring
6 Monitoring and controlling happen at the same time in the project life cycle. What's the difference between the two processes?Monitoring is about collecting information about project progress and comparing it against the project plan. Controlling is about adjusting the project based on that comparison.Monitoring is about collecting status information from team members daily. Controlling is about helping team members stay on schedule.Monitoring is about working with the appropriate Microsoft Project views. Controlling is about entering the right information in the right views.Monitoring is about designing and generating reports for the team and stakeholders. Controlling is about watching the project schedule and budget.
7 What are two of the most important aspects of the closing process of a completed project?Archiving project files and celebrating with the teamDocumenting processes developed as part of the project and writing team member evaluationsObtaining project sponsor acceptance and conducting a lessons learned meetingCollecting all project deliverables and debriefing with your manager
8 You are the project manager for equipment retrofit of a manufacturing line. Which of the following project characteristics lead you to advocate for using the waterfall project management methodology?The project requirements are very well defined before the project starts.The project scope is vague and can benefit from experimentation, prototyping, and iterations of solutions and deliverables. The project is in a more structured, physical environment and even early changes to the project can be prohibitively expensive.A and CB and C
9 You've been assigned as project manager for an ambitious website design initiative. Which of the following characteristics might lead you to recommend using the agile project management methodology?The project requirements are very well defined before the project starts, and the project sponsor will not be frequently engaged.The project scope is more vague and can benefit from experimentation, prototyping, and iterations of solutions and deliverables.The project is centered on knowledge-based work done by a highly collaborative creative team, and the project customers are enthusiastic about frequent reviews and feedback.A and CB and C
Lesson 2 Introducing Microsoft Project
LESSON OBJECTIVES
Describe three of the five major ways that Microsoft Project helps you manage projects.
List three of several Microsoft Project editions you can choose from as your project management solution.
Explain the pros and cons of two different Microsoft Project editions.
Select the Microsoft Project edition that is best suited to your projects, team, and organization.
Navigate the Microsoft Project window.
Name three sources for getting help with your Microsoft Project edition.
Although it doesn't manage your projects for you, Microsoft Project is your quick and clever assistant in estimating schedules, calculating costs, balancing resources, displaying progress, and testing what-if scenarios.
Microsoft offers several editions of Project, from basic to full-featured, and from traditional desktop to online cloud-based applications. In this lesson, you'll discern which of these flavors is best for you and your team.
To begin, you'll start up Microsoft Project and tour the windows, views, and modes where different features reside.
For this book, the procedures and examples are based on Microsoft Project Online Desktop Client as implemented in October 2021 as the Microsoft “Project Plan 3” for cloud-based project management solutions. This is largely the same as Microsoft Project Professional 2021, the perpetual (nonsubscription) version. You can learn about changes since then with help and tips located within the app, online, and in user forums.
How Microsoft Project Helps
Project management is a fascinating confluence of skills, knowledge, and intuition. It fully engages experience of the industry in which the project lives, while employing the soft skills and emotional intelligence associated with working with human beings.
All of this becomes clearer when you survey the list of the 10 project management knowledge areas: integration management, scope management, schedule management, cost management, quality management, resource management, communications management, risk management, procurement management, and stakeholder management.
Although you, the project manager, are responsible for orchestrating the disciplines of all these knowledge areas in a single project, Microsoft Project does the heavy lifting when it comes to managing the schedule, costs, and resources. Project also helps you communicate progress and formulate what-if scenarios for responding to risks and changes.
Manage the Schedule
With its powerful scheduling engine, Project shines brightest in helping you estimate, manage, and adjust your project schedule. At the start of project planning, you use Project to determine the timeframe for the project start and finish dates, along with the phases and milestones along the way.
When you specify how long each task will take to accomplish and link together tasks that depend on each other, Project calculates the schedule of linked task paths. If the project sponsor needs the project finish date to come in sooner, or when an unexpected change occurs in the middle of the project, you can adjust the timing of one task and all related tasks change with it (see Figure 2.1).
FIGURE 2.1 A Project schedule recalculation
This automatic scheduling and rescheduling saves you a huge amount of time as you create, track, and adjust the project.
Project can also factor in other scheduling information you might provide, such as specific deadlines or “drop-dead dates,” or the availability of assigned team members.
As you work through the project life cycle, you enter actual progress in Project, such as the percentage of specific tasks completed. Project updates the schedule accordingly, so you continue to see the projected schedule based on work already done. Then if necessary, you can adjust the timing of upcoming tasks to ensure that the schedule stays on track.
You'll start learning about scheduling tasks in Project in Lesson 4, “Set Up the Project and Tasks.”
Calculate Costs
Project helps you determine your budget. The majority of most project costs come from team members, with additional costs from equipment, materials, and travel expenses. In Project, you enter the resources required to carry out the tasks, the resources' cost per hour or per unit, and when and how much they will be needed (see Figure 2.2).
Then when you assign the resources to tasks, Project calculates the cost for the task based on the cost for the assigned resources. As shown in Figure 2.3, these costs roll up in your project plan to show overall project costs.