Ten Best Microsoft Project Tips – MPUG

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Have you ever driven a stick shift car? You have to use your left foot for the clutch, while the right foot has to alternate between the brake and accelerator pedals.

On top of that, you have to change the gear as you vary the car speed. You also have to balance the wheel without taking your eyes off the road. And, while you are doing all this, your mind has to stay attuned to the traffic around you. They have to take care of so many aspects of the tool without losing the sight of project plan.

Most probably, you are not at fault. Most of us have been there, but we have gotten better. MSP sets the start date as the current date by default when you create a new project. You should change it if your project is going to start on a different date. If you prefer, you can schedule your project from the project finish date instead of the start date. This is helpful if your project has a committed deadline. However, since you are a beginner, I would suggest you to stick to project start date for now.

Purpose : By default, MSP does not automatically calculate task dates, which usually creates scheduling problems. By default, MSP tasks are manually scheduled, which means that the MSP does not change the dates or duration of manually scheduled tasks.

However, dates should change automatically when there is a change in predecessor s tasks. Consider two tasks: T1 and T2. Task T2 has finish to start dependency with T1, which means that T2 should start immediately after T1 is completed. This, in turn, means that the dates of T2 should automatically get changed if dates of T1 are changed.

While there are occasions when you might need your tasks to be manually scheduled, for the majority of beginners, I recommend that you set then to be auto-scheduled.

See the tip 1 above. Similarly, a task is changed if its predecessor changes. Keep reading! Purpose : The MSP calendar defines high level scheduling rules for tasks, meaning that you can define that Monday to Friday are working days and Saturday and Sunday are non-working days.

MSP will take care of these directives while scheduling tasks. A MSP calendar can be used to specify working days and time, non-working days and time, and general holidays. You can start by using one of the above base calendars for your project schedule.

In this tip I have talked only about Project Calendar. You should only tinker with the other types when you become more comfortable with MSP. Purpose : You have to plan before you start using a planning tool. A planning tool like MSP can help you in your planning, but it cannot replace you.

You have to supply the information list of tasks , so that the tool can do scheduling calculations for you. You should start by creating a detailed list of project tasks that you need to schedule.

Otherwise, you will miss things that will cause troubles later. It is difficult to insert a new task in the middle of a running project because it can disturb the whole schedule. If you do not know all the tasks at the beginning of a project, then you should list higher level tasks and decompose them later. See also the following tip. Purpose : Dates are automatically calculated by MSP if the task relationships are properly defined. You should not even think about the dates, duration estimates, or any other task attributes before creating a list of tasks.

You should first create the overall structure of project tasks and relationships among them before thinking about durations and dates. Purpose : A WBS divides and sub-divides a project into more manageable components. It reduces the risk and increases the predictability. This goes along with the tip above.

While creating the list, decompose the higher-level tasks into sub-tasks. Purpose : Only you, as a project manager, can define the working relationship between tasks. MSP will automatically calculate the task dates after you have properly defined the relationships. After creating a WBS and defining lowest level tasks, you should define network dependencies and relationships between tasks. As you define the relationships, the dates of successor activities will be automatically calculated.

You can refer to my other article on defining actual dates to understand the importance of these relationships. Purpose : Some tasks have client or environment-imposed date constrains. You should identify these date constraints and insert them in MSP, so that it can take care of date calculations. You may want to have control over tasks dates for some of the tasks.

You can manually schedule these tasks and make them independent of any other tasks. MSP puts a constraint on manually scheduled tasks as soon as you associate a date with them. You must make a note of these tasks and their constraints, as MSP will not change them automatically. Purpose : Summary tasks are automatically calculated by MSP. The calculations might not happen correctly if there are predecessor s in the summary tasks.

The dates and duration of a summary task is automatically calculated by MSP. You should add predecessors only to lowest level tasks. Purpose : A baseline sets up project standard. MSP measures project performance against the defined baseline.

After defining the schedule, you should baseline it. This way you will have an original set of dates even if your project schedule changes. You can refer to my other article on how to define project baseline to understand its importance. I wrote these tips for the new MSP user, but these are not essentially beginner tips. These tips can be implemented by anyone from newbie to experienced professional to create any new project.

As they say, practice makes a makes perfect. Follow these tips and use them in your project regularly. Very soon you will become expert in MSP. What type of difficulties have you faced while developing a MSP schedule?

How did you overcome them? What other tips would you like to share with your fellow professionals? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Be sure to check out my recent webinar recording and transcript.

Praveen Malik, PMP, has two-plus decades of experience as a project management instructor and consultant. He regularly conducts project management workshops in India and abroad and shares his project management thinking in his blog, PM by PM.

We recently covered printing in part 3 of our Mastering Microsoft Project Visualization course. Review Title. Your Review. Sign me up for the newsletter. Remember Me. Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email. Quick Links. However hard you may try, invariably, something goes wrong.

Refer to the below figures which illustrate how to change the project start date. Figure I. Figure II. Figure III. Figure IV. Figure V. Written by Praveen Malik. Share This Post. You May Also Like. Understanding Earned Value Fields. Customer Reviews. The other benefit is that when you paste a bulleted list from Word, it retains the hierarchy. I too, floundered my way through MS Project back in the day. Thank you for for the concise list!

 
 

Basic tasks in Project – Microsoft Support

 
This is also a self-paced course hence the user may choose among the available choices. The percent complete you see on the Tracking Gantt and on the Tracking percentage buttons is percent duration complete. Smith is looking to create graphs that represent the ethnic diversity of the 24 students in her 4 th grade class. However hard you may try, invariably, something goes wrong.

 

Microsoft project 2016 tips and tricks free

 

How to be more efficient within Microsoft Project Previous Next. View Larger Image. Publish: When using Microsoft PPM, it is very important to publish your updates once you have made significant changes — such as adjusting durations of assigning resources — so that these changes are reflected within Project Web App.

About the Author: Tom Henry. Tom has also worked with Agile teams looking to utilize Microsoft Project to manage projects using Scrum, Kanban, and other iterative methods. Related Posts. Get BOOK. Microsoft Office Tips and Tricks. An official release date for Windows has not been announced but leaked documents.

Quick Links. However hard you may try, invariably, something goes wrong. Refer to the below figures which illustrate how to change the project start date. Figure I. Figure II. Figure III. Figure IV. Figure V. Written by Praveen Malik. Share This Post. You May Also Like. Understanding Earned Value Fields. Customer Reviews. The other benefit is that when you paste a bulleted list from Word, it retains the hierarchy.

I too, floundered my way through MS Project back in the day. Thank you for for the concise list! I look forward to viewing your others as well. I wish I knew how to associate different project calendars to tasks. The nature of what I am scheduling includes contractors who do not have the same work schedule.

While the default project calendar is the standard work week, you can associate different calendars to different tasks. It would be useful to have something similar for setting up printing out a schedule. This has always been a very daunting part of using MS Project.

Dennis, Can you please elaborate what difficulty you face while printing? Thanks all, Praveen. Leave a Reply Cancel Reply Your email address will not be published. Sign In. Lost Password. An often overlooked but handy report is the Calendar view using a Resource Filter. Select Calendar from the View menu.

In Project 98 you can delete the bar styles you do not use to avoid displaying them in the legend. Right click in the Toolbar area to display the list of available Toolbars. A check next to a Toolbar indicates that it is currently displayed. Click on a Toolbar to display or hide it. In the Gantt Chart or any chart with a table and a chart area doubleclick the separator line between the table and chart to automatically push the separator line to the closest column edge.

To split the screen and place a specific View into the lower pane, hold the shift key while selecting an item from the View menu. You can also split the screen by selecting Split from the Window menu or doubleclick the small horizontal split bar in the lower right corner of the screen. Doubleclick it again to remove the split or choose Remove Split from the Windows menu.

Just for fun – Create two 10 day tasks. Place the cursor in the Finish field of the first task and click the Copy button. Place the cursor on the Finish field of the second task and click the Copy button. Place the cursor on the Start field of the first task, select Paste Special-Paste Link and watch the tasks “walk” across the chart.