Quick MS Project

Interim plans

2017-03-11T23:51:00.001-08:00

When you create baseline it stores all the information about tasks in five categories: start dates, finish dates, durations, work, and cost estimates) sometime you want only to track dates for comparisons you can use Interim plans. An interim plan is a set of current project data that you save after the project begins and that you can compare against the baseline to assess project progress. An interim plan saves only two kinds of information: the current start dates and finish dates for tasks. Remember you can set up to 10 interim plans for a project so don't afraid of using same.

After setting up an Interim Plan in MS Project, the next steps typically involve tracking and analyzing the project's progress against the established baseline.

Once you setup your Interim Plans, you can now follow below steps

Update Actual Progress: As work on your project progresses, regularly update the actual progress of tasks in MS Project. This includes updating task durations, marking tasks as complete, and entering actual start and finish dates.

Compare Baseline and Actual: MS Project provides various views and reports that allow you to compare the Interim Plan (baseline) with the current project schedule (actual). These comparisons help you identify any deviations, delays, or changes in the project.

Analyze Variances: Review the variances between the baseline and actual data to identify areas where the project is deviating from the original plan. MS Project offers features like the "Tracking Gantt" view and "Variance" table that can assist in analyzing these differences.

Adjustments and Rescheduling: Based on the variances you observe, you may need to make adjustments to your project schedule. You can update task durations, add or remove tasks, adjust dependencies, or allocate additional resources as necessary to realign the project with its objectives.

Communicate Updates: Share progress updates and reports with stakeholders and project team members. This helps keep everyone informed about the project's status and any changes that have occurred.

Monitor and Track Changes: Continuously monitor the project's progress and update the Interim Plan accordingly. Capture new Interim Plans at significant milestones or when substantial changes occur to maintain an accurate historical record.

Perform Trend Analysis: Over time, use the Interim Plans and historical data to analyze trends and patterns in the project's performance. This analysis can help identify recurring issues, assess the effectiveness of corrective actions, and improve future project planning.

Iterative Process: Project management is an iterative process, so you'll repeat these steps throughout the project's lifecycle. Set new baselines as needed, track progress, analyze variances, and make adjustments to ensure the project stays on track.

By following these steps, you can effectively monitor, track, and adjust your project's progress based on the Interim Plan you have set up in MS Project. It helps you stay informed, make data-driven decisions, and keep your project on course towards successful completion.

Baseline the Project and Tasks

2017-03-05T20:15:00.001-08:00

Now you have finalized your plan, it is time to execute the project. Before you jump and start tracking the changes you have to take snapshot of your plan so that you can compare this in future with actual execution values. This is called base lining.

To set baseline, got o Project menu and click on set baseline button.

Setting Baselines

Select Baseline Options

Popup will ask what you want to do, you can set baseline additionally you can set up to 10 baselines more. Meaning you can have nearly 11 different versions that you can compare against each other.

Also it is possible to set baselines to selected tasks. This is useful if you want to closely track the project task for variation.

To do baseline for few task select the task and click on selected tasks.

We will see the other interesting topic Interim plan in next blog.

Budgeted resource – Saving Budget to your project

2017-02-11T04:37:00.001-08:00

Sometime during planning and even in executing you have been assigned some budget by company irrespective of what is actually needed to your project, for example your dept. can only spend X amount of euro in particular fiscal year or X amount of hours or X amount of material. Sometime it makes sense that we keep note of this while we do our planning.

Let us say we have 100 days and 80,000 Eur approvals from management and if the project plan or actual is more than this value we need extra approvals from top management. It is important to save this in our project

To do this we need create Budget Resources.

Go to Resource sheet and create two different resources, Budgeted_Cost of type cost and Budgeted_days type work.

To do this double click on empty line in resource sheet and in Resource Information tab select type as “Cost” and check “Budget” checkbox.

Adding Budgeted Cost Resource

To create Budgeted_days resource, follow the same steps but select the type as “Work”
You will see for this type of resource the “Resource Availability” will be disabled.

Adding Budgeted Work

Also you will see that cost tab is deactivated. The standard rates are not available. Reason it has the special purpose we will see this soon.

Budgeted Resources

Now you created the budgeted resource now it is time to assign them. One thing you must always remember that you cannot assign the budgeted resources to any task or even to summary task.

Error When you try to assign resource to Task or Summary Task

You can assign the budgeted resources only to overall summary task.

Correct Way of Assigning Budgeted Resources

The best way to analyze budgeted resource in Task Usage screen where you can use them for comparing same against actual.

Switching to Task Usage

Task Usage view

Saving Extra Information – hyperlinking and attaching documents

2017-01-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

It is sometime required that you save more information about a task or link some documents to your task that make your job much easier.

To save notes for task, double click a task and in task information dialog box click notes.
In our scenario we want to keep note of what manual task we need to track, lets make note of it and save it.

Adding Notes

The MS Project will indicate small note icon next to task, indicating it has some notes.

Task with Notes

When you mouse over the note icon, MS project will show the quick popup with note, very useful feature to quickly give you hint what you want to meant by it.

Quick pop up on Note icon

Now let us assume that you want to save the complete checklist while you create the Design.

To add document in project that can be saved inside the project file and move with it, you can do this by following same method as above and click on Insert Object button.

Insert Object

From popup window either create new document or select from file.

Insert Object

If you don’t want directly the content to be added from document, click on the Display as icon check box.

Now some time it doesn’t make sense to include complete document to your MS project file as this will increase the overall project file size. To save the link of document to your task, right click on your task and select hyperlink from menu.

Add Hyperlink

In Insert Hyperlink select the file or provide web address, enter text to be shown when you hover your mouse on link also you can show additional tip using screen tip button.

Adding link

You will see that MS Project adds hyperlink icon next to your task and now you can hover your mouse to see the desired information.

Task with hyperlink

View the cost and add fixed cost

2017-01-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Now that we have done with our scheduling we like to see the overall cost for our project. To view the cost quickly, right click on the table corner and select “cost”

Changing Views

You will able to view total cost for each task.

Cost View

In earlier project version the cost resource was not available, if you want to use some cost like travel etc to specific task you need to visit this view and maintain the values here. The new cost resource has now made the job much easier to track however we can still use this feature to mention any fix cost specific task has.

In our scenario when we install new hardware we also need to do some carpeting work to adjust the new hardware and save on space and some furniture need to be changed. We assume the overall cost would be around 500 Euros.

Just add the new fixed cost in Fixed cost column next to respective task.

Adding Fixed Cost

You can see the overall cost is automatically updated by MS project. In case the project summary task is not visible click on format tab and select the Project Summary task.

Using Resource usage view

2017-01-15T00:59:00.000-08:00

You have seen how team planner helps to quickly adjust the resource overloading issue either by postponing or transferring task to other resource. However if you want same resource to work on multiple task at same time you can user resource usage view to adjust the efforts.

For example in our case

Resource Usage View showing overloaded resource

Let's adjust the hours manually, as we know Jayant need more efforts at start of hardware sizing task thus we assign more efforts at begin and then reduce the efforts.

Resource Usage view after manual adjustment.

As you can see MS Project show icon indicator with pencil in information column, indicating the hours are manually adjusted.

The other way is to let MS project adjust the hours using work contour option. To access work contour option double click task, it will open Assignment Information box, Now select the desired work contour option.

Assignment Information

The Work Contour option provides choices for the contour shape to use for the resources assigned to a task. The work contour determines how work for an assignment is to be distributed across the duration of the assignment.

You can use the work contour to manage the work scheduled for a certain resource. This will allow the user to control any resource workload better.

The categories of Work Contour field include:

Flat - This is the default setting. Flat contour means that the resource is working the same amount of hours every day).
Back Loaded - More work is assigned to the end of the task duration.
Front Loaded - More work is assigned to the beginning of the task duration.
Double Peak - A task that has two major periods of peak activity.
Early Peak - More work hours in the 3/8 part of the task duration.
Late Peak - More work hours in the 6/8 part of the task duration.
Bell - More work hours in the 4/8 and 5/8 of the task duration.
Turtle - A bell with a ramp up and ramp down.

Working with Team Planner

2017-01-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

Team planner is great tool introduced in MS project with version 2010. Team view can quickly help you in seeing clearly and quickly what your team is doing at any given point in the project schedule. You can move task to a different time in the schedule or able to move task from overloaded resource to any free resource.

You can switch to Team planner view either by clicking Team planner button on status bar or selecting Team Planner option from View group in view tab.

Team Planner button

When two or more tasks assigned to a resource overlap and cause the resource to be overbooked (or overallocated), thin red bars appear above and below the overbooked period. Team Planner view also shows you any tasks that are unassigned or lack enough schedule information to be scheduled.

In our case, MS Project shoeing us resource overloading for few tasks.

Overloaded resource

Team Planner view showing resource over-allocated.

Now if we select and drag the Hardware Sizing task to left after Prepare New Design Task, the schedule is changed to reflect the new date keeping task to same resource.

Team Planner view after adjusting

In case you don't want to change the timeline and you have other free resource who has same skills you can drag the task to respective resource.

In our case we can assign this task to Soham by dragging the task down.

Team Planner view after assigning the task to new resource.

You can see all the unscheduled task in column next to resource name column, you can drag the task to respective resource and timeline.

The unassigned tasks are shown at the bottom , you can move the task to respective task to assign it to respective resource.

Leveling resources

2017-01-09T02:31:00.002-08:00

Once you added several tasks and resources assigned to those tasks. Some resources are assigned to multiple tasks, resulting in over-allocated resources.

Resource leveling helps in taking care of a resource-loaded schedule and making it so that those resources don’t have to work overtime. The main goal is to have a critical path that is corrected for resource dependencies. Furthermore, all other tasks and deliverable should have reliable finish dates.

For example in our case "Develop web pages" and "Develop web services" both are planned to start on 20th Jan, and Soham is key resource for same. MS project indicates the resource overloading with icon refer below image

Task before Leveling

To level resource click on task that need to be level and select "Level Resource"

Level Resource

MS Project adjust the dates of task to avoid any resource overloading. Check the develop web pages task below, the task is moved to new date.

Task after Leveling

You can use "Level All" to adjust all the resource leveling for all task that are showing resource overloading however please use this option with caution and review the plan again.

Before using the automated feature, you will need to ensure that each resource has the appropriate project allocation set and that there are no manual over-allocations.

In case you want to use this feature , first adjust the task priorities so the task that you want to postpone have lesser priorities.

The automated resource leveling will NOT adjust tasks where the resource assignment is above Max Units, nor will it change the assignment level to resolve task/resource level over-allocations. Automated resource leveling will adjust only the scheduling of tasks, not the allocation of resources to tasks.

Fixed work, Fixed Duration, Fixed Units explained

2017-01-06T03:33:00.000-08:00

In last blog we understood the task type and how they related, Please read same before continuing below and remember the formula !

Duration x Units = Work

Use Fixed Work when you know the amount of work, In this case you can change the duration to stretch out or compress the time you allow to get that fixed amount of work done. Changing work changes duration proportionately, but changing duration does not change work.

Suppose you set fixed-work task to have 40 hours of work. Duration is automatically set to 5 days (by default 8 hrs./day) . Now if you change the duration to 10 days , the work will still remain as 40 hrs (Fixed work) and task changes: from 8 hours/day (the default) to 4 hours/day (units changes).

Other hand for Fixed Duration task the Duration remains constant, for example you have fixed-duration task set to 5 days. Work will automatically be set to 40 hours (by default calculation). Now if you change the work to 20 days the task changes: from 8 hours/day (the default) to 4 hours/day.(units changes)
Use Fixed Duration when you think about a task in terms of how much time you want to allocate for it irrespective of work and units.

Use fixed-units, when you think of tasks interchangeably in terms of its work and the time allocated for it. That's generally because, when you do assign resources to the task, you expect they will work on the task a fixed number of hours (i.e. units) of their time each day. So, changing either the work or the duration will change the other one proportionally.

Below table is quick cheat sheet to remember the relationship .

Quick Cheat : Relationship between Work, Unit and Duration

Understanding Duration, Work and Units

2017-01-05T04:07:00.001-08:00

Remember,

Duration x Units = Work

Fixed Units suggests that are the amount of capacity that a resource can devote to a task. An example of this is that you suggest to Microsoft Project that a resource can only work 50% of the time on a specific task. Microsoft Project will then automatically calculate the duration of the task with the resource only working 50% of the time.

Fixed Duration suggested that the task the task must be completed within a given duration. As you assign a single or multiple resources to the task, Microsoft Project will automatically calculate the appropriate resource allocation percentage to ensure the task is completed within the given duration.

Fixed Work suggests that a task has a specific numbers of hours work associated with it. In this scenario, we know that the task is going to take ten hours to complete. We have the ability to schedule the tasks overall duration for five days with fixed work of ten hours. Assuming a single resource is responsible for completing the task, Microsoft Project will schedule the resource to work two hours a day for the five day duration.

Maintain Resource calendar

2017-01-03T02:51:00.000-08:00

As setting up project calendar is an important thing that must be done at the beginning of project, similarly maintaining the resource calendar for your “planning” step. You may face project disaster if your resource who is assigned to the critical path task has planned leave and you have not taken care of same in your plan.

Maintaining resource calendar is easy in MS Project, the difficult part is to get details I know ;) …

When you define work resource in MS Project, Project will automatically create a calendar with the respective resource name. You just need to maintain it like the one we maintained for the project.

Let us assume that Swapnali is on a planned vacation on 16th Jan 2015. If you don’t inform this to project, project will assign work to her during this period, however if you maintain her leaves project will take care of this situation and adjust the work accordingly.

Project task prior maintaining resource calendar

To maintain respective resource calendar, go to manage working time and select Swapnali's calendar from drop-down. Now select 16th Jan and Mark it as holiday.

Maintain resource calendar

Now once you click ok, you can see project has taken the leave in consideration and automatically adjusted the dates for dependent tasks.

Request/Demand (assignment field)

2017-01-02T06:12:00.001-08:00

When you use “Assign Resource” dialog box for assigning resource you can see small field with mark “R/D” . This is the Request/Demand field.

Assign Resource

When you mark resource as “Demand” it indicates that the specified resource must be used and not substituted. When you mark resource as “Request” it indicates that the specified resource should be used unless the resource is over allocated. Request/Demand field is manually entered and can be used to specify how and which resources can be assigned to tasks when the Resource Substitution Wizard is activated.

The default option is “Blank”, indicates that any qualified resource can be assigned to the task.

This option can be best used with Task Usage or Resource Usage view when you want to display or change the resource substitution type for an assignment.

Note that the Request/Demand field is disabled for generic resources.

In Project Professional 2010, connected to Project Server 2010, it was possible for project managers to assign resources to tasks and then specify whether that assignment was a Request or a Demand, depending on their view of which resources could carry out that task. Running the Resource Substitution Wizard would then attempt to level resources.

The Resource Substitution Wizard is no longer available in Project Professional 2013, so one would assume that there would be no need to be able to specify a Request or Demand field for resource assignments.

Generic Resources

2016-12-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

Some time during project planning you are not sure about of the specific individuals that will eventually be assigned to the work. In such cases you can create resource and mark them as generic resource.Generic resources can help indicate demand for resources in a specific role. This helps with capacity planning, and can be a deciding factor during portfolio analysis. Certain resources are identified as generic resources. This allows them to be identified by skill rather than by name. The Generic field indicates whether a resource is generic or not.

To Mark resource as generic, in Resource Information check the Generic checkbox.

Marking Generic Resource

You can also specify non-enterprise resources as generic. You can add the Generic field and set it to Yes for generic resources or in the Resource Information dialog box, select the Generic check box on the General tab.

For example in our case we will create resource vendor to outsourced jobs in our project.

Use the Resource Substitution Wizard to automatically replace generic resources with actual resources from the enterprise resource pool.

Assigning Resource to Task

2016-12-28T04:15:00.001-08:00

Once you set up your resources it is easy to assign them to respective task. The easiest method to assign resource via Gantt chart view, to add resource to task click on Resource column in Gantt view and it would popup all the resources.

Adding resource in Gantt chart

Other way is to double click on task and from Task Information tab you can select the resources, This method gives more controls like you can define the % availability of resource and can maintain cost manually.

Assigning resource via Task Information

In our scenario Jayant is only 50 % available during coding so we can enter the % units. The cost for hourly resources is automatically calculated by MS Project.

The other way to add resource is via "Assign Resource" button in Resource Menu.

Assigning Resource from Resource Menu

To assign resource to task first select the task and click on Assign Resources button in resource menu, this will launch the Assign Resource window.

Assign Resources

If there is any conflict with your resources assignment , project will show smart tag that will quickly show you the possible solution to resolve any conflicts. When resource are over allocated MS Project will mark red icon in front of task.

Smart tag while assigning resources.

Defining Resources and working with Resource sheet.

2016-12-26T04:13:00.001-08:00

We have seen in details resource sheet, now let's add resources details as per our scenario.
To define resources as per our requirement, select resource sheet from any view.
Now as per our scenario we will update the details.

Resource Sheet

Please note we assume all resource work in standard time thus we have set Standard calendar to respective Work resources.

There is no value maintained for cost resources as that will be done at task level.

Understanding Resource Type and Resource sheet

2016-12-21T00:55:00.000-08:00

As you know resources are critical part of any project, your project success failure can be largely depending on this.

There are three types of Resources in MS PROJECT 2010: Work Resources, Material Resources and Cost Resources.

Work Resources are people and machines, and they need time (hours, days, weeks, etc.) to perform the Tasks.

Material Resources are consumables like bricks, oil, concrete etc., and they are time independent.

Cost Resources are time independent resources, like Airplane tickets. Or if you want to keep track of the project dinners you offered to team during execution phase.

This is important to understand how you use this type, for example in your project if you are charged the time you used particular machine (eg. Laptop, internet) you will like to define the resource as work resource as you spending money based on time but for example it don’t matter how much time you use but you are charged per use of it the resource must be defined as Material Resource an last if it is one time cost, not time dependent and may vary every time you can define this as Cost Resource.

Resource Sheet

Let's understand Resource sheet in detail,

The first field as name suggests is Resource Name you want to assign or track.

Second is Type as we discussed earlier any of following work, material or cost.

The other fields are as follows

Material: If resource type is Material Resources in this field you are putting measure unit (like tons, meters, pieces, etc.). This field is disabled for other resource types.

Initials: You can put initials for the Resource (like JD for Jayant Dhawale), this is quite useful to save space on Gantt chart.

Group: If you are going to have a group of resources (like Purchase, Vendors, Painters etc.) here is the place to put the name of the group.

Max: This field is only enabled for the Work Resources. You can put 10%, 50%, 100%, 300%, or any number you want (except 0%). This field defines how much specific resource is available to work on your project. Project use this field for calculating the Work for resource.

Standard Rate: This is Standard fee (MONEY) for the resource. You can put that fee like, for example 100/hour, /day etc. This is true only for Work type. If, for example, resource has $100/hour, and it will work 5 days and 8hours per day, cost for this resource will be 40 hours X $100 = $4,000. This field is disabled for the Cost type, because for this type of resources you will put the exact cost when you will assign that cost to the Task.

Overtime Rate: This will help you define the overtime rate for resources . This field is enabled only for Work type of resources (there is no overtime work for bricks, or air ticket, is it? 😏)

Cost/Use: That is also known as a Setup fee, this is one time cost you have to pay to the resource to work on specific task. Note that this one time amount is added to task and not for duration.

For example we have taken help from vendor to install hardware and they will charge one time processing fee for resource onboarding (or travel fee) .

Accrue at: You have three choices: Prorated, Start or End. This when will you charge those costs. Prorated means that if, for example, cost for the task is $1.000, and only 20% of the task is finished, it will be $200 charged! Start means that this $1.000 will be charged as soon as the task begins, and End means that this $1.000 will be charged not before the tasks ends.

Base Calendar: You are assigning any specific calendar for the resource if you have one. This field is enabled only for Work type.

Please note that project automatically creates the resource calendar for each work type resource.

Code: If you have any specific code for you resource put it here.

There are two types of resources: Committed and Proposed. Committed (Default) means that you are 100% sure that this resource is available to your Project. If the Resource is proposed (TENTATIVE), it means that you NEED that resource, but you do not know if it will be available when you will need it.

Scenario continues…

2016-12-20T02:17:00.001-08:00

Till now in project we know what kind of task involves to achieve our final output of project. Next step is to start on boarding of resources based on our plan. It is time to revisit our scenario based on resources.

After discussion with management we understand that we will need two functional consultants who can guide us on old system and manual work done in company. Andy and Maxi will travel from Germany to India for Analysis period and will join Jayant who is our technical sr. level consultant for analysis period. The hourly rate for all this consultants are 100 Euro per hour.

Vendor will provide three resources for Installation and Setup, the cost charged by them is 120 Euro per hour also note that they will be charging 10 Euro one time processing fee for Installation and Setup resources for respective task.

Jayant will be available full time on project for Analysis however due to his other project he will be only 50% available during coding time.

We have Soham who will able to develop web pages and coding along with Jayant, Soham will be charged at 56 Euro per hour. Swapnali the database developer will be cost 39 Euro per hour. Note that if Soham or Swapnali need to do overtime they will be charged extra 10 Euro each, this is not applicable to Andy, Maxi and Jayant.

Hemant can help us in creating testing scripts and setting up the documents. He will be charged 24 Euro per hour, the number of xerox copies made for testing are charged 0.25 Euro per copy. Irrespective of how many copies you made, each time you have to pay 1 Euro onetime charge for binding service to create books, it don’t matter how many books 1 or 100 you bind.

Based on above resource conditions in next few blogs we will see how to update the information in our plan.

Understanding Constraints

2016-12-19T02:06:00.000-08:00

Constraints has impact on schedule thus it is important to understand them in detail. Broadly constraints can be divided in two main categories.

Flexible Constraints

Flexible Constraints do not have specific dates associated with them e.g.As Soon As Possible (ASAP) and As Late As Possible (ALAP). Setting these constraints allows you to start tasks as early as possible or as late as possible with the task ending before the project finish, given other constraints and task dependencies in the schedule.

Inflexible constraints

Inflexible constraints have specific date associated with them e.g. Must Start On (MSO) and Must Finish On (MFO) require an associated date, which controls the start or finish date of the task. These type of constraints must be applied when you must take into account external factors, such as the availability of equipment or resources, deadlines, contract milestones, and start and finish dates

When you enter a new task in the Task Name field, Project assigns the As Soon As Possible (ASAP) constraint when you schedule your project from the start date. When scheduling from the finish date, Project assigns the As Late As Possible (ALAP) constraint.

If you drag the mouse in the chart portion of the Gantt Chart to create a new task, however, Project automatically assigns the Start No Earlier Than (SNET) constraint when you schedule your project from the start date. When scheduling from the finish date, Project automatically assigns the Start No Later Than (SNLT) constraint.

When you manually enter a start or finish date for task, you automatically apply a constraint to it.

When you schedule your project from the start date and you type a start or finish date for a task, Project constrains the task to begin or complete no earlier than that date. If you schedule your project from the finish date, however, Project constrains the task to begin or complete no later than the date you type.

Applying Deadlines and Constraints & when to apply them

2016-12-16T02:34:00.000-08:00

Now till this time we have linked our all task and our basic plan is ready, before we finalize our plan it is important to look for constraints and apply them to our project.

First, switch all your task to "Automatic Scheduling", this is important as soon as we start applying constraints to our plan the overall duration will be automatically adjusted by MS Project.

Initial Plan before applying constraints

Now go back to our scenario and take look at below

As many people off during X-Mas vacation it is suggested to complete the manual work analysis with business before 18th Dec.
The Hardware sizing must be submitted to vendor by 22nd Dec, any delay will result delay in delivering new hardware and lead to commercial impact.
The new hardware will be only available on 5th Jan 2015.

As we can see it in first point we are “suggested” to do manual work analysis before 18th Dec, we will treat this as the deadline for us. When we mark something as deadline MS Project will mark indicator on the plan to showcase the important event.

To setup the deadline follow following steps

Double click on the Manual Work task or click on “Information” button in properties group in Task menu.

Adding Deadline

Select the Advanced tab in “Task Information” dialog box. Now click on drop-down next to Deadline and select the 18th Dec 2014 date.

Deadline indicated on Gantt Chart

Microsoft project will indicate the green arrow showing the deadline of our task, so now we have to make sure that we have to complete the task before 18th.

Now once again Consider at point below

The Hardware sizing must be submitted to vendor by 22nd Dec, any delay will result delay in delivering new hardware and lead to commercial impact.
The new hardware will be only available on 5th Jan 2015.

This date condition is more serious than the earlier one as if we don’t able to deliver the design we will have commercial impact on the project! It is a constraint that we must complete the hardware sizing on 22nd Dec or earlier.

As per our earlier plan we will able to install new hardware on 31st Dec however this is of no use as the hardware will be deliver and ready for installation on 5th Jan only !

Now let’s configure both the constraint to the project.

Now double click on Hardware sizing task and select “Must Finish on” constraint in constraint type and select 22nd Dec 2014 as constraint date.

Adding Constraints

The popup would come up , select the "Continue"

Planning Wizard

Once you click ok, you will see the Gantt chart and relevant task are adjusted as per our constraints.
Also you can see new calendar sign next to "Hardware Sizing" task indicating we have applied constraints to this task.

icon indicating Constraints

Now same way set the “Start no earlier than” constraint for “Install new hardware” for 5th Jan.

Applying Constraints

Other way of setting this constraint is to manually pull the task in Gantt chart to 5th Jan and Project will set the constraint automatically for you.

Changes after applying constraints

Once we apply constraints the dependent task are automatically shifted accordingly, all the dates that are affected due to your current action are highlighted in blue color.

I hope till now you understand the difference in deadline and constraints, importing thing to understand that when you apply deadline and your task can go beyond the deadline however if you apply constraint (e.g. Must finish on) your task cannot go beyond the constraint date. Thus use both this wisely as per the situation.

Setting Milestones

2016-12-13T22:52:00.000-08:00

Milestones are tools used in project management to mark specific points along a project timeline. Milestones do not impact project duration. Instead, they focus on major progress points that must be reached to achieve success.

Milestones can add significant value to project scheduling, it allow project managers to much more accurately determine whether or not the project on schedule. By constraining the dates associated with milestones, the critical path can be determined for major schedule intervals in addition to the entire project. Slack/float can also be calculated on each schedule interval. This segmentation of the project schedule into intervals allows earlier indication of schedule problems and a better view into the activities whose completion is critical.

For example in our scenario we have task called “Design signoff” as one of the milestone until this is completed we can’t begin with implementation of design.

To mark a Milestone just set the duration to “0” and the project will convert the task to milestone.

Adding Milestones

Once you define all your milestones, on the View tab, in the Data group, click a filter in the filter list. Select the Milestone as filter, this will show all milestones in gantt chart. You can use this to showcase project milestone reporting.

Filter Option

Linking tasks – understanding task dependencies

2016-12-13T04:07:00.000-08:00

In project task are done in sequence or in parallel. You can quickly link the task by clicking on the task and then dragging them over other task, this will make the link as end to start linkage.

When you link tasks by default MS Project will link the task using Finish-to-Start (FS) type. This means MS project assume that as soon as you finish your earlier task you can start with next task. There are additional types that are supported by MS Project as follows.

Let's understand the task dependency before you start linking the tasks,

Finish to Start (FS) task dependency :

Finish to Start - task dependency

This is default task dependency when you link two tasks, The dependent task (B) cannot begin until the task that it depends (A) on is complete.

For Example, In our case , task "Create Database Scripts" will be only started after "Setup of database".

Start to Start (SS) task dependency :

Start to Start - task dependency

In this case the dependent task can begin anytime after the task that it depends on begins. The SS link type does not require that both tasks begin simultaneously. They simply require that the first task has begun, in order for the second task to begin.

For Example: We can start "Hardware sizing" as soon as our "prepare new design" task begins.

Finish to Finish (FF) task dependency :

Finish to Finish -Task dependency

In this case the dependent task can be completed anytime after the task that it depends on is completed. The FF link type does not require that both tasks be completed simultaneously, They simply require that the first task be finished, in order for the second task to finish.

For Example: "Analyze Manual work" task can complete only after "Analyze old system" task. That can help us to understand what is missing in old system thus user need to do manual work.

Start to Finish (SF) task dependency :

Start to Finish -Task dependency

This is a little tricky to understand, In this type of dependency, you are saying that the second task in the relationship can’t finish until the first task starts. However, the second task can finish any time after the first task starts.

You can define task dependency in task sheet by entering respective dependency in predecessors column or by dragging task on other task in gantt chart.

linking task in gantt chart

You can use network diagram to define the task dependency like below.

Linking task in network diagram

Adding Duration, Start time and End time (Understanding days vs edays)

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You can manually enter the respective Duration, Start date or End date to the respective task. The duration can be marked with number followed by duration indicator like days or hours etc.

To enter duration in Hours you can enter h similarly for min (m), days (d) , or week (w) or y for years. Please note that to indicate months you have to enter as (mo) And not as (m) !

Some time you can enter? Next to duration, this indicates the values are estimated and may change.

Adding Duration to Task

As you can see the question mark on manual task disappears as soon as you enter the duration and either of start or end date.

In our project there is task to move the data from old machine database to new machine, the task is automated and will be done 24 X 7 and will be continue on holiday. Your IT person expects this would need 240 hours approx. 10 days to copy data for last 10 years.

Project Schedule when duration is 240 hrs

If you enter the 240 hrs in duration MS project will schedule it for 6 weeks, this is because MS project assumed the task as 8X5 job with Sat, Sun as off. To tell MS project it as 24X7 job with no holidays change the 240 hours to 240 ehours !

Project Schedule when duration is 240 ehrs.

You will see the task will be now adjusted to 10 days!

When you indicate any duration with prefix e it is treated as elapsed time, you can indicate edays, eweeks and so on. The Elapsed time as I mentioned earlier 24X7 with no holidays.

Adding Tasks

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Now you understand the concept of scheduling mode let’s begin by adding our tasks to MS Project. First look at our WBS sheet. We have three KEY WBS, Enter them manually in available sheet.

New Task Entry

You can quickly do spell check once you enter task name, for example in above case Analyze task has wrong spelling, you can correct this by using spell checker (press F7).

Task Name after spell check

Now every this WBS ha sub elements, let us begin with Deploy WBS.

Deploy Sub WBS

Deploy has 3 sub elements, let's enter same.

Now to mark them as sub Task of Deploy select all the three task and click on Indent Task,

Indent Task option on toolbar

Or right click task and select indent task

Right click option on selected tasks

The result will be as below

Task Indent Result

Now you can see the Deploy task is automatically switched as Summary task and to automatic mode. This is indeed ok as it will automatically adjusted the duration and dates as per the sub tasks.

Now to add sub task of Analyze click on task next to it (i.e Build) and select the number of rows as per the required task and right click and click Insert task

Insert Task

The result is as follow

Result : Insert Task

Now you can enter the sub task and then intend task as showcased above.

In case you want to make any sub task to main task you can do so by clicking Outdent task either from toolbar or by right clicking task and selecting Outdent Task.

Outdent Task on Toolbar

Understanding Tasks Manual vs automatic scheduling, When to use them !

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Once we setup the calendar, we are set to enter our tasks to Microsoft project and begin to plan our project.

Before we start do so I like you to understand the concept called Manual Scheduling and Automatic Scheduling.

If you observed the status bar on MS Project you will find bar with comment “New Tasks: Manually Scheduled”

New Task mode in status bar

When you select the Manual schedule, the tasks can be entered with or without duration, start dates, or end dates. Duration and dates are entered as free-form text, and summary tasks do not inherit dates and task data from sub-tasks.

In Automatic Scheduling the task start and End date are automatically determined by MS Project, In case you didn’t enter the duration, project assumes this as 1 day task. The task Start date and End date is determined by the dependencies with each other and the resource/ task calendar.

It is up to you decide which mode suitable to you, the manual scheduling is useful at initial as at start we don’t know the exact date for task or duration. You can mention the details in the column and MS project will not change it. However once you completed planning it is advisable to switch task to automatic scheduling as this will help project to take care of schedule.

Manual Task with custom data

You can observe the italic font for duration, start or finish. This way MS project indicate it don’t understand the duration etc. Also there is no bar exist on Gantt chart.

A word of caution when you switch from manual to automatic and if there is no relation maintained in task then the task moved to start date of project start date and if duration is not maintained it will be treated as 1 day.

How to switch between tasks:

You can switch the task by clicking on task and then selecting Task Mode from Tasks group in Task menu.

Switching New Task mode

Other way is to right click on task and select the mode.

Switching Task mode

Creating new calendar

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Usually we don’t need to create new calendar as the existing three calendars are enough to perform any critical tasks. You can customize the existing calendar to fulfill your needs however some time you have some requirement that need to be worked out differently than normal. In such conditions you can maintain the different calendar. Note that resource calendars are created automatically thus you can customize them separately based on resource available time.

TO create new calendar, click on “Change working time” button in “Project” menu and click on “create new calendar ….” Button.

Create New Calendar

You will be presented with two options.

Create New Base Calendar

To create new calendar from scratch or to create copy of existing calendar, Even though you selected new calendar it usually similar to default standard calendar.

You can give suitable name to your calendar that you can customize like normal calendar and assign them to any task etc.