Video About Introduction Of Microsoft Project

Video Link About Introduction Of Microsoft Project

Please click on the link below to watch our video that relates to the introduction of Microsoft Project on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivm-8JeHKio

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Video About Introduction Of Project Management

Video About Introduction Of Project Management
Please click on the link below to watch our video that relates to the introduction of Project Management on YouTube:
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Overall Explanation Of Project Management

Overall Explanation Of Project Management 

A successful project manager plans and is committed to completing a project, and to do this uses a range of tools and techniques to monitor progress. A project may not go ahead according to its plan, and in some cases may fail to achieve its targets, if it is not managed and controlled properly. Some common reasons for failure of, or delays to a project that needs close monitoring are:

• Project monitoring tools and techniques that are not properly or adequately used.

• A project manager who does not have the required technical and managerial skills.

•  Inadequate allocation of resources to project activities.

•  Project team members or higher-level management who are not fully committed to the project.

Projects regularly fail because Project Management tools are used incorrectly to control a project. A wide range of tools and techniques can, and should be used and each of these tools can be applied to one or more phases of the project.

Examples of these tools are outlined below such as:

• Work breakdown structure (WBS) – WBS is about breaking larger tasks into smaller activities so that activities can be planned and resourced more effectively.

• Gantt Charts – A method to record the actual performance of an activity against its predicted targets and deadlines using horizontal bars.

• Network Analysis – Used for larger projects where Gantt charts, for example, would not be very effective due to the complexity of the project and the inter-relationship of its activities. These networks provide a much better visual picture of the project tasks and are more effective at identifying the priority tasks when combined with methods such as CPM (critical path method).

• Reports – These are vital to the success of a project. They can be generated at different stages of a project and by various parties. Examples of reports include:

1. A feasibility report, which is used to justify the initiation of a project.
2. A project plan report, which gives all relevant information about a project or progress reports written by the project team, which show how a task has progressed against its targets and what resources are needed to make sure the task remains on track.
3. A project conclusion or closing report, sometimes referred to as a post-completion report, which gives a summary of project deliverables and is an essential document required to sign off a project.

There is a wide range of Project Management software available to help project managers and project team members deal with the complexities of a project. These tools give the project valuable support and help to control project timing and deadline monitoring, allocation of resources, budgets and funds, generation of various reports at different stages, identification of risks and actions to manage these risks and, the most important part of any project, communication.

As part of a Project Management system, and especially in manufacturing engineering projects, it is also important to have a conformance management system, which checks and ensures project final deliverables meet previously agreed technical specifications.

Set The Task Priorities And Project Priorities

Set The Task & Project Priorities

Setting task priorities allow us to specify a task's importance and its availability for leveling. The priority value that we enter is a subjective value between 1 and 1000, which enables us to specify the amount of control we have over the leveling process. For example, if we don't want Project to level a particular task, set its priority level to 1000. By default, priority values are set at 500, or a medium level of control. Tasks that have lower priority are delayed or split before those that have higher priority.

1 In the Task Name field, double click the name of the task whose priority we want to change, and then click Task Information.

2 Click the General tab, and then type or select a priority in the Priority box.

Next, we also can set an entire project's availability for leveling by setting the Project's Priority. For example, if we are sharing resources with another project that serves as a resource pool, and if we don't want to level the tasks in one of the shared files, then set that shared file's priority level to 1000.

1 Click the Project tab. In the Properties group, click Project Information.

2 Type or select a priority in the Priority box.

Modify Leveling Settings

Modify Leveling Settings

We can modify leveling to help us fine-tune how Project determines which tasks are leveled, and to what extent.

1 Click the Resources tab. In the Level group, click Leveling Options.

2 In the Resource Leveling dialog box, Under Leveling calculations, select how we want leveling to occur. If we choose automatic leveling, clear the Clear leveling values before leveling check box. When this check box is cleared, Project levels only new and unleveled assignments. This check box is selected by default, but when leveling automatically, leaving it selected can significantly slow down our work in the schedule because all tasks are leveled.
However, in the Look for over-allocations on a box, click a time period, or basis, for the sensitivity with which leveling will recognize over-allocations. Day by Day is the default. This setting establishes the point at which we want leveling to intervene. For example, when we have an overallocation within just one minute, one day, one week, or one month.
Manual leveling (the default) occurs only when we click Level All. Automatic leveling occurs instantaneously whenever we change a task or resource. Use automatic leveling if we want to reschedule tasks whenever resources are assigned more work than they have the capacity to complete.

3 Under Leveling range for, select to level the entire project or to level only those tasks falling within a specific time range.

4 In the Leveling order box, select the leveling order that we want: 

• Select ID Only to level tasks in ascending order of their ID numbers before considering any other criteria.

• Select Standard to first examine predecessor dependencies, slack, dates, priorities, and constraints to discover whether and how tasks should be leveled.

• Select Priority, Standard to check task priorities first and only then examine the standard criteria.

5 To prevent the finish date of our project from being delayed, select the Level only within available slack check box.

6 To allow leveling to adjust when a resource works on a task independently of other resources that are working on the same task, select the Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task check box.

7 If we want leveling to interrupt tasks by creating splits in the remaining work on tasks or resource assignments, select the Leveling can create splits in remaining work check box. If a resource is assigned to tasks concurrently beyond what the resource's schedule can handle, then a task that has remaining work can be split and worked on when the resource's schedule will allow it.

8 To include proposed resources, select the Level tasks with the proposed booking type check box.

9 To allow leveling to change manually scheduled tasks, select the Level manually scheduled tasks check box.

10 If we want to clear the previous leveling results before leveling again, then click Clear Leveling.

11 If we are leveling manually, click Level All. If we are leveling automatically, click OK.

Distribute Project Work By Leveling

Distribute Project Work By Leveling

1 Click the Resources tab.

2 In the Level group, click one of the following options.

3 Level Selection   

Use this to level only the tasks that are selected. To select multiple tasks that are next to each other, select the first task in the selection, then press SHIFT while selecting the last task in the selection. To select multiple tasks that are not next to each other, select each task by pressing CTRL while selecting the task.
This is useful when it may be acceptable for resources to be over-allocated on certain tasks in the project plan, but the project managers would like to resolve overallocation for other specific tasks

4 Level Resource    

Use this to level only those tasks with specific resources assigned. Click Level Resource, and then select the resource to whom tasks are assigned. Use CTRL to select multiple resources.
If the selected resource is working on tasks that have multiple resources, the other assignments will not get moved.

5 Level All    

Use this to level all resources in all tasks within the project plan. 

6 Leveling Options    

Use this to modify the settings that Project uses for leveling. See the section on Modify leveling settings in this article. 

7 Clear Leveling    

Use this to undo the effects of the previous leveling.

8 Next Over-allocation    

Use this to go to the next task with over-allocated resources. Use this to more easily see the effects of leveling on individual tasks.

Distribution of Resources Using Microsoft Project

Distribute Resources By Using Microsoft Project

To get the best performance and results from resources, we need to manage resource workloads to avoid over-allocations and under-allocations. If we want to change resource assignments, we need to check the effects of our changes on the overall schedule to make sure that the results meet our project goals. Hence, the way we can resolve resource conflicts or over-allocations is by using the resource-leveling feature in project. Leveling works by delaying tasks or splitting them such that the resources that are assigned to those tasks are no longer overloaded.

When it is leveling, project does not change who is assigned to each task. Project levels only the work resources, generic resources, and committed resources. It does not level the material resources, cost resources, or proposed resources.

Prior to leveling, we may want to modify a few settings such as task priorities which are an indication of a task's importance and its availability for leveling, project priorities which determine the project’s availability for leveling, and lastly leveling options which help us fine-tune how Project determines which tasks are leveled, and to what extent.

Milestone Tasks

Milestone Tasks

Life is full of milestones – and so are projects. When planning a project, aside from laying out the tasks that take us from beginning to end, we’re inevitably going to want to mark key dates along the way. One easy way to do this is through the use of a diamond shaped symbol in our Gantt chart, the milestone. Milestones not only help our team to stay on track, they are also useful to us as a project manager to more accurately determine whether or not our project is on schedule.

Milestone tasks in Microsoft Project are defined as any tasks with a duration equal to zero or a value of Yes in the milestone field. In general, a milestone is a task that represents a significant date in a project, such as the completion of a project phase, or the date a particular report is due. For Microsoft Project to be aware that a particular task is a milestone, its milestone field must be set to Yes. Microsoft Project sets this value to Yes automatically for any tasks we enter with a duration of zero. To create milestones out of nonzero duration tasks, use the method appropriate for our version of Microsoft Project. 

Incorporating milestones in our project planning helps us and our team keep sight of:

• Key Dates: Launch parties, board meetings, product rollouts and other key dates mark significant pieces of our project. It’s also helpful to include other one-day events unrelated to our project specifically that are still important for our team to keep in mind–like a group offsite or team holiday.

• Key Deadlines: Key deadlines are important to surface on large project plans so our team can easily see what’s coming up and plan accordingly. For example, the date that website development is completed or when customer conference registrations need to be returned to qualify for early bird pricing. Key deadlines are related directly to our project but they aren’t project tasks. Use a key deadline as a milestone to reflect when a section of tasks or key task is completed.

• External Dates and Deliveries: For example, a due date for a deliverable we are expecting from an agency, the date when our hiring manager has received an offer letter, or the day that pipes are scheduled to be delivered. These key events can affect when other tasks in our project are allowed to start. They may also be used as predecessors in our plan.

How To Create a Milestone

A milestone is an important date or event that we can include in our project sheets, reflected as a diamond symbol in our Gantt charts.  

• Make sure our project sheet has dependencies enable.

• On a new row in our project, write a brief description of our milestone in the task name column (Company Off Site, Registration Materials Due, etc).

• In the Start Date column, enter the date of our milestone.

• Enter a Duration of zero.

Add a Milestone

Create a Milestone With Zero Duration

The quickest way to create a milestone is to add a task with no duration to our project plan.

1 Click View, and then in the Task Views group, click Gantt Chart.

2 Type the milestone name in the first empty row or pick a task we want to turn into a milestone.

3 Type 0 in the Duration field, and then press Enter.

The milestone symbol is now part of our Gantt Chart.

Add a Milestone With a Duration

Sometimes a milestone takes time. For example, the approval process at the end of a phase might take a week, so that milestone would need to take place over time like a normal task.

1 Click View, and then in the Task Views group, click Gantt Chart. 

2 Type the milestone name in the first empty row or pick a task we want to turn into a milestone.

3 Select the milestone, and then click Task. In the Properties group, click Task Information.

4 Click the Advanced tab, and then type the milestone duration in the Duration box.

5 Check Mark task as milestone, and then click OK.

On the Gantt Chart, the milestone symbol appears on the last day of the task. It doesn’t appear as a bar, even though it has duration.

Add an External Milestone

Sometimes we might need a milestone to track a task that’s outside the scope of our project.

• If the milestone depends on a project that is beyond our control, such as software that is being developed by another company, create a milestone using the steps in the previous section. We’ll have to keep an eye on the external task and update it manually.

• If the milestone is part of a project in our organization, we can track it with a cross-project link.

Linking Tasks In Microsoft Project

Link Tasks In A Project

In Microsoft Project, we often need to link  the tasks we had done together. This is how we can define and display the relationships and dependencies between different tasks. The default link type is Finish to Start Link but there are 3 additional types, in total 4 different link types; google, ad, section, and end.

1. Finish to start (FS)

Fro example, we have two tasks; Lay foundation (Task A) and Raise Walls (Task B); and we are not able to start Task B before we have finish the foundation. The link between these two tasks is therefore a Finish to Start Link. 

2. Start to Start (SS)

Let’s say that we and one of our friends are going to put up a new fence. We are putting down the poles and our friend are attaching the net. This is two different tasks; Putting down poles (Task A) and Attaching net (Task B). These two tasks are of Start to Start Link type because our friend needs to wait until we have started our activity but he/she does not need to wait until when we are finished with our task. The SS link type does not require that both task starts simultaneously.

3. Finish to Finish (FF)

Using the same example as above, we can also say that we need to be finished with putting down the poles before (Task A) before our friend is able to finish his/her task of attaching the net (Task B). This is a Finish to Finish Link type.

4. Start to Finish (SF)

For example, when we lay a foundation to a house with concrete, we could have two tasks, Lay foundation (Task A) and Deliver Concrete (Task B). Task A is not possible to to completed before Task B.

To create a Finish to Start link between two tasks;

1. Click on the Finish-date of the first task.

2. Press CTRL and click on the Start-date of the second task.

3. Click on the Link Task button in the Toolbar.

Link Manually Scheduled Tasks

When we link a manually scheduled task to another task, Project places the manually scheduled task relative to the other task. We can configure Project so that a manually scheduled task does not move when we link it to another task:

1 Click File > Options.

2 In the Project Options dialog box, click Schedule and scroll to the Scheduling options in this project section.

3 Uncheck the Update manually scheduled tasks when editing links check box.

Building a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a key project deliverable that organizes the team's work into manageable sections. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines the work breakdown structure as a "deliverable oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team." The WBS visually defines the scope into manageable chunks that a project team can understand, as each level of the work breakdown structure provides further definition and detail. An easy way to think about a Work Breakdown Structure is as an outline or map of the specific project.

The project team creates the project Work Breakdown Structure by identifying the major functional deliverables and subdividing those deliverables into smaller systems and sub-deliverables. These sub-deliverables are further decomposed until a single person can be assigned. At this level, the specific work packages required to produce the sub- deliverable are identified and grouped together. The work package represents the list of tasks or "to-dos" to produce the specific unit of work. If you've seen detailed project schedules, then you'll recognize the tasks under the work package as the "stuff" people need to complete by a specific time and within a specific level of effort.

From a cost perspective, these work packages are usually grouped and assigned to a specific department to produce the work. These departments, or cost accounts, are defined in an organizational breakdown structure and are allocated a budget to produce the specific deliverables. By integrating the cost accounts from the organizational breakdown structure and the project's Work Breakdown Structure, the entire organization can track financial progress in addition to project performance.

Why use a Work Breakdown Structure?

The Work Breakdown Structure has a number of benefits in addition to defining and organizing the project work. A project budget can be allocated to the top levels of the Work Breakdown Structure,  and department budgets can be quickly calculated based on the each project's work breakdown structure. By allocating time and cost estimates to specific sections of the Work Breakdown Structure, a project schedule and budget can be quickly developed. As the project executes, specific sections of the Work Breakdown Structure can be tracked to identify project cost performance and identify issues and problem areas in the project organization. 

Project Work Breakdown Structures can also be used to identify potential risks in a given project. If a WBS has a branch that is not well defined then it represents a scope definition risk. These risks should be tracked in a project log and reviewed as the project executes. By integrating the Work Breakdown Structure with an organizational breakdown structure, the project manager can also identify communication points and formulate a communication plan across the project organization.

When a project is falling behind, referring the Work Breakdown Structure will quickly identify the major deliverables impacted by a failing work package or late sub- deliverable. The Work Breakdown Structure can also be color coded to represent sub- deliverable status. Assigning colors of red for late, yellow for at risk, green for on-target, and blue for completed deliverables is an effective way to produce a heat-map of project progress and draw management's attention to key areas of the Work Breakdown Structure.

Example of Work Breakdown Structure:

How to Make a Gantt Chart Using Microsoft Project

How to Make a Gantt Chart Using Microsoft Project

If you desire to be a project manager, you must learn Microsoft Project. One major component of Microsoft Project you must understand is Gantt charts. Gantt charts are bar charts or timelines that enable you to view and manage resources, tasks, dependencies and milestones. Gantt charts are easy to create. In fact, every time you open up Microsoft Project, you will see a Gantt chart. It just doesn't contain any data until you add information into your tasks or resources columns. Before you learn how to create a Gantt chart, you should be familiar with both project management terminology and Microsoft Project.

These are the following steps to make a Gantt Chart using Microsoft Projects:

STEP 1

Open Microsoft Project. The interface consists of two separate panes. The left side consists of your tasks, duration, resources and predecessors. The right side, which is the Gantt chart, shows the timeline of your project, such as your tasks and resources.

STEP 2

Type your task under the Task Name column. Tab to the "Duration" column and click on the up or down arrow to select the number of days it will take to complete the task.

STEP 3

Tab to the "Start" column and click on the arrow to select the date you want to start the task. Tab to the "End" column to enter your end date.

STEP 4

Tab to the "Predecessors" column and enter the information. You create predecessors or dependencies when you must complete a certain task before starting another one. For example, you cannot start editing the script until you have finished writing it.

STEP 5

Tab to the "Resources" column, and click on the arrow to select your resource. Even if you have not entered your resource in the "Resource" mode, type the name in the field. Press "Enter."

STEP 6

View and manage your project via the Gantt chart. To get a wider view of the Gantt chart, move your mouse to the line that separates your tasks/resources pane from your Gantt chart pane. The cursor will change its look. Drag the line to the left so that you will have a wider view of the Gantt chart.

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project 

Is a project management software program developed and sold by Microsoft, designed to assist a project manager in developing a schedule, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analysing workloads. Project creates budgets based on assignment work and resource rates. As resources are assigned to tasks and assignment work estimated, the program calculates the cost, equal to the work times the rate, which rolls up to the task level and then to any summary task, and finally to the project level.

Each resource can have its own calendar, which defines what days and shifts a resource is available. Microsoft Project is not suitable for solving problems of available materials (resources) constrained production. Additional software is necessary to manage a complex facility that produces physical goods.

Project Management

Microsoft Project is feature rich, but project management techniques are required to drive a project effectively. A lot of project managers get confused between a schedule and a plan. MS Project can help you in creating a Schedule for the project even with the provided constraints. It cannot Plan for you. As a project manager you should be able to answer the following specific questions as part of the planning process to develop a schedule. MS Project cannot answer these for you.

• What tasks need to be performed to create the deliverables of the project and in what order? This relates to the scope of the project.

• What are the time constraints and deadlines if any, for different tasks and for the project as a whole? This relates to the schedule of the project.

• What kind of resources (man/machine/material) are needed to perform each task?

• How much will each task cost to accomplish? This would relate to the cost of the project.

• What kind of risk do we have associated with a particular schedule for the project? This might affect the scope, cost and time constraints of your project.

Pert Chart

Introduction of PERT Chart

A PERT chart is a project management tool used to schedule, organize, and coordinate tasks within a project. PERT stands for Program Evaluation Review Technique, a methodology developed by the U.S. Navy in the 1950s to manage the Polaris submarine missile program. PERT chart was used at that time to show the connection between activities that have been determined to complete the project. 

History of PERT Chart

PERT was developed primarily to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects. It was developed for the U.S. Navy Special Projects Office in 1957 to support the U.S. Navy's Polaris nuclear submarine project. It was able to incorporate uncertainty by making it possible to schedule a project while not knowing precisely the details and durations of all the activities. It is more of an event-oriented technique rather than start- and completion-oriented, and is used more in projects where time is the major factor rather than cost. It is applied to very large-scale, one-time, complex, non-routine infrastructure and Research and Development projects. An example of this was for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble which applied PERT from 1965 until the opening of the 1968 Games. This project model was the first of its kind, a revival for scientific management, founded by Frederick Taylor (Taylorism) and later refined by Henry Ford (Fordism). DuPont's critical path method was invented at roughly the same time as PERT.

Steps in the PERT Planning Process

PERT planning involves the following steps:

1. Identify the specific activities and milestones,
2. Determine the proper sequence of the activities,
3. Construct a network diagram,
4. Estimate the time required for each activity,
5. Determine the critical path, and
6. Update the PERT chart as the project progresses.

1) Identify Activities and Milestones

The activities are the tasks required to complete the project. The milestones are the events marking the beginning and end of one or more activities. It is helpful to list the tasks in a table that in later steps can be expanded to include information on sequence and duration.

2) Determine Activity Sequence

This step may be combined with the activity identification step since the activity sequence is evident for some tasks. Other tasks may require more analysis to determine the exact order in which they must be performed.

3) Construct the Network Diagram

Using the activity sequence information, a network diagram can be drawn showing the sequence of the serial and parallel activities. For the original activity-on-arc model, the activities are depicted by arrowed lines and milestones are depicted by circles or "bubbles".

If done manually, several drafts may be required to correctly portray the relationships among activities. Software packages simplify the step by automatically converting tabular activity information into a network diagram.

4) Estimate Activity Times

Weeks are a commonly used unit of time for activity completion, but any consistent unit of time can be used. A distinguishing feature of PERT is its ability to deal with uncertainty in activity completion times. For each activity, the most usually includes three time estimates:

• Optimistic time - generally the shortest time in which the activity can be completed. It is common practice to specify optimistic times to be three standard deviations from the mean so that there is approximately a 1% chance that the activity will be completed within the optimist time.
• Most likely time - the completion time having the highest probability. Note that this time is different from the expected time.
• Pessimistic time - the longest time that an activity might require. Three standard deviations from the mean is commonly used for the pessimistic time.

PERT assumes a beta probability distribution for the time estimates. For a beta distribution, the expected time for each activity can be approximated using the following weighted average:

                    Expected time = (Optimistic + 4 x Most likely + Pessimistic) / 6

This expected time may be displayed on the network diagram.

To calculate the variance for each activity completion time, if three standard deviation times were selected for the optimistic and pessimistic times, then there are six standard deviations between them, so the variance is given by:

                                          [(Pessimistic - Optimistic) / 6]^2

5) Determine the Critical Path

The critical path is determined by adding the times for the activities in each sequence and determining the longest path in the project. The critical path determines the total calendar time required for the project. If activities outside the critical path speed up or slow down (within limits), the total project times does not change. The amount of time that a non-critical path activity can be delayed without delaying the project is referred to as slack time.

If the critical path is not immediately obvious, it may be helpful to determine the following four quantities for each activity:

                  ES - Earliest Start Time

                  EF - Earliest Finish Time

                  LS - Latest Start Time

                  LF - Latest Finish Time

These times are calculated using the expected time for the relevant activities. The earliest start and finish times of each activity are determined by working forward through the network and determining the earliest time at which an activity can start and finish considering its predecessor activities. The latest start and finish times are the latest times that an activity can start and finish without delaying the project. LS and LF are found by working backward through the network. The difference in the latest and earliest finish of each activity is that activity's slack. The critical path then is the path through the network in which none of the activities have slack.

The variance in the project completion time can be calculated by summing the variances in the completion times of the activities in the critical path. Given this variance, one can calculate the probability that the project will be completed by a certain date assuming a normal probability distribution for the critical path. The normal distribution assumption holds if the number of activities in the path is large enough for the central limit theorem to be applied.

Since the critical path determines the completion date of the project, the project can be accelerated by adding the resources to decrease the time for the activities in the critical path. Such a shortening of the project sometimes is referred to as project crashing.

6) Update as Project Progresses

Make adjustment in the PERT chart as the project progresses. A the project unfolds, the estimated times can be replaced with actual times. In cases where there are delays, additional resources my be needed to stay on schedule and the PERT chart may be modified to reflect the new situation.

Benefits of PERT

PERT is useful because it provides the following information:

• Expected project completion time,
• Probability of completion before a specified date,
• The critical path activities that directly impact the completion time,
• The activities that have slack time and that can lend resources to critical path activities, and
• Activity start and end dates.

Limitations

The following are some of PERT's weaknesses:

• The activity time estimated are somewhat subjective and pend on judgement. In cases where there is little experience in performing an activity, the numbers may be only a guess. In other cases, if the person or group performing the activity estimates the time there may be bias in the estimate.
• Even if the activity times are well-estimated, PERT assumes a beta distribution for these time estimates, but the actual distribution may be different.
• Even if the beta distribution assumption holds, PERT assumes that the probability distribution of the project completion is the sae as the that of the critical path. Because of other paths can become the critical path if their associated activities are delayed, PERT consistently underestimates the expected project completion time.

The underestimation of the project completion time due to alternate paths becoming critical is perhaps the most serious of these issues. To overcome this limitation, Monte Carlo simulations can be performed on the network to eliminate this optimistic bias in the expected project completion time.

Operations > PERT