Microsoft Project A Quick Guide For Beginners

( Follow the blog everyday for recent updates. Everyday a new feature of MS Project will be updated here.)

Microsoft Project is the most basic software for project management, be it a project of IT, Construction, Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Film Production and so on.

The best part of MS Project is that if you know basics of it you can learn any project management software very easily. so lets start..

Starting MS Project

It is as simple as opening any of the Ms office software. Just find it on desktop or Go To Start Program and find Ms Project. when you will click. It will open Ms project it may show you some templates but you should click on Blank Project and then create to start. It will open something like the below provided interface with minor change depending on the version you are using. (This one is from Version 2010.)

The first thing you should do after opening ms project is to set your Calendar, Currency, Working time. In following sections it is elaborated to understand easily.

Setting Initial Project and Setting Working Time In MS Project

Go to FILE -OPTIONS- (It will open a Dialogue box with many options) – Click on Schedule The following view will open

Go to calendar options for the project change it according to you for example if you want a 6 day working week with 8 hours per day and 1 hour break at 1-o-clock in the after noon set it as per following

• Default start Time as the time you want the work to start every day lets say I want it to start at 9-o-clock.
• Simillarly set an end time say 5 p.m.
• Now say you want an 8 hour working day so put hours per day as 8 now you want a six day a week so multiply 8 with 6 you get 48 so put 48 as hours per week now assume there will be atleast 4 holidays every month so put 26 days a month
• If you want some days to have more working hours it can be changed further in calendar options I will tell you once we reach there.

Now when you will click ‘Set Assignment Unit as’ it will show you two options decimal or percentage this you will understand when we will discuss more about resources for the time being lets set it as ‘ percentage only’ as it is in my view more precise and easier to use.

Also for time being I suggest you to keep Default task type as ‘ Fixed Duration.’ rest of all the options keep as it is don’t edit for now. Now after doing all this click OK.

Setting Currency in MS Project

For setting Currency in MS Project go to FILE – OPTIONS – DISPLAY, and set currency as you want like If your project is in India you might want it to be in rupees so just click currency and find INR and select it. now click on OK.

Creating a calendar

It is very important that you create a calendar of your own. But why? Although MSP gives 3 basic calendars which you can use. they are 1. Standard Calendar, 2. Night shift and 3. 24 hrs calendar. but these calendars may not apply to your work area so it is advisable that you create one of your own

following are the ways of creating a calendar

1. Got o Project – Change Working time- it will open following dialogue box

It will ask you if you want to make a copy of any preexisting calendar. so choose standard calendar there. also give a name to your new calendar as I have given here trial 1.

Now provide some holidays in exception section where you can see a table up there in order to provide a holiday give the name of holiday, its start date and end date. Put the same date if it is only a one day holiday.

Now since you have copied the standard calendar it will show Saturday as non working. But if you want it to be working or if you want some other day to be now working follow the steps

keep the change working time open now in the lower right side you will find a details button when you will click it the following will open.

If you will see when Wednesday is selected the working time is being shown in the given table. but when you will click Saturday it will be blank i.e. non working day. to make it working you just need the time in from and to sections also if there are breaks (lunch break, tea break etc) you will have to enter each working hours individually. for example on Saturday I want the working hour to start at 8 am and lunch break between 12-1 and then at 5 pm the working hour will end I will enter the same values as it is showing for Wednesday in the image provided. Calendar is all set. isn’t it easy.

How to Assign Calendar to your Project

For assigning calendar to activities, follow these steps. First of all save your project by going to FILE – SAVE AS – (Give a name to your project) and click save. Now for assigning calendar Go to Project tab and click Project information, The following window will open

Now click the arrow button in front of calendar and choose your calendar which you created. Note : After creating the calendar if you closed the MS Project software, the calendar will not show up here so make your calendar global calendar before that. To make your calendar global, so that on whichever project you are you can select the calendar you created. follow these steps. Go to FILE -INFO ORGANIZE GLOBAL TEMPLATE – And it will open the following window

Here click on Calendar tab and the same box will open. now you will see the name of your calendar in the right side just click it and click copy written there to shift it to right side i.e. for making it a global calendar.

Now to assign the global calendar to project click on Project Information to open this window

Now click on the arrow in front of calendar and select your calendar. Now whole calendar work is complete. Now Set the project start date for your project. For that go to FILE -INFO in the right side you will see written all of these

Click on start date. and set the date as you want the project to get started.

Now you are ready to add activities.

How to Add Activities in MS Project

You can now add activities in Project. But before that you should know some basic views and column which if you add before adding activities will definitely help you not doing any mistake.

Views In MS Project

There are different views in MS Project. but here we will talk about the mostly important ones. to know about all the views click on Task Tab then click on the little arrow beneath Gant Chart View Tab. You will get the list of all the views they are :-

1. Calendar
2. Gantt Chart
3. Network Diagram
4. Resource Sheet
5. Resource Usage
6. Resource Graph
7. Task Usage
8. Task Form
9. Task Sheet
10. Team Planner
11. Time Line
12. Tracking Gantt

The most commonly used views during entering tasks are Gantt chart view, Resource Sheet, Resource Usage, and Task Usage.

Gantt Chart View

This is the most common view for MS Project it is here only you will enter all the Tasks their Inter dependencies, Duration etc. we will talk about other view during Resource Assignment.

Columns in MS Project

Columns named Indicator (Shown by a blue ‘i’ in the first cell), Task Mode, Predecessors, Duration, Start, Finish, Predecessors, Resource Names should already be present there by default. present by default. If any of them are not present there, you can add it by right click on any of the heading of column – Insert Column – Select The name of column from drop down many and it is all set. Make sure you add the following two more columns before you start, its my personal suggestion, it will help you avoid mistakes.

1. Type
2. Cost

What is Task Types

There are three types of tasks in MS Project which you can choose for every task in type column, They are :-

1. Fixed Duration
2. Fixed work
3. Fixed Unit

MS Project works on a principle that when you will add any task with its Duration, And Resources which in turn apply some cost it will follow a simple principle which i personally call as WUD principle. where W = Work, U = Unit and D= Duration. i.e. You are bound to keep one of them fixed so that if you change any of the other two the third will change. Lets take an example for a better understanding, Suppose there is a task of electrical fitting with a duration of 8 days and it requires 2 carpenter to finish it in said duration. Also you want the work to be completed in 8 days and you don’t want it to get late or early, so you select the fixed duration as its type. Now if you add all these in MS Project then MS Project will save it in its memory and when you will change any of the work (here work is work of carpenter to finish the carpentry which is 8*2 = 16 days) or unit (Unit here means no. of carpenters i.e. 2) further after one time allocation the other will change automatically. i have explained this only because i want you to decide what your task type should be its up to you and your requirements but you have to fix any of the W, U & D. Further while assigning resource we will talk about this again and i will elaborate, what will happen if you fix work or units.

If you are ready by adding all these columns. now start writing task names as i showed below. I hope all the readers are practicing also so please make a list of the listed tasks in the image below only as i will be showing all the operations on these tasks only.

If you worry abou the symbols under indicator column and the position of task name and [-] sign also. don’t worry we will talk abou that also. for now just type in your file task name, duration and predecessors. Dont write duration for task named as in bold letter.

Now you should do the indentation (indent / outdent i.e. changing the alignment of any task to show that it is a part of the upper task.) for that go to your activity which you want to indent. now you will find these buttons if you are in task tab

And click on the right arrow there. you will see that your task is slided right side. now what does it mean. it means that the indented task is an activity but the task of which it is part is its summary task. you can not add duration for any of the summary task it will be automatically calculated by adding all its sub tasks.

Precedence logic in MS Project

There are mainly four type of precedence logic they are

1. Start to Finish
2. Start to Start
3. Finish To Finsh
4. Finish to Start (Most Common)

Start to Finish

It means that when the previous activity will start it should be the end of the successor activity. this type of logic is not commonly used.

Start to Start

It means that when the preceding activity will start the successor activity can also start i.e. both can start simultaneously.

Finish to Finish

It means that both the activity should finish simultaneously

Finish to Start

This is the most commonly used logic and it simply means that when the preceding activity finishes, the succeeding activity will start.

What is Lag time

Suppose you want to start an Activity B 7 days after the start of Activity A. Here lag time is 7 days.

How to define Predecessors or Precedence Logic in MS Project

For defining predecessor of an activity just type the serial number of the activity you want to be its predecessor.

If you want predecessor with lag, then type the serial no. of predecessor then write FS and then add a ‘+’ sign followed by the lag duration for example “9FS+7DAYS” Shows that this activity will start 7 days after the finish of activity 9. another example “9SS+7DAYS” Shows that this activity will start 7 days after the start of activity 9. so its very simple, just type the logic in the predecessors section.

So now we will keep up to here only in this blog. for resource allocation I will write another blog which you can find on https://infoheed.com blogs section its my new website and I will write all the blogs there from now onward. so hope to see you there.