5 Key Steps to Your Scheduling Success in Microsoft office Project

1. Enter in Phases, tasks and Milestones-Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)


2. Outlining (indenting/outdenting) to establish levels of detail


3. Enter in duration estimates


4. Set dependencies


5. Assign resources and costs

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Enter in Phases, tasks and Milestones-Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Tip: To be successful with Project 2007 you need to know your WBS. This is the first key to a good project plan and vital if you are going to have a good planning experience. The WBS can be easily enter into the "Task Name" (or Name) column in the Gantt Chart view. You can use the import wizard to bring in tasks from Excel files if you already have a plan or start from a template.

Outlining (indenting/out denting) to establish levels of detail

Tip: Turn on the outline number codes under Tools, Options, View, Show Outline Number. You can also use the WBS manager to define outline codes under Project, WBS. You can always add more detail under and existing task. Once a task has another task indented underneath, it automatically becomes a summary task and is sometimes referred to as the parent task or phase. Remember a milestone is a task with 0 duration.

Enter in duration estimates

Tip: Remember duration is based on the working time options from your calendars. 1d = 8 hours, 1 week = 5 days or 40 hours, and 1 month = 20 days. Enter your duration directly into the duration column. You can not enter duration at the summary task level as these are calculated fields. You can enter duration in minutes, hours, days, weeks or months. We recommend that you be consistent throughout the plan and try and use the same unit.

Set dependencies

Tip: All tasks should be in the network. If a task has no dependencies it automatically gets scheduled from the project start date which you define in Project Information. Stay away from using constraints as much as possible by not typing dates directly into the start of finish dates as this will "hard" code the date in a manner of speaking and override other scheduling drivers. Use constraints with caution and with compelling scheduling reasons. Most of your tasks should be "As Soon as Possible" following this scheduling process and be in the network. This will result in a good and useful plan and allow you to analyze the critical path and the impact of change much more effectively.

Assign resources and costs

Tip: Build your resource pool first in the resource sheet. You can assign resources without costs to simply track work load and effort. If you assign costs in the resource sheet than costs will be add to the project when you assign the resources to tasks automatically. Keep in mind that assigning resources will impact your schedule depending on the whether it is fix duration, fix work or fix units base on the formula Work = Duration * Units.