A P P E N D I X

Microsoft Project
Professional Tutorial

Learning Objectives
After reading this appendix, you will be able to:
• Become familiar with Microsoft Project Professional.
• Enter tasks, estimate task durations, and sequence tasks in Microsoft Project
Professional.
• Enter resources and assign resources.
• Track project progress.
• Report project status.

Introduction
In keeping with the technological focus of this textbook, this appendix will provide
you with a basic introduction to Microsoft Project Professional (“Project”), a powerful
project management software package that can help project staff manage schedules
and resources and to track project progress. Although several vendors provide project
management software (see Chapter 1) across a variety of price points and a variety of
specific industries, Project is one of the most widely used project management software
applications available. Considering its widespread use and its familiar Microsoft Office
user interface, we chose Project to illustrate how project management software in gen-
eral can support and facilitate information systems project management.
While the use of project management software can enhance and support the proj-
ect management function, project management software should not be used in lieu of
becoming familiar with the project management concepts presented in the textbook.
This appendix is written with the expectation that the reader possesses some basic
knowledge of the IS project management concepts presented in Chapters 1 through 12.

Microsoft Project Professional Basics

If you do not already have Project, a trial version can be found online—for example, at
https://products.office.com/en-us/project/project-professional-desktop-software.
Follow the directions on the website to install Project on your computer. During the
installation process, you will be asked whether you prefer the “typical” installation, or

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whether you want a “complete” or “custom” installation. The typical installation includes
the most commonly used features of Project; however, if you would prefer some addi-
tional features, choose the complete installation.
Project is a Microsoft Office application, so it has many elements similar to other
Office software such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. When you start Project, the
application will open with the screen shown in Figure A.1. From there, you can either
launch a blank project or choose from different templates supporting traditional or agile
methodologies. Depending on settings specific to your computer, your opening screen
may not appear exactly as shown, but the differences will be minor.
Once you start a blank project, you will see that many elements of the user interface
should be familiar to you if you’ve used Word or Excel. Just as in other office applica-
tions, the quick access toolbar lets you perform generic actions such as save, undo/redo,
and so on. The ribbon provides a variety of project-specific actions, organized by tabs.
Microsoft Project will indicate the current view on the left-hand side of the interface
(see Figure A.2).
Before getting started with specific project management activities, we will first
explore the help menu and some interface characteristics that will help you configure
Project Professional to your preferences.

Figure A.1 Microsoft Project Professional opening screen

 Views in Project • 3

Figure A.2 Microsoft Project Professional screen elements

Microsoft Project Help

An important (and underused) feature of Project is the Help menu. The Help menu
can be a valuable resource for assistance with common and not-so-common issues. The
Help menu should become the first stop for answers to questions that may be beyond
the scope of this introductory appendix. To get help in Project, just type your question
into the field labeled “Tell me what you want to do,” or hit the key combination Alt+Q.
Once you start typing, Project will present commands that may match your query. If
you click on “Get help on . . .,” you will see more detailed help (see Figure A.3). If these
results are not helpful, you can open the Help pane by clicking on “More results for . . .”
or by simply pressing the F1 key. The Help pane opens with a field to type questions or
keywords and displays links for a variety of help topics (see Figure A.4).
To illustrate how Project helps support project activities, the Software Development
template will be used to show some of the features of this software. It may be useful
for you to open the Software Development template to follow along. It can be loaded
by clicking on the File tab, then choosing “New.” You will see various commonly used
templates but can also search for online templates (see Figure A.5).

Views in Project
When Project is opened, it opens by default into the Gantt Chart view. Other views
of a project also exist, such as a Network Diagram view. These other views (as well as
other options) are available using the “View” tab (see Figure A.6).
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Figure A.3 Help menu in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.4 Microsoft Project Professional Help pane

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Figure A.5 Searching for templates in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.6 Microsoft Project Professional “View” tab

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The “View” tab includes the most commonly used views, such as the Calendar view
(see Figure A.7), or the Network Diagram view (see Figure A.8). If you can’t find the
view you’re looking for on the main View menu, click on the “Other Views > More
Views” option for a dialog box with all possible view choices and options for creating
and editing views (see Figure A.9).

Setting Up a New Project

After starting a blank project, your screen should resemble that in Figure A.2. To get
started, you should first set the estimated start date for your project by clicking on “Proj-
ect Information” under the “Project” tab. For example, in Figure A.10, the estimated
start date is February 4, 2019.

Working Time
After choosing the estimated start date of your project, the next step is to define the
working time for the project using the “Change Working Time” dialog. Defining the
project’s working time requires multiple steps, depending on your project’s needs (spe-
cific resources may be scheduled differently later). In the topmost dropdown box, you
can select between three calendar templates for the basic working time for the project.
Standard is the standard forty hours a week, Monday through Friday schedule with
weekends off. The other options are Night Shift and 24 Hours. To illustrate the next steps
in this example, we will choose the Standard schedule.
By clicking on “Options” at the bottom of the dialog box, you can change various
default Schedule options, such as the days of the week or the daily working times (see

Figure A.7 Calendar view in Microsoft Project Professional

 Setting Up a New Project • 7

Figure A.8 Network Diagram view in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.9 More Views in Microsoft Project Professional

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Figure A.10 Set estimated start date in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.12). These changes will be global—that is, be applied for the entire project. It
is important to know that Project calculates schedules based on hours. So, if you sched-
ule the duration of a task as two days and the setting for work days is eight hours, then
Project will specify sixteen hours for that task. You may wish to make changes here if
you have selected the Standard schedule but have made changes to the working times.
For example, if your organization works on compressed schedules, four days per week
at ten hours a day, making changes here will ensure that if you specify a task to take two
days, it will be a twenty-hour task rather than a sixteen-hour task.
After making any global changes, you can specify exceptions for specific days or
weeks. Under “Exceptions” you can enter descriptive names and start and finish dates
for the exceptions, before specifying the details, such as nonworking time or hours
during a given day that are not working hours. You can also specify a recurrence pattern
for each exception. Likewise, you can specify details for different workweeks. As in
many dialog boxes, clicking on “Help” will open the online help feature.
For example, to specify July 4, 2018, as nonworking time, click on the Exception
tab and enter “July 4th Holiday” to select the entire day as nonworking time (see Fig-
ure A.13). If your organization does work on that day but only works a half-day, as an
example, click on the “Details” button, then click on the “Working Times” radio button,
and then specify the working time for that day in the fields provided. Figure A.14 shows
the dialog box with a morning half-day specified for July 4; notice that the working
times are set to recur yearly on July 4.
 Setting Up a New Project • 9

Figure A.11 Setting project working times in Microsoft Project Professional

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Figure A.12 Specifying global calendar options in Microsoft Project Professional

There is an option at this step to define a different calendar for a different set of
resources. This might be useful if your organization utilizes a pool of part-time workers,
for example. To create different calendars for different resources, you need to click on
“Create New Calendar . . .” (see Figure A.15).

Task Entry
Now that the calendar has been set and saved, the next step is to enter the tasks to
develop a work breakdown structure (WBS). To do so, just start typing in the task
names (see Figure A.16), or just copy and paste the task list from another application.
When setting the “Task Mode” to “Automatically Scheduled,” Project by default assigns
a duration of one day for each task. To specify a task as a milestone, you need to set
the task duration to zero days. As you can see from Figure A.16, a milestone has a
diamond-shaped duration indicator in the Gantt Chart view.
Notice that you could already specify durations for the tasks. You may wish to enter
durations at this stage; however, if your goal is to develop a WBS (as shown in Chapter
6), you may wish to wait until a later step to specify durations. As shown in Figure
A.16, all tasks have a duration of one day, and all start and finish dates equal the start
date set for the project.
 Setting Up a New Project • 11

Figure A.13 Specifying calendar exceptions in Microsoft Project Professional

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Figure A.14 Specifying details for working time exceptions in Microsoft Project Professional

The next step is to create summary tasks that represent phases of the project. Notice
in the task list, the first five tasks listed involve issues related to scope. Considering
that these tasks are all related, and the fifth task is a milestone referred to as “Scope
complete,” we may wish to group these five tasks into a larger summary task. To do
this, select these five tasks in the list, and then click on the button “Insert Summary
Task” (see Figure A.17). This will create a summary task and automatically indent all
subtasks. Double-clicking on this new summary task will allow you to rename the task;
for this example, we’ll enter the summary task’s name as “Scope” (see Figure A.18).
Notice that the “Scope” task is now bold and has a bridge-shaped duration indicator
in the Gantt Chart view.
 Setting Up a New Project • 13

Figure A.15 Creating separate calendars for different resources in Microsoft Project Professional
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Figure A.16 Entering tasks and milestones in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.17 Inserting a summary task in Microsoft Project Professional

 Setting Up a New Project • 15

Figure A.18 Entering the summary task name in Microsoft Project Professional

Alternatively, you can insert a new task (which will be the summary task). Then,
select the related subtasks (“Conduct needs analysis” through “Analysis complete”)
and click the button with the arrow pointing to the right to indent the selected
tasks (see Figure A.19); this automatically makes the tasks above the selected task a
summary task.
Likewise, you can create multiple levels of subtasks. For example, as shown in Figure
A.20, the subtask “Testing” includes other subtasks, such as “Unit testing” or “integra-
tion testing.” To create multiple levels of subtasks, follow the steps outlined previously.
To finalize the WBS, Project can generate WBS numbering codes to identify the
levels of decomposition for each task level. To generate the WBS codes for your project,
right-click on a column header and select “Insert column.” Then start typing to find
the column name you would like to insert. Inserting a WBS column will automatically
generate the WBS codes (see Figure A.21).
Depending on the complexity of your project, and the level of decomposition of
the tasks, you can display different levels of the WBS by collapsing or expanding the
summary tasks. To change the numbering format of the WBS codes, select “WBS >
Define Code . . .” under the “Project” tab. In Figure A.22, the formatting for the WBS
numbering has been set to an uppercase letter, followed by a period and a number for
subtask levels.
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Figure A.19 Indenting subtasks in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.20 Multiple levels of subtasks in Microsoft Project Professional

 Setting Up a New Project • 17

Figure A.21 WBS Code column in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.22 Setting the WBS numbering format in Microsoft Project Professional
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Task Scheduling
At this stage, we have a completed WBS in Project that we can use as we estimate
activity durations and determine task dependencies. To set the durations of each task,
use the menus in the Duration column, or you can enter any number followed by “days,”
“hours,” or “months.” The default is “days,” so if you know the task will not take a full
day, you may wish to enter the time in hours (see Figure A.23). Do not set start or finish
times; Project will calculate these automatically. If you need to constrain a task to begin
or end at a specific time, that will be done in a later step. Notice that Project will not allow
you to set a duration for the summary tasks because Project will compute these auto-
matically. Thus you only need to set the durations for tasks that are not summary tasks.
Once you have set the durations for all of your tasks (milestones remain with 0
durations), it is time to schedule the tasks by setting their dependencies. In the task list
of the Gantt Chart view, scroll to the right to reveal the “Predecessors” column. (If the
column does not appear, insert a new column following the steps outlined previously.)
In the “Predecessors” column, you can enter predecessors by directly entering the task
numbers separated by commas (see Figure A.24). Alternatively, you can click on the
dropdown arrow to display a list of tasks to select from (see Figure A.25). A third way
of setting predecessors is to select two or more tasks and click on the “Link the Selected
Tasks” icon; this will create a predecessor relationship between the selected tasks (see
Figure A.25). If several tasks are sequential, you can select all of the sequential tasks at
once and then click the icon to set the dependencies for those tasks.
As you have learned in Chapter 6, there are four options for task dependencies—fin-
ish-to-start (the default), start-to-start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-finish. To change
the type of dependency between two tasks, double-click the dependency arrow linking

Figure A.23 WBS with task durations set in Microsoft Project Professional
 Setting Up a New Project • 19

Figure A.24 Setting task dependencies by entering task numbers in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.25 Setting task dependencies by selecting predecessor tasks in Microsoft Project Professional
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Figure A.26 Setting task dependencies by using the “Link the Selected Tasks” icon in Microsoft Project
Professional

the two tasks in the Gantt chard; this will allow you to specify the type of dependency
and any lag or lead time. (see Figure A.27). For the purposes of this running example,
we will specify all dependencies as finish to start.
Now with all of the task dependencies set, notice that Project has determined the
start and finish dates and times for each task based on the project’s estimated start date,
working and nonworking times, and task parameters (see Figure A.28). Additionally,
after setting task dependencies, the Predecessor column in the Task entry table is now
completed.
Finally, in project scheduling, tasks may sometimes have specific deadlines or may
not be able to begin at a certain date. In these cases, you may wish to set a deadline for
(or constraint on) those tasks. By default, every task is set to start as soon as possible.
However, you may wish to push back a task as long as possible, particularly one with
float or slack, in which case you would set the constraint to start “As late as possible.”
To set a deadline or constraint, double-click on the task to open the “Task Information”
dialog box. You can then set deadlines or constraints under the “Advanced” tab. Figure
A.29 shows a constraint being set for the Secure core resources task to finish no later
than March 14, 2019.

Displaying the Critical Path

At this stage, you might want to have the critical path shown in the Gantt chart. To
display the critical path on your Gantt chart, from the “Format” tab check the “Critical
Tasks” checkbox. Under the “Format” icon, you will be able to make a number of other
 Setting Up a New Project • 21

Figure A.27 Setting task dependencies in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.28 Task dependencies set in Microsoft Project Professional

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Figure A.29 Set deadlines and constraints in Microsoft Project Professional

changes to the appearance of the Gantt chart. For example, besides showing the critical
path, you can choose to show resources and dates on the Gantt chart as well.
When you choose to show the critical path, tasks that are on the critical path are
shown in red. You may wish to change the font color of the critical path tasks in the task
entry table as well. To change the critical path tasks’ font color, from the Format menu,
choose “Text Styles” to open the Text Styles dialog box (see Figure A.30). From the
Item to Change dropdown menu, choose Critical Tasks; then from the color dropdown
menu, choose Red. You also may wish to bold and/or underline the critical tasks, which
can be done in this dialog box as well. After you have made the changes you wish to
make, click the OK button to return to the Gantt Chart view (see Figure A.31).

Entering Resources
Now that the project has been decomposed and tasks have been identified, their dura-
tions estimated, and scheduled, it is time to identify and assign resources. The first step
is to identify the people and equipment that will comprise the resources for your project.
Click on the “Resource Sheet” under the “View” tab and select “Add Resources” (see
Figure A.32). Microsoft Project gives you different options for adding resources to your
project. First, you can add resources from your company-wide active directory. Next, you
can add resources from a company-wide address book (e.g., Outlook Exchange Server).
Third, you can manually add work, material, or cost resources.
For the purposes of this appendix, the following examples will be based on man-
ually entering resources. You can either manually add resources by clicking on “Add
Resources” and selecting the desired option, or you can directly type into the Resources
 Entering Resources • 23

Figure A.30 Critical path tasks font color in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.31 Critical path in Microsoft Project Professional

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Figure A.32 Adding resources in Microsoft Project Professional

Sheet (see Figure A.33). The columns allow you to enter various details about the
resource, such as the resource’s name, hourly rate, assigned calendar, and overtime rate
of pay. You can also add other columns, such as the resource’s email address, by clicking
on “Add New Column.” In addition to entering details in the Resource Sheet view, you
can double-click on a resource to bring up the “Resource Information” dialog, which
allows you to specify the details about a certain resource (see Figure A.34).

Define Working Time for Resources

Once the resources have been identified and entered into the Resource entry table, you
may wish to identify individual working times associated with resources—particularly
those that differ from the project’s normal working times. For instance, you may have
some people who are working on multiple projects within your organization and can be
allocated to work on your project only on certain days. Or, you may have some people
who have scheduled vacation time that needs to be accounted for in their working time.
Microsoft Project allows you to specify working times for individual resources that are
different from the project’s normal working time. To change the working time for a
resource, click on the “Change Working Time . . .” button in the Resource Information
dialog. In the Change Working Time dialog, you can set the working times for each
resource following the process to set the project’s working time outlined previously. For
example, if you had a flex-time employee, you might want to choose the twenty-four
hours template to be able to schedule that individual during different hours than the
project’s normal working times (see Figure A.35).
 Entering Resources • 25

Figure A.33 Manually adding resources in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.34 Entering resource details using the Resource Information dialog in Microsoft Project Professional
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Figure A.35 Changing working time for individual resources in Microsoft Project Professional

As discussed previously, you can also specify nonworking time for a resource. In the
example in Figure A.36, we have specified Christoph’s vacation time, July 29–August
26, 2018, by selecting those dates and entering “Vacation” under the Exceptions tab.
This automatically enters that time as nonworking time; however, you can make specific
changes, like partial days, by clicking on the “Details” button as in Figure A.14.

Assign Resources
Now that all the resources have been specified and working times have been deter-
mined, the next step is to assign resources to tasks. In the Gantt Chart view, select one
or more resources and click on “Assign Resources” under the “Resource” tab to open the
Assign Resources dialog. To assign resources, select the resource to assign and click the
Assign button in the Assign Resources dialog box (see Figure A.37).
 Entering Resources • 27

Figure A.36 Entering nonworking time for individual resources in Microsoft Project Professional

The first time you assign resources to a task, Project calculates the work required
to complete the task by multiplying the duration of the task by the percentage of work
units. For example, the “Determine project scope” task has originally been estimated to
take four hours, so when we assign both Christoph and Joe to this task at 100 percent,
Project keeps the duration of the task at four hours, but calculates that it takes eight
hours of actual work to complete the task: 4 hours × 200% assignment units (Christoph
at 100% and Joe at 100%) = 8 hours work. Once resources for a task have been finalized,
any subsequent resource additions or subtractions will cause Project to prompt you to
make a decision. In Figure A.38, after assigning Christoph and Joe to the “Determine
project scope” task, we’ve decided to add Joey to that task as well. Notice the warning
diamond that appears next to the Task Name field when Joey is added to the task.
Hover your cursor over the warning diamond to get the option for the dropdown menu.
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Figure A.37 Assigning resources in Microsoft Project Professional

Within the dropdown menu, there are three options for assigning the extra resource to
the task. You can (1) reduce the duration to keep the work the same, now across three
people instead of two; (2) increase the work required for the task to keep the duration
constant (in this case, all three people now assigned four hours of work for twelve total
hours instead of eight); or (3) keep both the hours of work and the duration constant,
reducing the number of hours that the resources work per day.
These decisions should not be made lightly. While it might be tempting—and in
some cases advisable—to assign additional resources to a task to shorten its duration
(effort-driven scheduling), having too many people assigned to a task can sometimes
cause more problems than it solves, both administratively and financially.

Resource Views
After assigning resources to tasks, you may wish to explore different views of the
resources that Project provides. From the “View” tab, click on “Resource Views > Other
Views > Resource Graph to view a graph of each resource and their percentage of
allocation (see Figure A.39).
 Entering Resources • 29

Figure A.38 Adding resources to a task that has already been assigned in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.39 Resource Graph view in Microsoft Project Professional

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The left pane of this view indicates which resource the graph represents. Use the
horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the pane to view other resources. The graph view
shows the percentage of allocation for that resource on the dates shown. Depending on
how you have assigned resources, you can end up with resources being overallocated.
This view provides an intuitive, easy-to-understand representation of such overalloca-
tion by indicating overallocation with a red bar in the bar graph.
Another valuable resource view is the Resource Usage view. Open the Resource
Usage view by choosing Resource Usage from the “View” tab. The left pane of this view
lists each resource and each task that is assigned to the resources (see Figure A.40). The
usage view shows the number of hours each resource is working on each task on a given
day. Any overallocated resources will be displayed in red.
After you have completed identifying, assigning, and managing the project’s
resources, it’s time to start tracking the progress of the project.

Tracking Progress
Now that tasks have been scheduled and resources have been assigned, it is time to
utilize Project to help you manage the progress of your project.

Save the Baseline Plan

The first step in the Track pane is to save a baseline plan to compare with later versions.
If you have saved your project at any time up to this point by clicking on the Save
icon in the toolbar or by choosing Save from the File menu, Project by default saves it
normally, not as a baseline plan. This is important because once the project is saved as
a baseline plan, all subsequent changes will be shown in relation to that baseline plan.

Figure A.40 Resource usage view in Microsoft Project Professional

 Tracking Progress • 31

First, click on the “Set Baseline > Set Baseline . . .” under the “Project” tab to open the
“Set Baseline” dialog (see Figure A.41). Notice that in the Set Baseline dialog, you have
various options for saving baselines, such as setting different baselines, or only setting
baselines for specific tasks (see Figure A.42).

Track Progress
Once the baseline plan has been saved, the next step is to record progress on the tasks.
There are different options for tracking progress. The fastest method is to specify the
percentage of work completed; however, this method is typically less accurate than
other methods. The next method, entering the actual work done and work remaining,
is moderately accurate but more time-consuming. Finally, entering the number of hours
of work done per time period (i.e., time phased tracking) is the most accurate but also
most time-consuming method of tracking progress.
Before specifying the progress, you should set the status date under the “Project”
tab. You can then specify the percentage of work complete in the task entry table of
the Gantt Chart view (note that you may have to first add the “% Work Complete”
column to the table; see Figure A.43). Microsoft Project will then calculate the actual
work performed by each team member; thus, while the percentage of work completed
might be accurate, it may not reflect the actual amount of work completed by each
assigned resource.
If you want to track the progress of your project by entering the actual work done
and work remaining, you will still set the status date but will then enter the amount of
work done and/or the amount of work left to complete each task. Project provides two
other columns—“Actual Work” and “Remaining Work”—in the task entry table to enter

Figure A.41 Saving the baseline plan in Microsoft Project Professional

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Figure A.42 Options for saving the baseline plan in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.43 Tracking progress by percentage of work completed in Microsoft Project Professional
 Tracking Progress • 33

this type of progress (note that you might have to add these columns). If you enter the
amount of actual work done, Project will compute the amount of remaining work to be
done based on the task duration you have specified for that task. You can also enter the
amount of work remaining, and Project will compute the amount of work done and per-
centage of work completed. However, you may wish to enter the amount of actual work
done and the amount of work remaining. This can cause the task’s duration to change
but may be necessary, depending on the circumstances. For the following example, refer
to Figure A.44. Assume that we set a duration of five hours for the “Define preliminary
resources” task and assigned two people; thus the total work for the task would be ten
hours (5 hours duration × 2 resources = 10 hours work). Now assume that twelve hours
have been completed, but we have determined that it will take six more hours to com-
plete the task. This brings the total work for the task to eighteen hours, where before it
was ten hours. Because two people are assigned to this task (Christoph and Joe), Project
makes changes to the work needed to complete the task (eighteen hours) and changes
to the duration of the task to nine hours based on the progress information entered and
the number of resources assigned to the task.
If you want to track the progress of your project by entering the hours of work
done per time period, you will still set the status date, but you will need to switch to
the “Task Usage” view (make sure that the “Actual Work” box under the “Format” tab
is checked). You will then see a calendar view listing each task and each resource under
each task (see Figure A.45). In the calendar pane at the right, each resource will have
the estimated work to be done entered in each “Work” row for each task. To incorporate
progress information, enter the actual hours worked for each resource in the “Act. Work”
row of each resource for each task. In the example provided in Figure A.45, on Monday
and Tuesday, each task has been completed in the number of hours estimated. Notice,

Figure A.44 Tracking progress by entering actual work done in Microsoft Project Professional
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Figure A.45 Tracking progress by entering the number of hours worked in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.46 Checking progress in Microsoft Project Professional

 Viewing Reports • 35

however, that on Wednesday, Christoph and Joe have only completed two hours each
on the “Define preliminary resources” task.

Checking Progress
Now that you have begun entering progress information, Project can indicate which
tasks are on schedule, which are not, and which have already been completed. To check
the progress of your project, set the “Status Date” under the “Project” tab and view the
“Indicators” column (signified by an encircled “i”; see Figure A.46). Depending on the
tracking information you entered in the previous steps and the status date you have
chosen, Project will indicate which tasks have been completed, which are on schedule,
and which are behind schedule, or late, with icons in the Indicators column. For exam-
ple, in Figure A.46 you can see that the task “Define preliminary resources” did not
meet a preassigned deadline.

Making Changes
Once you have begun tracking the progress of your project, you may find situations
where you need to make changes to the project plan. Microsoft Project allows you
to make task duration, work, and resource assignment changes as you go along. For
example, you can conveniently change these in the Task Usage view (refer back to Fig-
ure A.45). Because task duration, work, and resource assignments are all interrelated,
changes made to one may impact the others, so be aware of the possible impacts that
any change you make can have on other aspects of the project.
Now that you have begun to enter project progress information and have begun
to track the status of your project, you might find that the Tracking Gantt Chart view
allows you to see at a glance how your project is progressing. In Figure A.47 we can eas-
ily see which tasks have been completed by the check marks located in the first column
of the task entry table. Notice that the bar for each task is split horizontally with a black
bar on the bottom and two colored bars on top. (Note that this may be different based
on the style selected in the “Format” tab.) The black bar indicates the baseline plan, the
colored bar on top indicates the current project schedule (which may be different from
the baseline), and the colored bar in the middle indicates the actual progress made for
the project. In the example in Figure A.47, no changes have been made yet to the project
plan relative to the baseline plan. Also notice that once a task has been completed, it is
no longer considered a critical path task and reverts to a blue bar on the Gantt chart.

Viewing Reports
With the incorporation of tracking information into your Project file, you are now in a
position to begin reporting your project’s progress to stakeholders regarding a number
of project criteria. To begin analyzing and reporting project information using Project,
click on the Report tab to view the different choices of reports. For example, reports
include project dashboards or reports related to costs or resource usage (see Figure
A.48).
The “New Report” option gives you the opportunity to create any report you may
need. You can format the different report elements as you would in other Office soft-
ware, such as Excel or PowerPoint (see Figure A.49). Further, you can customize any
report by double-clicking on the different report elements to show different fields or
change the formatting (see Figure A.50).
36 • Appendix / Microsoft Project Professional Tutorial

Figure A.47 Tracking Gantt Chart view in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.48 Reports in Microsoft Project Professional

 Viewing Reports • 37

Figure A.49 Formatting a new report in Microsoft Project Professional

Figure A.50 Customizing a report in Microsoft Project Professional

38 • Appendix / Microsoft Project Professional Tutorial

Appendix Summary
Become familiar with Microsoft Project. Micro- them as “Work” or “Material” resources, and the mate-
soft Project Professional shares some common ele- rial label column. Once all the resources have been
ments with other Microsoft Office titles, so it should specified for the project, it is time to assign resources
be somewhat familiar. Major screen elements were to tasks. Microsoft Project computes the number of
noted and explained. The various Help options were hours of work needed to complete the task in the
discussed. Project also provides several view options task’s scheduled duration by multiplying the duration
with which to see various aspects of the project. of the task by the percentage of work assigned to the
task. After the first assignment of resources to the
Enter tasks, estimate task durations, and sequence tasks, if any subsequent resource assignments occur,
tasks in Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project makes Project prompts you to decide whether to shorten the
entering tasks to develop a WBS simple. Once some duration of the task, increase the amount of work to
of the project’s parameters, such as the estimated start complete the task, or keep both the duration and work
date and project working times, are set, you can enter constant by decreasing the number of hours worked
tasks directly into the task entry pane. After enter- by the resources assigned. Microsoft Project provides
ing the tasks, you can have Microsoft Project number several views with which to see and manage resources
each of the tasks based on your organization’s WBS during a project.
numbering convention. Once your WBS is set, you
can begin entering the estimated durations of the Track project progress. Microsoft Project provides
tasks, and you can schedule the tasks relative to each many options for tracking the progress of your proj-
other by setting their dependencies. After the tasks ect. Once your plan is entered (tasks scheduled and
have been scheduled, you can also set constraints on resources assigned), you can save the plan as a baseline
the tasks and change the Gantt Chart view to show plan against which all progress is compared. You have
the critical path. different options for how to input progress.

Enter resources and assign resources. Now that Report project status. Microsoft Project contains a
the tasks have been scheduled, it is time to specify wide variety of reporting options to facilitate com-
the resources for the project. This involves identify- munication with stakeholders. The various reports
ing each resource, and for human resources, specify- are grouped into different main options. Each main
ing their working rates and working times. Material grouping contains a variety of reports to choose
resources are also identified and entered with two from that can be customized or can easily be printed
additional columns; the Type column that identifies directly from Project.