Computer aided project management

using MS project 2007

Construction Engineering & Management Division

Department of Civil Engineering
University of Moratuwa
Sri Lanka
 Time and Cost Management Maldives 2006

1.0 Introduction to Microsoft Project – The Features in a Nutshell

MS Project is a powerful and easy to use graphical program that helps you with planning tasks,
allocating resources, costing, tracking and reporting and is suitable for any project – from the
simplest to the most advanced. It provides popular project management tools in the form of
graphical screen displays called Views. By using these views to define your project tasks and
their exact relationships, you can plan your project to reflect real world situations. With MS
Project, you have complete control in managing your project resources, for a single project or
among multiple projects. You can assign a project calendar for the entire project or define your
own separate calendars and assign them to individual resources. MS Project alerts you to any
over-allocated resources which can be either corrected manually or with the automatic resource
levelling feature in the MS Project.

With MS Project it is easy to see if your project is progressing as planned. By using its project
features in combination with views, you can display exactly the information you want. To help
you in communicating the project details, MS Project includes a variety of Report formats that
you can print or plot in addition to views. You have complete control in changing the look or
content of reports and views to convey what you want in a format that exactly suits you.

MS Project also has the facility to electronically communicate project data among the project
team members through workgroup features which facilitates project management by project team
members stationed at different locations through Intranet and Internet.

2.0 Getting Started

When you invoke MS Project 2003 package two windows appear on the screen, one within the
other. The larger one is called the application window and is used to communicate with the MS
Project. The smaller one is called project window and is used to create and edit your projects (see
Fig. 1).

Figure 1 – MS Project Window and Application Window

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2.1 How to Issue Commands

There are several ways to issue commands to MS Project in order to formulate a project plan and
carry out day-to-day operations.

• Using the mouse to choose the command from the menu bar and the pull down menu. This
method is recommended for any user of MS Project.
• Using the mouse to click on a button in the Tool bar or View bar. This is a short cut method
and can be used for most common commands. The tool bar you see in the application
window when you start up is the Standard tool bar. Depending on what operations you do
with MS Project you can display the relevant tool bars (out of about 14 tool bars) using View
pull down menu and selecting Toolbars Command. When you bring the cursor to a tool
button, a small pop up menu provides the descriptions of various tool buttons.
• Using the keyboard (with Ctrl key) – this is recommended only for familiar users of MS
Project.

2.2 Getting Help in Project 2003

MS Project provides a comprehensive help facility, which will be very useful when you are in
trouble irrespective of whether you are a new user or an experienced user. MS Project puts the
following six types of help at your disposal some of which are described in a little more detail:

• The Office Assistant

• Microsoft Project Help
• Getting Started
• Microsoft Office Online
• Detect and Repair

The Office Assistant

You’ve probably already encountered the ever-so-helpful Office Assistant.

The Office Assistant is Microsoft’s Social Interface for Project 2003 and other members of the
Office family. Modified significantly from Office 97, the Office Assistant is now a separate
application called an agent, which, like SDI windows, operates independently of the open
application. The Office Assistant crosses all applications, and provides help for specific features
of each application. You can choose from several Assistants from the Assistant Options. Each has
its own personality.

The Assistant offers help the first time you work with a feature and if you have difficulty with a
task. Sometimes the offer is subtle: you can click the Assistant to receive a tip that could save you
time and energy. Other offers of help are a bit more intrusive. If, for example, you open a wizard,
the Office Assistant pops up to ask if you’d like help with the feature. After you’ve worked with
Project 2003 for a few days, you might decide that you’d like a little less help from your eager
assistant. To change the Assistant’s options, right click on the Assistant, choose Options to open
the Office Assistant dialog box, and then click the Options tab to display the Options page.

When you’re ready to go it alone, you can turn off the Assistant by unchecking the Use the Office
Assistant checkbox in the Office Assistant dialog box. If you are not quite ready for total

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abandonment, clear the other checkboxes to reduce the frequency with which the assistant volun-
teers to help.

Microsoft Project Help

Microsoft Project Help available on the Help menu is the web-style system that gives you
option for contents, Answer wizard, and Index. The content page is shown in Figure 2.

You may experiment with the entire Help Menu to see its potential whenever you have a little free
time.

Figure 2 – MS Project Help – the contents window

3.0 Creating a Simple Project

Once you invoke the MS Project you will see a blank Gantt-chart (Bar-chart) view (see Fig.1).
This is the default view which you can change if you so wish. Gantt-chart is the most convenient
view to create a project.

3.1 Defining the Project

Setting Project Properties

This is an essential step in creating a new project as it establishes essential parameters for your
project plan. You can do it in two methods.

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Method 1- using Project Guide

MS Project 2003 helps you to create a project using Project Guide which a new feature in MS
Project 2003. You can display the Project Guide tool bar by selecting it from the portfolio of tool
bars in the View pull down menu.
The Project Guide tool bar categorizes your project operations into Tasks, Resources, Track and
Report. The steps you need to follow under each of these four project management areas appear in
the vertical window pane on the left hand side of your desktop.

In order to create a project using Project Guide follow the steps given below.
1. On the File menu, click the New command. The New Project task pane appears.
2. Under New, click the Blank Project link. Project creates a new project and the new
project task pane is replaced by the task pane of the project guide. Note that this task pane
contains links to several activities; all focused on tasks (see Fig. 3).
3. In the task pane click Define the Project link.
4. In the next pane that appears, set the project start date and click Save and go to Step 2
link.
5. In the Project professional you will see additional panes that relate to Project Server. In
step 2 pane, click No, then go to step 3, click Save and Finish. The task activity list
appears.
6. in the standard tool bar, click the Save button or Save link in the pane.

Figure 3 – Task pane for the Project Guide

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Method 2- using Project Properties dialog box

You may adopt the following short cut method to do several of the above mentioned steps at once.
In order to do this, choose Project Information command from the Project pull down menu.
You will see the Project information dialog box, shown in Figure 4. There are three information
settings you’ll want to affirm or change: task scheduling method, priority, and calendar.

Setting Project Start Date: A project can be scheduled from the start date, or from the finish
date. Under normal circumstances, a project is scheduled from the start date. This way MS
Project can use the full potential of the facilities. If you set the scheduling method to schedule
from the project start date the Start Date field is active and the Finish Date field is dimmed. This
is because, the MS project wants you to give only the project start date. The project finish is
established automatically by the MS Project depending on your activity durations and their inter-
relationships. Project 2003 schedules all tasks to begin as soon as possible. Enter your project
start date using the pop up calendar you get by clicking the down arrow in the start date field.

Setting Project Finish Date: When you choose Project Finish Date from the Schedule From
drop-down list, tasks are scheduled to begin as late as possible. This method is recommended if
you know the project dead line, say you have decided to have a conference on a specific day or a
function to coincide with your birthday. If you decide this scheduling method you can enter only
the project finish date and the MS Project establishes the project start date depending on the
activity details. Enter your project finish date using the pop up calendar you get by clicking the
down arrow in the finish date filed.

If you want to change any of the project properties you have set when you initially created the
project (such as the project commencement date, base calendar etc.) you can recall the project
information dialog box anytime by selecting Project Information from the Project pull down
menu.

Figure 4 – Project Information Dialog Box with pop up calendar

3.2 Entering General Task Information

Once you have given overall project information you can then enter task information (although
this sequence need not be adhered to) in the Gantt Chart view. Because modifying, adding and
deleting tasks are simple in MS Project, you do not need to have all the facts to enter task details.
You can enter these information in many ways starting with task names and subsequently

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gradually building up your plan by entering activity durations, relationships, constraints, resources
and so forth.

Gantt Chart has a table component and a time scale component. Each column in the table is
called a Field and field headings are at the top of the columns. The numbers in the first column
will be assigned to the tasks that make up the project. Information appeared in the table
component of the Gantt Chart can be changed whenever you want. For example, when entering
activity details you may like to have columns for activity descriptions and durations. When
looking at costs, instead of durations you may like to have perhaps cost fields, or on the other
hand during tracking you may like to have actual start dates, actual finish dates, percentage
completion etc. To do this you have to use View menu and then select Table: and then select the
required table format (See Fig. 5 ). Fig. 6 shows Table: Entry Format). You can also customise
the table component to have any information about your project.

Entering Task Names

Clearly, before you enter task names, you should have a list of task names of your project, at least
the main or top level activities (MS Project cannot assist you to identify your task names). You
can keep on entering task names in the Task Name field in the Gantt Chart like you enter details
in an Excel work sheet.

Figure 5 – Selecting suitable table component

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Figure 6 – Entry table in Gantt Chart

Activity Durations

You can enter durations of activities in minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months. In the
duration column enter the value followed by m for minutes, h for hours, d for days, w for weeks
and mo for months depending on the unit of time. The default setting is days. If the duration is
entered as zero the task converts to a Milestone. You may enter task names and durations
together if you so wish.

3.3 Establishing Activity Relationships

With Microsoft Project, you can define four different types of relationships between tasks.
Linking Tasks

You can enter links between tasks when you enter tasks into Project, or you can wait until you
have all the tasks entered and then go back and establish links. Whichever method you choose,
you want to establish links before assigning resources and costs to a project. MS Project offers a
variety of methods to link tasks as follows.

• Using Schedule tasks link in the Task pane.

• Using the Toolbar or menu commands
• Dragging and dropping with the mouse
• Using Task Information dialog box
• Using Task tables and forms

Some of these methods depend on the view you are in and the order in which you select tasks for
linking.

Linking tasks using Task pane

1. Activate the task pane if not already activated.
2. In the task pane, click Schedule tasks.
3. Follow the instructions in the task pane.

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Linking tasks using Toolbar or menu commands

The easiest way to create a finish-to-start link is to use chain link button in the Toolbar. Follow
these steps:

1. Select the tasks you want to link. You can link two tasks at a time or a set of tasks. If you
select tasks by dragging the cursor, the tasks with lower ID numbers are set as the predecessor
tasks and the tasks with higher ID numbers as successors. If you want to designate a task with
a higher ID number as a predecessor, select tasks by holding Ctrl key while you click the
tasks in order.
2. Click the Chain link button on the Standard toolbar to create the links.

If you prefer, you can also link tasks by selecting the tasks you want to link and choosing Link
task in the Edit pull down menu or pressing Ctrl+F2. All of the links created using the menu or
toolbar are finish-to-start links with no lag or lead time. If you want to create other types of links,
you must use Task Information dialog box or one of the task forms, described below or edit
linking information you have already established.

Linking Tasks Using Drag-and-Drop

One of the easiest ways to link tasks when you can see both the predecessor and the successor
task in the Gantt Chart or Calendar view is to use drag-and-drop with the mouse. You have to be
careful when you use drag and drop to make sure you are linking tasks but not moving tasks.
Once you get the hang of it, it’s a quick way to create finish-to-start relationships with no lag or
lead time.

To use the mouse to link tasks, follow these steps:

1. Point to the predecessor task. When you point to the centre of the task in the Gantt Chart, the
pointer changes to a four-headed arrow.
2. Drag the task and drop it on the successor task. As soon as you start dragging, the pointer
changes to a chain link pointer shape. A pop up menu will indicate your actions.

Linking Tasks by Using the Task Information Dialog Box

The Task Information dialog box is the main vehicle for viewing and entering all of the details
about a task. To enter predecessors for a task, you want to open the Task Information dialog box
for the successor or dependent task. You can access the Task Information dialog box by three
ways:
• Double-click a task name
• Click the Task Information button on the Standard toolbar
• Choose Project pull down menu and select Task Information

To enter predecessors in the Task Information dialog box, follow these steps:

1. Open the Task Information dialog box for the successor (dependent) task.
2. Click the Predecessors tab to display the page shown in Fig. 7.
3. Select the Task Name field and click the down arrow to open the Task list. Select the
predecessor task from the list or select the ID field and enter the number of the task.
4. To accept the entry, click the green right check mark in the Entry bar, press Enter, or press
the tab key. Click the red X in the Entry bar to cancel the entry:
5. To change the link type, select the Type field and click the down arrow to choose from the
list of types (see Fig. 8).
6. Select the Lag field and use the spin box arrows to increase or decrease the amount of lag or
lead time. Positive numbers represent lag time and negative numbers represent lead time.

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7. Repeat Steps 3-6 if you would like to enter additional predecessors for this task.
8. Click OK to create the links and close the Task Information dialog box.

Figure 7 – Setting Predecessors using Task Information dialog box

Figure 8 – Selecting Task type using Task Information dialog box

Linking Tasks using Task tables and Task forms

You can create any type of link using Task tables and Task forms but we will not discuss these in
detail as they are alternate ways to do the same thing. It is recommended to use Task Information
Dialog Box to enter all your task relationships.

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Modifying Task Relationships

In even the best-laid plans, it may be necessary to change the relationships between tasks. Project
offers a number of ways to change established relationships.

In the Task Dependency dialog box (see Fig.9), you can change the type of a relationship and
modify the lag time. To access the Task Dependency dialog box, double-click the connecting line
between two tasks.

To change the relationship type, click the down arrow on the Type field and Select the Type you
want from the drop-down list. If you choose None as the relationships type, the link is removed.
You can also remove the link by clicking the Delete button. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Figure 9 – Task dependency dialog box

If you want to unlink tasks, the easiest way is to select a task and click the Unlink Tasks button on
the Standard toolbar. This immediately removes all predecessor and successor links related to the
select task. If you want to remove only one link, select the predecessor and successor tasks and
click the Unlink Tasks button. You can also delete links using the menu by selecting the Unlink
Tasks from the Edit pull down menu.

Linking Tasks can be Flexible or Inflexible

Using constraints, you can control start or finish of important tasks. MS Project automatically
assigns the As Soon As Possible constraint when you enter a task. You can easily see the
constraint type of all the tasks by selecting Constraint Type Table in the Gantt Chart. To do this
while you are in the Gantt Chart, select Tables on the View Menu, select More Tables and then
Select Constraint Type from the Table list. There are several constraints you can set for a task
(see Fig. 10 for the full list).

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Figure 10 – Setting constraints type using advance page of Task Information

Find below a description of these constraints types.

Constraint Type Description

As Late as Possible This is the default constraint type when a project is scheduled from the
Finish date. Project schedules the task to start as late as it can based on
its relationships and other scheduling parameters.
As Soon As Possible This is the default constraint type when a project is scheduled from the
start date. Project schedules the task to start as early as it can based on
its relationships and other scheduling parameters.
Finish No Earlier Than The task must not be completed before the established constraint date.
Finish No Later Than The task must finish by the established constraint date.
Must Finish On The task must finish on the established constraint date.
Must Start On The task must start on the established constraint date.
Start No Earlier Than The task must not start before the established constraint date.
Start No Later Than The task must start on or before the established constraint date.

You will notice that some of them are flexible, for example, As Soon As Possible, As Late As
Possible, Finish No Earlier Than etc. but some are inflexible, for example, Must Finish On, Must
Start On. In order to set the constraint type for a task do the following.

1. On the View bar, click the Gantt Chart.

2. In the Task Name field, select the task for which you want to change the constraint type, and
then click Task Information button in the tool bar or double click task name.
3. Select the Advanced tab, and then select the constraint in the Constraint type box.
4. If the constraint requires a date, enter a constraint date in the Constraint date Box using
down arrow calendar navigator.

MS Project recalculates the start and finish dates of all the tasks affected by the change.

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You are advised to set inflexible constraints only if they are essential, such as when your client or
contract requires that a task begin or end on a specific date. Set a constraint only if,

• The constraint reflects an actual time restriction in the real world.

• The project will be penalised for not starting or finishing by a specific date.

The inflexible constraints seriously limit your schedule’s flexibility. When you apply these, you
bypass the advantage of allowing MS Project to calculate start and finish dates automatically as
the schedule changes. They will become undesirable when you reschedule tasks. For example, if
you specify that a task must start on a certain day, but the predecessor actually takes a longer time
to complete, the resources assigned for both tasks might be overloaded with work on overlapping
days or vice versa.

The planing Wizard can help prevent from you getting entangled in messy scheduling conflicts. It
displays a message each time you set a constraint that causes or might cause a scheduling conflict
with various possibilities. If you have inflexible constraints in your schedule, be sure to turn on
the Planning Wizard using Help pull down menu.

3.4 Saving Your First Plan

Using the save as Dialog Box

Similar to any other software package operating in Windows environment, use Save as command
when you save your project for the first time. The save as dialog box you see, helps you identify
where you want your file saved and what the file name will be. Similar to the open dialog box,
the save as dialog box allows you to perform many functions other than just saving files such as
saving in other formats etc.

Using the Auto Save option

If you do not always remember to save your project files, you can have automatically save your
project files at regular intervals through auto save option. You can find the Auto Save option on
the Save tab of the Options dialog box in the Tools pull down menu shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11- Setting save options

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4.0 Creating Your Own Calendars

4.1 Project Calendars

There are two types of project calendars in MS Project: base calendar and resource calendars.
Base calendar designates working days, working hours, holidays for the project in general
whereas different resource calendars can be assigned for different resources depending on their
availability. Information contained in these calendars and activity durations are then used to
establish a project schedule.

Let us create a new base calendar called ABC calendar having 6 day working week (through
Monday to Saturday) with 8.00am-12.30pm and 1.30pm-5.30pm as working hours. Follow these
steps. You can do this by two methods.

Method 1- using project guide

1. Activate task pane.
2. Click Define general working time in the task pane.
3. Click forward arrow of the Project working times pane several times until you see Project
calendar is set. (Note: if you need to modify an existing base calendar to suit your project,
do not click the forward arrow but follow the instructions.)
4. Click Define additional calendars link in the Project working times pane.
5. Click Create new calendar choice, click save and go to step 2.
6. Type Level 2 as the name of your new calendar in the space given, click save and go to step
3.
7. Follow the instructions, click save and go to step 4.
8. Select Change working times. Change working time pop up menu appears.
9. Select all the headers from Monday to Saturday to select all the working days. Type times in
the From and To boxes to indicate your new working hours. You may also set any specific
working day or days to non working or vice versa. For example, if you want to give a week
holiday during New Year (say from 13th to 20th April), select these days as non working
days, and click save and finish.

Method 2- using menu bar

1. Select Change working Time command from the Tools Pull down menu. You will see a
Change working time pop up form.
2. Click the New button, you will see another pop up form Create a New Base Calendar (see
Fig. 17)
3. Type in the name of the calendar you need to create (say ABC Calendar).
4. Select make a copy of Standard Calendar to avoid creating your calendar from scratch.
5. Click OK to create a new Level 2 as a copy of Standard Calendar.
6. Select Saturday header to select all the Saturdays. Make it a working day by clicking non
default working time.
7. Select all the headers from Monday to Saturday to select all the working days. Type times in
the From and To boxes to indicate your new working hours. You may also set any specific
working day or days to non working or vice versa. For example, if you want to give a week
holiday during New Year (say from 13th to 20th April), select these days as non-working days
so that Project won’t schedule tasks on those days.
8. Click OK. You have now created a new base calendar called PA Calendar (see Fig. 13).

[WARNING Calendar settings affect every aspect of the project, and changes to the base working
times later in the project cycle aren’t fully reflected in tasks that have already been assigned
resources].

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Figure 12 – Modifying your base calendar

Changing the working times (by creating or modifying calendar) doesn’t necessarily change the
working hours in a day. For example, if you define fixed start or finish date for your project, or if
you type in a date for an individual task to start or finish, and you do not include the time of the
day with the date, MS Project adds the default start time to any start date entry and default end
time for any finish date entry. This feature will create nuisance for you if the default values do
not match the actual start and end settings of your Level 2. Therefore, you also need to change
the Hours Per Day and Hours Per Week calendar options (if you have not already done that as
described in Session 1). To do this click the Options button in the Change working Times
dialog box to jump to the Calendar tab in the Options dialog box (see Fig. 14).

You want to make sure that the Calendar options are in sync with your calendars, The Hours Per
Day option determines how Project 2003 converts durations. If Hours per Day is 8, then 2 days is
converted to 16 hours. When Hours per Day is set to 10, Project converts 2 days to 20 hours.
Hours per Week and Days per Month are also used to convert durations.

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Figure 13 – Level 2 Calendar with specific settings

Figure 14 – Change working time dialog box for default settings

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After you set working and non-working days, and change the calendar options (if-necessary),
close both dialog boxes.

In addition to the Standard default Calendar we discussed in Session 1, there are two other base
calendars available in MS Project, 24 hour Calendar and Night shift Calendar. 24 Hours Base
calendar, shown in Fig. 20, runs around the clock from Sunday through Saturday, 12:00 am to
12:00 pm. This calendar is typically assigned to non-human resources such as a press that runs 24
hours a day, or to a resource group such as Security that covers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Figure 15 – 24 hour calendar

Night Shift Base calendar, shown in Fig. 16, includes working times from Monday night through
Saturday morning, 11:00 pm to 8:00 am, with a break from 3:00 am to 4:00 am.

Figure 16 – Night shift calendar

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5.0 Gantt Chart (Bar Chart) View

By now you are somewhat familiar with the basic Gantt Chart View as you have been using it to
enter activity details, establish activity relationships and also experiment with some formatting
commands during your Session 1 assignments. You can format the Gantt chart to display
information in a number of ways.

5.1 Viewing the critical path

By default you cannot see the critical path in the Gantt Chart. This is because, in MS Project
2003, Gantt Chart view has not been designed to represent Critical Path. You can see this if you
select Bar Styles command from the Format menu while you are in the Gantt Chart View. You
will notice that it has all the other styles for bars to represent different types of activities but not
critical tasks. You can change this manually (by defining how to represent a critical bar in Bar
Styles).

Manual formatting
To view the Critical Path in the Gantt Chart follow these steps.

1. Select Bar Styles in the Format menu when you are in the Gantt Chart View.
2. Go to the bottom of the Bar Styles and define how you would like to represent critical
tasks.
• Type Critical under name.
• Define your bar style ( the shape, pattern and colour) using the Bars page in the bottom
page of your window. Your defined bar style will appear in the Appearance field.
• Select Critical from the pull down list to indicate that you want tot define for Critical
Activities.
• Select Row 1 in the rows field to have your critical bar in line with other bars.
• Select Start for the From Field and Finish for the To field to show the critical path for
the entire project.
• Click OK to accept. You will see your critical path in the way you defined.

Using Gantt Chart wizard

You can also see critical path using the Gantt Chart wizard, a feature that leads you through step
by step process to format the Gantt Chart the way you want. Follow the under mentioned steps:
1. Call up Gantt Chart wizard by selecting Gantt Chart wizard from one of the following
ways:
a. Using Format pull down menu
b. By clicking the Gantt Chart Wizard button from the Tool bar (if not seen use
Tool bar option button of the Standard tool bar).
c. By clicking Change the look or content of the Gantt Chart from the Report
pull down menu of the Project Guide.
2. Follow the instructions on the screen (see Figure 17 for a Gantt Chart with critical tasks).

5.2 Formatting Gantt Chart

You have a portfolio of Formatting commands under Format pull down Menu to format your
Gantt Chart to look the way you want. Let us discuss the important ones. You can experiment
with the other ones to familiarise yourself to various formatting features.

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Figure 17- Gantt chart view

Layout

Fig 18 shows the Gantt Chart layout page you will see when you select the Layout
command from the Format pull down menu. You can see that this page can be used to
modify the way arrows are indicated in the Bar Chart (or avoid arrows), change the data
format, bar heights etc.

Figure 18 Gantt chart layout page

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Time scale
You can change the way the time scale appears using the Time Scale command in the
Format menu ( see Fig 19). Using this page you can set one of the three time scale options
and change your format of each time scale and the way the non working time is
represented etc.

Figure 19 -Time scale formatting page of Gantt chart

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6.0 PERT Chart/Network Diagram

MS Project facilitates displaying your network in Precedence notation. It does not support
activity- on-arrow notation. You can view your project network by selecting Network Diagram
from the View pull down menu or using Select a view or report from the Report pull down
menu of the Project guide tool bar. See Fig.20 for part of the Network Diagram of Hingula
Bridge Project.

Figure 20 – Part of the Network diagram of Hingula Bridge project

6.1 Formatting your PERT Chart/Network Diagram

Change Box Styles

You can change the Box styles of your PERT Chart/Network diagram using Box Styles command
in the Format menu while you are in the PERT Chart/Network Diagram View. Note that the
facilities available in the pull down menu change with the View you are in, although the Titles in
the pull down menu look the same. See Fig. 21 for the Box styles page. The information
contained in the activity boxes can be changed by choosing a specified template or by creating
your customised activity box (use Format command in the menu bar and select Box command
and then More Templates). You can also change the appearance of boxes (use Format
command in the menu bar and select Box Styles).

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Figure 21 – Box Styles page of PERT Chart/Network Diagram

PERT Chart/Network Layout

Fig. 22 shows the Layout Page of the Format Command. With this page you can facilitate manual
repositioning of your individual activity boxes or selected activity boxes to produce a neat
Network diagram. It can also be used to change the way the relationship arrows are indicated in
your diagram.

Figure 22 – Layout Page in the Format Menu of PERT Chart/Network Diagram

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7.0 Building an Advanced Project

By now you are familiar with creating a simple project and viewing project information using
several Views. Let us now build on our project by adding activities, grouping them into sub
projects, defining recurrent activities and so forth which are common in any advanced project.

7.1 Types of Tasks

A project usually consists of four major types of tasks:

• Subtasks (or normal tasks): These are smaller tasks that roll up into a summary task (or
subprojects). They do not have sub tasks under them. These are the type of tasks we have
been using so far.
• Summary tasks (or sub projects): These are tasks that contain subtasks. Microsoft Project
automatically summarises the durations and costs related to subtasks into the summary task.
• Recurring tasks: These are tasks that occur at regular intervals during the course of the
project—a project review meeting, for example.
• Milestones: These are tasks that usually have no duration and mark the commencement,
completion of a significant phase of the project.

7.2 Editing Your Tasks

Moving and Copying Tasks

Being able to change the order of tasks is essential to effectively organize a project. In
MS project, you can move and copy tasks by using the traditional cut/copy and paste, or
drag and drop.

Inserting and Deleting Tasks

To insert a task, select the row below where you want the new task by clicking the row number.
Choose New Task command from the Insert pull down menu, or right-click and choose New
Task from the short-cut menu. If you want to insert multiple rows, select the number of rows you
want to insert by clicking the first row number and dragging to select additional rows.

To delete entire tasks, select the row or rows you want to delete, and choose Delete Task from the
Edit pull down menu or press the Delete key on the keyboard. You can also choose Clear from
the Edit menu to delete tasks or parts of tasks. The Clear menu has options for clearing formats,
contents, notes, hyperlinks, or the entire task.

Entering Milestones

Milestones are tasks that usually have no duration and mark the commencement or a completion
of a significant phase of the project. To create a milestone, reduce the duration of the task to 0.
Project immediately converts the task to a milestone by changing the task bar in the Gantt Chart
to a black diamond with the date above it. This is because we have formatted the Bar Chart to
shoe the Mile stone that way. If you wish to see the format, Choose Format in the Gantt Chart
and select Bar Styles. Make it a habit to use Milestones to mark important phases of every
project you create. These Milestones can be set using Advanced page of the Task Information
dialog box.

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7.3 Working with Subtasks and Subprojects (Summary Tasks)

MS Project facilitates the use of subtasks to describe many levels of detail in a complex project.
When you break down main activities to subtasks, they appear indented below the main task.
Then you can look at the project in different levels of detail: all tasks, just main tasks, or some
combination. You can have any number of outline levels.

In order to do this you can adopt either top down approach (where you enter broad activities or
summary tasks first) or bottom up approach (where you enter all tasks first and add summary
tasks later). Top down approach is better because with that you can easily add details to a project
until its completion. For example, consider expanding ‘Roof Construction’ activity in our
example into two activities – Roof structure work, Roof covering. Follow these steps.

1. Select the activity row just below the Roof construction activity.
2. Insert 2 rows to accommodate your two subtasks using Insert New Task described earlier.
3. Type in the information about the two sub tasks (names, durations etc.).
4. In order to make them subtasks of Roof construction, select the two subtasks and click the
Indent (right arrow) button in the Format tool Bar. This will bring all three subtasks under
the task Roof construction. This task changes to a sub project or a summary task.
5. In a properly designed sub project you cannot have links appearing between individual
subtasks and tasks outside the sub project. So you need to modify the links by clicking the
appropriate links if you have such links.

Fig. 23 shows a completed summary task.

Figure 23 – Creating subtasks and Summary tasks

You can see a negative (–) sign in the Foundations activity to indicate that the summary task is
expanded. You can collapse this to hide all the sub tasks by clicking the – sign in front of the
activity or that appears in the Format tool bar when the subproject you want to collapse is
highlighted. This way you can display only the required details in your View.

When the summary task is collapsed the – sign changes to a plus (+) sign to indicate that the
summary task has sub tasks not shown. Click this button or the + button in the Format tool Bar
when you need to expand the summary task.

Outlining features we have used above have several advantages:

• Create multiple levels of subtasks that all roll up into a summary task
• Collapse and expand summary tasks so that you can focus on specific phases of the project
• Move, copy, or delete entire groups of tasks.

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• Apply WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) numbering

As you have already seen, the Outlining tools shown below occupy the space on the left end of
the Formatting toolbar

The major activities related to outlining involve demoting (indenting) and promoting (outdenting)
tasks to create summary tasks and subtasks. You can have multiple levels of subtasks. When you
demote a task to a subtask, the task above it becomes a summary task. You can no longer edit the
data related to that task. As a summary task, it derives its values from its subtasks. The Start Date,
for example, is determined by the earliest Start Date of any of its subtasks. Its Finish Date is the
latest Finish Date of its subtasks. The duration of a summary task is the total of all its subtasks’
durations.

You can also use the Show menu to display the outline levels that you
want to see and to show all the tasks without having to go through each
one to display the sub-tasks. Click the Show button to access the menu
of choices.

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8.0 Understanding and Defining Resources

As we already know, project resources are defined as individuals, teams, facilities, equipment,
supplies, and materials needed to complete a project. Without resources, the tasks outlined in the
project could never be accomplished. All construction projects we carry out generally require
detailed tracking of all the resources used in the project to achieve project goals of timely
completion within estimated cost with required quality standards.

8.1 Determining Types of Resources

Resources fall into two categories for use in Project: work resources and material resources.
Work resources are the people and equipment assigned to work on a project. Work resources
complete tasks by expending time (or work) on the task.

Material resources, on the other hand, are supplies, stock, or other consumable items used to
complete tasks in the project. Now, for the first time in MS Project 2003, you can track material
resources and assign them to tasks.

To determine the types of resources you need in the project, review the project scope and task list
to see what the project requires. Following questions will be helpful to identify the resources:

• What type of people do you need to complete the tasks?

• Will individuals be assigned to the project?
• Are teams or departments responsible for certain tasks?
• Will you be using outside vendors or contractors?
• Are there classes of workers (masons, carpenters, for example) that can be used
interchangeably?
• What facilities and equipment do you need?
• Does the project require that you schedule certain facilities: a computer lab, conference
rooms, or factories, for example?
• Will equipment need to be scheduled, such as cranes, backhoes, dump trucks or other
machinery and equipment?
• What consumable materials will you use during the course of the project? Does the project
require building products, a special kind of material, parts to be assembled, or other material
goods?

If you are uncertain about the answers to these questions, review the project specifications,
consult with others who have completed similar projects, and review old project reports. If similar
projects do not exist within your organization, talk with supervisors and other leaders about
specific aspects of the project and to hear educated guesses about the types of resources you will
need. In construction you will identify all the resources needed during pre-tender planning when
you develop method statement.

8.2 Mapping out the Necessary Resource Quantities

After ascertaining the resource identities, you need to consider how much of each resource you
need for each task. The quantity of resources, in most cases, is decided considering the project
goals such as completion times and availability of resources.

For the purpose of working in Project 2003, it is necessary to think of work resources in terms of
time (such as minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years) and to think of material resources
in terms of units of measurement (such as pounds, boxes, cubic feet, tons, and dozens).

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8.3 Obtaining Resources

After you determine the types of resources you need and the approximate quantities, you have to
consider where or how you will obtain the resources. Answer the following questions to
determine where and how you will obtain the resources:

• If you are using staff within your organization, will they be assigned to the project as
individuals or as a class of workers? In other words, will you have to consider each
individual’s work schedule and time commitments, or will you be using a secretarial pool
in which all the individuals share a common schedule and work is divided according to
availability?
• Will another department or team be handling certain tasks so that you don’t have to
delineate specific people in the resource list?
• Will you be contracting with external workers for some of the tasks? If so, will you pay
them by the hour or on a flat-fee basis? If you are paying them a flat fee, you may be able
to identify them as a material resource because you are not concerned about the amount of
work it takes them to complete the assigned tasks.
• Does your organization own the equipment and facilities you need; or do they need to be
purchased, rented, or leased?
• How and from where will you obtain other material resources? Will they be delivered or
does one of your resources have to go and pick them up? If you’re responsible, you may
want to account for the time involved in the pickup and delivery of the materials
resources.

8.4 Preparing to Enter Resource Information into Your Project

After you determine what kinds of resources you need, how much of each resource you need for
individual activities, and where you will obtain your resources, you are now ready to begin
creating a draft resource list for your project. You can enter resources into your project in three
ways:

• Create a resource list within your project.

• Share the resource list created in another project.
• Share resources with other projects from a resource pool.

A shared resource pool is a master list of resources that is shared among multiple projects in an
organization. By using a resource pool, you can schedule work resources across projects. But for
the time being, let us assume that we create a list of resources within our project to be used.

9.0 Assignment of Resources

Information about resources is maintained in a resource pool that can be used by all tasks in one
or more projects. Typically this information consists of resource names, resource calendars,
standard and overtime costs, accrual methods and other identifying information such as groups,
initials and codes which will be described later. There are many ways to enter resource
information in MSP but basically there are three aspects: (1) Creating a resource, (2) Setting
resource information, (3) Assigning a resource to a task.

You can create work resources in Microsoft Project in several ways:

• Using Assign Resources dialog box.

• Using Resource Sheet.

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• Using Resource Information dialog box.

• Enter resource details using Resources Form.
• Add resources automatically as you assign them.
• Using resources pull down menu of the Project Guide.

We will discuss only the methods which are commonly used in resource management.

9.1 Using Assign Resources Dialog Box

This is a quick way to create and assign resources at the same time. Follow these steps:

1. Click the activity name for which you want to assign resources.
2. Click the Assign Resource button in the standard tool bar while you are in the Gantt Chart
view to open the Assign Resources dialog box (see Fig. 24)
3. Type the resource name and number of units. You may enter more than one resource.
4. Click the green tick in the resource header to assign resources to activity.

The disadvantage of this method is that it does not permit to identify the maximum number of
resources you have in your resource pool and to define resource details such as their unit costs,
the resource calendars etc. Of course you can enter them later using Resource Sheet or Resource
Information dialog box described below. This process therefore might be a bit troublesome.

Figure 24 – Resource assignment dialog box

9.2 Using the Resource Sheet

The Resource Sheet is the primary means of defining both work and material resources. It creates
your resource pool specifically for your project or to be shared by other projects in your company.
You enter a variety of information about resources in the Resource Sheet (see Fig. 25 for a
resource sheet). Use the Resource Sheet to:

• Enter resources for a project

• Set up the pay rates and characteristics of resources
• Group related resources so you can track data by groups

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To enter resources using the Resource Sheet or to enter additional information on existing
resources, follow these steps:

1. Click View pull down menu and select Resource Sheet, or choose Resource Sheet from
the View bar.
2. Choose View, Table and then Entry to make sure that the Entry form is displayed.
3. In the Resource Name field, type a resource name.
4. Press Tab to move to the next field.
5. Complete entry in the fields using the field descriptions found in Table 1.

Figure 25 – Resource Sheet with Entry Table

Table 1 – Description of Resource Sheet fields

Field Data Type Description

ID Number The identifier assigned to the resource.
Type Text What kind of resource is it: Work or Material
Material Label Text The unit of measurement for a material, resource: tons, pounds,
items, gross, etc.
Initials Text Initials to represent the resource name
Group Text Assign a group name that you can give to similar resources to
indicate the category of resource (for example: programmer,
computer equip., marketing, etc). You can use department names
or codes, job titles or job types, or accounting codes for billing.
Entering a group allows you to display, sort, filter, or edit
resources by the resource group.
Max Units Percentage/Number The maximum percentage or number of units that represent the
maximum capacity for which a work resource is available to
accomplish any tasks during the current time period.
Std. Rate Currency Rate of pay per time unit for regular non-overtime work.
(Standard The standard time unit is hour; to -enter a different time
Rate) period, include a forward slash and the unit. For example,
Rs500/d or Rs2500/w

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Ovt. Rate Currency Rate of pay per time unit for over time hours. Be sure to
(Overtime enter a rate here, even if the rate is the same as the standard
Rate) rate. Otherwise, Project
will calculate overtime hours at Rs.0.00 per hour.
Cost/Use Currency Cost that accrues each time you use a resource. For
example, if a resource charges a set fee instead of an hourly
rate, you would include that fee in this field. Or enter a set
delivery charge for delivering a material resource.
Accrue At Enumerated Choose Start, End, or Prorated to show when charges
accrue for a resource. The default is Prorated, which applies
the costs as the resource is used
Base Calendar Enumerated Choose which calendar—Standard, 24 Hours, or Night
Shift—serves as the default calendar for the resource. You
can adjust the calendar for the individual resource (see “Set
Working Times from Resources,” later in this chapter), but
it is still related to a base calendar.

Code Text An open field to enter any additional code you want to use
to classify a resource. It could include a cost center number,
department number etc.

Defining Max Units

In Project, work resources are assigned a percentage or number to represent the maximum units
the resource has for the project. If someone, for example, is available to work on a project full-
time, then they would be assigned a maximum unit of 100%. If they were only assigned to your
project on a half-time basis, you would assign them a max unit of 50%. Three full-time concreters
with similar skills in concreting provide 300% of a concreter resource.

Because the Max Units field is a based on a calendar, the Max Units field is not used for material
resources. Material resources are measured in assignment units (for example, tons or tons per day)
and are set when the assignment is made. For more about assigning assignment units to tasks, see
“Assigning Resources to Tasks,” later.

9.3 Using the Resource Information Dialog Box

You can enter additional information about each resource by opening the Resource Information
dialog box, shown in Fig. 26. The dialog box consists of four tabs, described in which you can list
more detailed data and include exception data, such as availability profile, different rates for a
resource etc.

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Figure 26 – Resource Information dialog box

Entering Resource Availability

The Resource Availability table on the General tab of the Resource Information dialog box (see
Fig. 26) can set the availability profile for a resource if it differs from the Project Start or Finish
Date. By default, the Start and Finish date of the project is designated by NA in the Available
From and Available To fields.

Leave NA in the field to indicate that the resource is available from the Start Date or until the
Finish Date of the project. If the resource is available from the start of the project but not until the
end, leave NA in the Available From field and vice versa. Enter specific dates that relate only to
the resource, not to the proposed start or finish date for the project. This prevents problems from
occurring if the project’s start/finish date changes—the dates you entered would no longer corre-
spond to the current start or finish date.

If maximum units will change during the life of the project, enter each time period with a different
value for maximum units on a separate row of the table in chronological order.

Assign more than one rate to a resource

The rates you type in the Resource Sheet when you create your resource list is the default rate that
is normally applicable to a particular resource. However, there can be situations where the same
resource will require different rates (or payment schedules) for different types of work. For
example, the rate applicable to a mason when he does plastering will be different to the rate
applicable for tiling. MS Project can accommodate different rates for the same resource and
applies the correct rate when assigned. Double click the relevant resource description in the
Resource Sheet to retrieve Resource Information dialog box and then select the costs page.
What you have already entered in the resource sheet is the default one under A. You may provide
up to 5 different rates per resource. Enter as a rate or percentage increase from the previous one.

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9.4 Assigning Resources to Tasks

Once you have defined all the resources using Resource Sheet or Resource Information Dialog
Box you can enter resources to individual tasks. We have already seen creating and assigning
resources using Resource Assignment dialog box and its limitations. The best and the
recommended way to assign resources to tasks is using Task Information dialog box we used to
enter activity relationships. Do this as follows.

1. Call up Task Information dialog box by double clicking the activity in the Gantt Chart or
using the Standard tool bar.
2. Click Resource tab to call up resource assignment form.
3. Click the down arrow in the Resource name field to see the pop up resource list and select one
resource to be assigned for the task you have selected.
4. Enter the number of Units. Depending on how you have set the assignment information, the
units will be decimal or percentage. As discussed earlier, a decimal value is the number of
workers assigned for the task. For example, if you assign 2.5, it means that the task uses 2.5
workers full time or in other words, two workers will be working full time and the other
worker will be working 50% of the time leaving other 50% to be used for another task (see
Fig. 27). If you enter as a percentage it will be 250%. You can change this setting by using
Options command in the Tools menu and selecting Schedule tab (see Fig. 28)
5. Enter all the required resources for the selected activity in the subsequent rows.
6. Click OK once you have entered all the resources including work type and material type.
7. Follow the same procedure for all the activities in your project.

Figure 27 – Assigning resources using Task Information dialog box

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Figure 28– The Options page in the Tools menu

Control when a resource starts working on a task

When you initially assign resources to a task MS Project assumes by default that each resource
begins working on the task from the task’s start date. However, there can be situations where
some resources may be required from the task’s start date but others may be required sometime
later. For example, the task construction of bridge deck will need resources like crane only during
placing bridge beams and not during other times.

With MS Project you can specify exactly when a resource begins working on a task (or a specific
period in which you need the resource) when you have assigned multiple resources or even one
resource to a task. These changes are automatically incorporated in the resource schedules.

To do this you can use Window menu in the Gantt Chart view, then Spilt command, select the
relevant task name, activate bottom pane (by clicking anywhere on it), display Resource Schedule
using the Details command in the Format menu, then enter the specific dates within which you
need the resource (see Fig. 29)

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Figure 29 – Fine Tuning Your Resources

9.5 Resource Graph View

Once you have assigned resources to tasks you can view resource utilisation throughout the
project using the Resource Graph View. To do this, select Resource Graph from the View pull
down menu. Fig. 30 shows the Resource Histogram of skilled workers of Hingula Bridge with
peak units throughout the project.

Exploring Resource Graph View

The Resource Graph View is an extremely important view as it provides key information for a
Project Manager with regard to resource demand, availability, utilisation, over allocation, peaks
periods etc. which are vital for decision making.

The Horizontal scroll bar on the bottom left of the view is used to change the resource or switch
the histogram to another resource where as the scroll bar on the right hand bottom is used to scan
through the entire project duration.

What you see in Fig 30 is the peak units or demand of masons throughout the project. You can
change the information displayed in this view to suit your requirements using the Format
command we described for other views. As you can see in Fig. 30 under Format, Details, you
can review resource profiles or histograms with other very useful information for your resources
such as number of hours working, cumulative work, resource over allocation, percentage
allocation, remaining availability, resources costs, cumulative costs, work availability and unit
availability.

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Figure 30 – Resource Histogram with formatting capabilities

10.0 Viewing Cost and Usage Information

Once the resources are assigned for individual tasks, MSP uses task duration and resource
information (number assigned and resource rates) to calculate individual task costs. These
resources include both work type resources and material type resources. These task costs are then
used to establish project costs. Once you have assigned resources to tasks it is therefore possible
to see assignment and cost information in a variety of Views and Reports. Let us now see some
of the views.

10.1 Gantt Chart View with Cost Information

Fig. 31 shows the Gantt chart View with Cost Table. All what you need to do is to display the
Gantt Chart View and select the Table: Cost from the View pull down menu. You will notice
that the total cost is established with the task duration and resource information. Remaining cost
is the same as the total cost and the actual cost is zero as your project has not started yet.
Variance is the total cost and the baseline cost is zero as we have not set a baseline yet (see later).

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Figure 31 - Gantt Chart View with cost information

10.2 Entering Fixed Cost to Tasks

In addition to cost of work type resources and material resources, there can be further cost
components in activities which you know you have to spend but you cannot clearly attribute to a
particular resource. For example, insurance, licensing fees, or money you need to organise a
function for foundation laying ceremony. These can be best identified as a fixed cost attributable
to a task. We may not need to identify exact resources as we do not plan to schedule those
resources or to track their cost throughout the activity. You can enter these types of costs as
Fixed Cost of a task. Follow these steps if you need to enter fixed cost to tasks.

1. Clearly identify the value of the fixed cost you want to assign for different tasks.
2. Call up Gantt Chart View together with the Cost Table as we did earlier.
3. Enter respective fixed cost values under Fixed Cost column.

You will notice that as you enter fixed cost under tasks, the total cost changes because the total
cost of an activity is established as the cost of work type and material type resources and fixed
cost.

There are several other Views and Reports available in MS Project to display cost and schedule
information. We will see them later.

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11.0 Advanced Resource and Cost Management

11.1 Resource Over Allocations

As a good Project Manager you want to ensure that all your resources are fully occupied during
normal working hours without under or over utilisation. An under allocated resource will waste
your money and an over allocated resources will become a bottleneck. Often the biggest
challenge you have is that some resources are over allocated, i.e. it is assigned to do more hours of
work in a given time than available according to the resource calendar. In these situations you
have to fine-tune the resource assignments to resolve over allocations.

By default MS Project looks at over allocations on a day-by-day basis. For example, if a resource
with 8 working hours per day is assigned to work 10 hours in one day then MS Project will
identify it as over allocated on that day. If you wish you can choose to look at over allocations
within a different time period, such as week-by-week. Then if a resource has 40 available hours
per week, MS Project will indicate over allocation only if the total number of working hours
assigned for the resource in one week period exceeds 40 hrs. For instance you can assign resource
to work 6,12,8,10, 4 per day without tripping the over allocation alarm. If you want to change
this setting follow the steps.

1. On the Tools pull down menu select Resource Levelling to display Resource Levelling
dialog box.
2. Change the setting to what you want using down arrow in Look for over allocation field.

Strategies for Resolving Over-allocations

Resource over-allocations can be resolved using three strategies, which you can use singly, or in
combination.

• Adjust task properties

• Change assignments
• Modify a resource’s working time

Before you act to resolve a resource over-allocation, be aware of possible trade offs, such as
project taking longer. Decreasing the percentage of resource units assigned to a critical task, for
example, may correspondingly increase the task’s duration. If this also makes the finish date later
than required, you may have to use other strategies to resolve over-allocation although sometimes
this may be the only option.

Locating an Over-allocation

Before you can resolve over-allocations, you must find out which resources are over-allocated,
when they are over-allocated, and what tasks they are assigned to at those times. Follow these
steps to locate over-allocations and their task assignments.

1. On the View Bar or View pull down menu, click More Views.
2. In the Views list, click Resource Allocation, and then click Apply.
3. On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Resource Management.
4. In the top pane, click the heading of the Resource Name field.
5. Click Go To Next Over-allocation button in the Resource Management tool bar. The next
task under the next over-allocated resource is highlighted in the Resource Name field.
6. In the top pane, look at the time scale to see whether the resource is over-allocated (red colour
if over allocated).
7. In the bottom pane, loot at the time scale to see the tasks that occur on the over-allocated
dates.

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If you just want to see whether a resource is over-allocated without other details, you can simply
look at the Resource Sheet View. Over-allocated resources appear in red colour.

If you want to see over allocated resources together with over-allocation period without the task
details you can view, Resource Graph View and then click Next over-allocation button in the
Resource Management toolbar.

11.2 Resolving Over Allocations by Task Adjustments

When you do not have extra resources but have the flexibility to reschedule tasks that are
contributing to over allocations, you can overcome the problem by adjusting tasks. There are
several options.

Delay a task manually

By delaying tasks manually one at a time, you can exactly see how the delay affects the project
schedule and how the over allocations are resolved. Remember, delaying a task will not only
delay the task you delay but its successors as well. Thus, you may want to delay a task only
within its total float. This way you have the total control of your schedule and you can delay only
the activities you want. This is difficult and time consuming if you have several over allocations
but very suitable if you have only a few over allocations (see Fig. 32). Follow these steps to delay
a task manually.

Figure 32 – Resolving over-allocations manually

1. Locate the resource over-allocation together with the affected tasks in the Resource
Allocation View as we did earlier.
2. Identify the tasks affected by the resource over-allocation and decide which task(s) can be
shifted.

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3. In the Levelling Delay field, type the duration by which you want to delay the task. To avoid
delaying successor tasks, enter a value within its float. You can see the total float for a task
by inserting the Total Slack field into the Levelling Gantt view in the bottom pane.
4. Press ENTER. The amount of delay and float for a task are indicated by thin lines next to
task.
5. If the resource is still over-allocated, increase the delay value.

Delay tasks automatically

You can instruct MS Project to delay tasks automatically if you want to resolve one or number of
over allocated resources all at once. This may delay commencement of one or several activities,
even critical activities (thus delaying the project completion) and can sometimes split certain tasks
in your schedule until the resource over allocation is satisfied. Automatic resource levelling is
always faster but can result in unacceptable schedules since you do not have much flexibility
unlike manual levelling. However, you can control automatic resource levelling to some extent
by (a) specifying a period within which levelling should be performed, (b) specifying only a
particular resource to level as against to all the resources, (c) instructing to level only within
activity floats, (d) instructing not to delay specified tasks, (e) instructing not to split specified
tasks and (e) prioritising tasks to indicate which tasks should be delayed first.

You can do automatic levelling even if you schedule your project from Finish date. In this case
you will get negative delay values for activities causing the task or resource assignment to finish
earlier.

Automatic levelling might not result in the best solution to your problem because MS Project can
follow only a limited set of fixed rules. It can’t do creative things such as substitute a resource or
change the task duration. Only you know the subtleties of your schedule, hence you should
always review the changes. You can review the changes on the Levelling Gantt View. If you do
not like the changes you can remove them at any time. Follow these steps to do automatic
levelling.

1. On the Tools menu. Click Resource Levelling to display Resource Levelling dialog box (see
Fig. 33)

Figure 33 - Resource Levelling Dialog Box

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2. Click Manual to level resource only when you click the Level Now button. Note that it is not
for manual levelling we carried out earlier.
3. In the Look for over-allocations on a basis box, select the time period to check over-
allocations.
4. Under, Levelling range for, select whether you want entire project levelled or only those
tasks falling within a specific time period.
5. In the Levelling Order box, click one of the following levelling orders.
• Click ID only to check tasks in the ascending order of their ID before considering other
levelling criteria to determine which tasks to level. (This is generally meaningless as ID
does not indicate any priority to assign resources).
• Click Standard to check tasks in the order of their predecessor dependencies, slack,
dates, priority and then task constraints.
• Click Priority, Standard to check tasks’ priorities to be levelled before considering
predecessor dependencies, slack dates and then task constraints.
6. To prevent finish date of your project being moved out, select, Level only within available
slack check box.
7. To have levelling adjust when a resource works on a task independent of other resources
working on the same task, select the Levelling can adjust individual assignments on a task
check box. When a task priority is set to Do Not Level, MSP will skill that task.
8. To interrupt tasks by creating splits in the remaining work on tasks or resource assignments,
select the Levelling can create splits in remaining work check box.
9. Click Level Now.

Immediately after levelling you can undo the action if you don’t get the results you want. To do
this, on the Edit menu, click Undo Levelling. To remove the effect of only the last levelling
operation, click Clear Levelling in the Resource Levelling dialog box.

If you have tasks that you prefer not to delay unless absolutely necessary, you can select the order
in which MSP delays tasks with over-allocated resources. You do this by assigning higher
priority to urgent tasks that should start as early as possible. To do this follow these steps:

1. On the View Bar, click More Views.

2. In the View list, click Levelling Gantt, and then click Apply.
3. In the Task Name field, select task that have over-allocated resources.
4. Click Task Information and the General tab.
5. In the priority box, click priority for this task based on the order in which you want MSP to
level tasks, and click OK.
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 for each task with over allocated resources.
7. On the Tools menu, click Resource Levelling.
8. In the Levelling order box, click Priority, Standard.
9. Click, Level Now.

11.3 Resolving Over Allocations by Adjusting Resource Assignments

MS Project also allows you to resolve resource over allocations by assigning extra resources or
shifting resources from one task to another. This is an obvious solution if you have more
resources. When you combine adjusting tasks with changing assignments you have a very
powerful antidote for over allocation. Be aware, however, that some of the methods you use to
resolve over allocations may cause task durations, and perhaps the project duration to increase.
There are several ways to change assignments to overcome over allocations.

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Shift resources

One way is to shift resources from non-critical tasks to critical tasks as long as this does not
inadvertently change the non-critical tasks into critical tasks. In order to do this you need to find
non-critical activities or activities having float. To see activity floats, select Schedule Table from
the View menu while you are in the Gantt Chart View. In the table component, you will have
two fields, total slack and free slack in addition to other fields. Clearly, zero total slack indicates
critical activities, negative total slack indicates that there is a scheduling conflict.

You can also see total slack graphically in the Detailed Gantt View. To do this on the View
menu, select More Views, then select Detailed Gantt in the View list and select Apply.

Reassign resources to work part-time

You may be able to resolve over allocations by reassigning resources to work part-time. This
method is suitable when you do not want to reschedule any of the assigned tasks or remove
resources altogether from any of the tasks. Follow these steps to reassign a resource to work part
time.

1. Display the Resource page of the Task Information dialog Box as you did earlier. (double
click the Task Name in the relevant task to obtain Task Information dialog box and select
Resources tab.
2. In the name field, select the resource you want to assign part-time.
3. In the Units field, enter the percentage of time the resource is assigned to work on the task.
4. Click OK.

Reassign under allocated resources

You can also use under allocated resources to tasks that are scheduled to be completed by over
allocated resources. This method is suitable when there are resources with available time who are
qualified to perform some of the tasks of the over allocated resources.

Modify a resource’s working time

When you can’t adjust tasks or change resource assignment to over come resource over
allocations you can still resolve over allocations by increasing working time of resources. This is
however, recommended as a last resort and is done by increasing the working time in the
resource’s calendar or by adding another work shift. This aspect was discussed earlier.

Resource Contouring

Resource contouring is allocation of resources to closely match the way the resources are used by
tasks. MS Project by default has a flat contour, i.e. the allocated resources are required everyday
of the task duration. However, it is possible to free up the time of some resources by assigning
them to their tasks to match the actual utilisation. There are eight pre-defined contours: flat, front
loaded, back loaded, double peak, early peak, late peak, bell and turtle.

To apply a resource contour for a task do the following.

1. On the View bar. Click the Task Usage or select Task Usage view from the View menu.
2. In the Task Name field, select the resource you want apply a preset work contour and double
click to Display Assignment Information dialog box, and then select General tab.
3. In the Work Contour box, select the contour pattern you want from the down arrow.
4. To change the start and finish dates for the resource assignment, click the new dates in the
Start and Finish boxes.

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12.0 Viewing the Project Information Using Views, Tables and Filters

Your MS Project database that you build up when you develop a project plan contains vast
amount of information, but you usually work with only a portion of it at any given time. MS
Project makes your data accessible for all your needs through Views, Tables and Filters.

12.1 Views

A view displays a subset of information from the database, in a particular format. You can enter,
edit and display information in most views. By choosing a variety of views you can look at the
same project information in different ways as you organise your project, schedule tasks and
resources, and track progress. You can even put two views together and form a combination
view.

With MS Project you can easily switch from one view to another as you have already seen. You
can modify information using tables and filters. Predefined views in MS Project include formats
traditionally used by Project Managers such as Gantt chart and PERT Chart but you can create
your own views too. MS Project views can be grouped into two major groups: task views and
resource views. Task views are used to work with tasks and resource views are used to work with
resources. Tasks and resource views are further divided to Sheets, Charts, Graphs, and Forms.
There are 20 standard task views and 6 resource views in MS Project.

Sheets: Sheets offer the best way to view text-based information about your project. A Sheet
View displays task or resource information in columns and rows just like a spreadsheet, for
example, Resource Sheet that you saw earlier.

Charts and Graphs: They provide the optimal way of viewing graphically based information of
your project. Examples of Chart Views include, Calendar View, Bar Chart View you saw earlier.
The Resource Graph View you saw earlier is clearly a Graph View.

Forms: The best way to enter detailed information about tasks and resources is to use forms.
Forms are composed of editable areas called fields. You can click or tab to a field and enter just
the information that is relevant to the filed. Typically you use a form in conjunction with another
view providing a support role. It is a means of entering task and resource information. Often
Form view appears in the bottom pane of the window, while another view appears on the top
pane. The Task Form and Resource Form you saw earlier are clear examples.

Figure 48 – Changing Views using more Views Command

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12.2 Tables

Most of the views in MS Project has a table component in it to display different information
associated with the same view. For example, Gantt Chart view can be seen with different table
components such as entry, cost, schedule, tracking and so forth. There are 19 task tables (those
which can be applied to task views) and 8 resource tables (those which can be applied to resource
views) to obtain different information about your project.

In order to apply a table you want in a view, select More Tables from the View pull down menu,
select the table you wish and click Apply button (see Fig. 34). You will notice that as we did in
the Views, you can easily create a new Table component you wish or edit an existing table to
display the exact fields you want to display.

Figure 34 – Changing Table component in Task and Resource Views

12.3 Filters

If you want to see information about only tasks or resources that share certain characteristics, you
can apply a filter. You can also create your own filters or modify an existing filter to customise
your needs. MS Project has two major groups of filters: task filters which you apply to task views
and resource filters which are applicable to resource views. Within these groups there are three
more types: standard, interactive and auto filters.

A standard filter distinguishes tasks and resources based on one or more commonly used criteria,
such as display only critical tasks or display tasks for which actual cost is greater than the baseline
cost. Most MS Project filters are of this type.

An interactive filter prompts you for its filtering criteria. You enter either a value or a range of
values.

An autofilter, available only in sheet views, displays tasks or resources that match a criterion
associated with a specific column. Each column has one autofilter. For example, if you
select 2 days as the filtering criteria for the duration column, MS Project displays only the
activities with two days. MS Project has 32 task filters and 21 resource filters. You can
apply each task filter to any task view except the PERT Chart View.

The following list provides the details of available task filters and resource filters.

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To Apply a Normal Filter:

1. Select the View you want using View bar or View pull down menu as you did earlier
2. On the Project menu, point to Filtered for, and then click the filter you want to apply. To
apply a filter that does not appear on the Filtered for submenu or to apply a highlighting filter,
click More Filters.
3. In the Filters list, select the Filter you want and click Apply or Highlight to apply the filter or
highlighting filter.
4. If you apply an interactive filter, type the requested values and click OK.
5. To turn off the filter, on the Project menu, point to Filtered for, and then click All Tasks or
All Resources depending on the type of filter you have applied.

To Apply an Auto Filter:

In addition to Standard (Normal) filters, you can apply AutoFilters for each column in every sheet
view, except the indicators field. When you select a criteria from a column’s auto filter list MSP
displays only those tasks or resources that match the criteria you chose. If you select AutoFilters
for more than one field, you can narrow the information you view even further.

The AutoFilter in each column includes All and Custom in its criteria list in addition to filed
values. By clicking All (the default setting) you remove the filter criterion from the field. By
clicking custom you can create your own filter for that field.

To apply an AutoFilter:

• If the AutoFilters are not turned on, click AutoFilter.

• In the filed you want to apply an AutoFilter, click the arrow in the column heading, and then
click the value for which you want to filter the table.
• To filter for an additional condition based on a value in another filed, repeat the above step in
another filed.
• To filter one field for two values or to apply comparison operators other than Equals, click
the arrow in the column and then click Custom.
• To remove filtering on a specific column, click All in the AutoFilter list for that column.
• To turn off the AutoFilters, click AutoFilter again.

If you apply a particularly useful AutoFilter frequently, it may be faster to save it as a normal
filter. To do this, click the arrow in the column heading, click Custom, and then click Save.
Make any changes to the filter and then click OK.

You will notice that you can create your own filters or modify an existing Filter by selecting
More Filters from Filtered for, submenu in the Project menu.

12.4 Changing Look of Your Project

MS Project automatically applies an effective and eye-pleasing format to all views both on screen
and in print. However, if you are not happy about the default formats you can use MS Project’s
powerful formatting tools to modify your project plan. You can;

• Format texts including appearance of individual pieces of information and column headings in
sheets views.
• Format Gantt bars, changing their shapes and pattern, adding text to them, changing the look
of link lines and so on.
• Format time scales to view your project at the level of detail you want.
• Format gridlines, changing their colour, pattern, other characteristics.
• Sort a view so that information appears in an order that is useful to you.

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• Import graphics to your views etc.

You may experiment with formatting command in all the views.

13.0 Communication Through Reports

MS Project also provides a large number of standard reports providing you with all necessary
information a Project Manager requires during proper management of a project. It facilitates for
six report categories: Overview, Current Activities, Costs, Assignments, Workload and
Custom under each of these you have several report types (see Fig. 35).

Figure 35 – Report categories in MS Project

In order to access various report categories, select Reports from the View pull down menu. Each
of the first five reports types in Fig. 35 (i.e. Overview, Current activities, Costs, Assignments and
Work loads) has several other reports. In order to see the individual reports under these
categories, double click on a report category. For example, Fig. 36 shows the reports available
under Costs category.
In the sixth category of reports (i.e. Custom) you will see a list of all the reports which are
available including those in the other categories from which you can select any report you wish to
see (see Fig. 37).

Figure 36 – Reports available in Costs category

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Figure 37 – List of reports available in MS Project

This way you can select any of the 29 standard reports available in MS Project. You will notice
in Fig. 37 that you can edit an existing report to suit your requirements or to create a completely
new report with suitable names attached to them.
We will see some of the important reports later when we do displaying and printing in the
following section.

14.0 Printing and Reporting Project Information

Once you have created and refined your project as we did earlier, it contains all the information to
manage your project effectively. You will then want to communicate that information to other
members of your project team. With MS Project you can print specific project information that
meets the needs of a particular person or a group. To do this effectively, you choose a view or a
report that best meets your audience’s communication requirements. Then you can fine-tune the
layout, adjusting various page elements before you take printouts.

Both Views and Reports can be printed. They differ in the kinds of information they contain and
in how they display that information. Most often, a printed view includes only the information
that is displayed on the screen when you use the print command (including the parts you can see
with the scroll). A printed report on the other hand comprises a predefined set of detailed
information about a specific aspect of your plan.

14.1 Print a View

If you decide to print a view, it is a good idea to check the pages in the preview window first to
see how they will look like when printed. You can print sheet views, graph views, and most chart
views, in fact any view except form views and Task PERT View.

To Print a View:

• Display the view on the screen using View bar or View pull down menu as we did earlier.
• On the File menu, click Print Preview to preview the printed output.
• If you are happy about the preview, on the preview, click Print or on the file menu click
Print.
• Select the printing options you want and then click OK.
You can cancel printing at any time by pressing ESC.

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14.2 Print a Report

Sometimes printing a report is the best choice, when the information you want to print is not
available in any one view. Or, you may simply prefer a format that is not available as a view.
MSP automatically displays a preview of a report when you select the report, so that you can
exactly see how the report will appear in your print before you actually print.

To Print a Report:

• Display a report using View pull down menu and selecting appropriate report as we did
earlier.
• If you are asked specific values, enter the values and then click OK. The report you want will
be displayed in the preview window.
• Click Print.

If the report’s text does not look the way you want it to, you can change its appearance and
information it contains as well as the report title, period covered by the report, and the order in
which the information appears. However, you can only change the appearance of the text in the
base calendar and Project summary reports. You cannot change the information in those reports.

To change the content and appearance of a report:

• On the view menu click Reports.

• Click Custom and then click Select.
• In the Report list, click the report you want to customise and then click Edit. If you choose
Base Calendar or Project Summary report, the report text dialog box appears. If you choose
any other report, the report dialog box for the selected report appears.
• To change the look of a report’s text, click Text, make the changes you want, and click OK.
• To change the information in a report, enter the information you want in the appropriate
boxes, then select the options you want on the Definition and Details tab (see Fig. 38)
• To sort information, click Sort tab and specify the sort options you want.

Figure 38- Change the content and Appearance

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15.0 Project Monitoring

15.1 Set a Baseline

Once you have planned and fine-tuned your plan you will have all the key information about your
project such as task start and finish dates, resource assignments and costs. You then need to know
whether your project is proceeding according to the plan. The first step in doing this is to set a
baseline for your plan which is essential for tracking project progress. A baseline contains your
original scheduling, resource and cost estimates. Once you have compared baseline information
to actual data, you can make any necessary changes to your project plan. You can monitor the
progress of your project to ensure that tasks are continuing on schedule, resources are completing
their work in the time allocated, and costs are not exceeding their budget. A baseline provides a
reference point against which you compare project progress and know whether your project needs
adjusting.

You can also change the baseline information if necessary as you proceed with the project for the
entire project or only for the selected tasks. When you set a baseline MS Project copies your final
refined schedule to baseline schedule and displays data in the baseline fields so that you can
compare baseline data with actual data.

When do you set a baseline plan

Because the baseline will provide the reference points against which you compare actual project
progress, it should be your best pre-construction plan. Clearly, baseline information that
consistently differs from the actual data shows that your plan is inaccurate. Do not worry, at any
time during the project you can modify or rework the baseline.

To help ensure that your baseline information is as accurate as possible, check the following items
before you set a baseline.

• The project start and end dates have been approved.

• Working times in calendars have been adjusted for the project, all groups and each individual.
• The task list is complete.
• The resource list is complete.
• All the necessary resources are properly assigned for each task.
• The workload is evenly distributed by resolving resource over-allocations and by resource
smoothing.
• The critical path has been shortened as much as possible.
• Each task link reflects the true task sequence.
• No unnecessary constraints have been applied to any tasks.
• All unnecessary float times have been cut from tasks.
• Estimated project costs are within budget.

Once you are satisfied with all that you can set a base line as follows.

• On the Tools menu, point to Tracking, and then click Save Baseline.
• Click Save Baseline, and then click Entire Project.

By setting a baseline only baseline information is saved in addition to other project information.
For example, MSP copies information from Start and Finish fields to Baseline Start and Baseline
Finish, Cost estimates to Budgeted Cost etc. It does not create a separate file. When you enter
actual information to your plan during project monitoring based on feed back from sites, only the
baseline information remains unchanged. If you want to create a separate file that contains
baseline information only, create another copy of your plan by saving it as a separate file using
Save as in the File menu.

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15.2 Tracking and Updating Your Schedule

Once you have set a baseline you can use it to track your physical and financial progress. By
tracking progress with MS Project you can:

• Keep your project up-to-date with actual data

• Compare baseline data to actual data to help you identify and solve problems as they occur
• Produce status reports for management and project participants
• Maintain historical data to help you plan future projects more accurately

To make your project plan as effective and valuable tracking tool, you must update your plan
regularly and consistently. The best way to do this is to update the plan at a set interval,
everyday, every week, every two weeks etc and stick to it.

You can track progress at varying levels of detail. If you are interested only in whether you are
meeting scheduled dates, you can choose to track just the start and finish dates of your tasks. If
you are concerned about the other aspects of your project such as costs and use of resources, you
can tract the project in greater detail.

Effective tracking is a two step process. You periodically update your schedule to reflect the
progress of the project. You then compare your updated schedule to the baseline to determine
how closely your progress matches your original plan.

When you compare current schedule to the baseline plan on a regular basis, you can identify
discrepancies between planned and actual progress to date. These discrepancies are called
variances. Finding variances early allows you to adjust schedule problems before they become
critical.

Which Information Should You update?

The key to tracking progress is accurate data about each task, resource and cost. You need
information such as each task’s completion percentage, remaining work, who did what and when,
and tasks cost to date. To track the schedule at a detailed level, you can track some or all of the
following project variables.

To Track Enter data in this field

Task start dates Actual Start

Task finish days Actual Finish
Percentage of each task that is complete Percentage Complete
Task duration Actual Duration
Task cost Actual Cost
Work Actual Work

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind when tracking your project.

• At the very least, you should record when tasks actually start and finish. If tasks finish late,
the rest of the project might be in jeopardy of finishing late. If tasks finish early, resources
could be freed that can help out with other tasks.
• For longer tasks that have started but not yet finished, you can record not only when the task
started, but also how far along the task is -what percent of the scheduled task duration has
been completed.
• Instead of tracking the percent of the task duration completed, and letting Project calculate
how much work that involves, you can record the actual work itself for the task. Or, for even
greater accuracy, you can record the work completed by each resource assigned to the task.

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• By default, actual costs are always calculated by Microsoft Project, and you can't overwrite its
calculations until the task is 100 percent complete. You have the option to supplement the cost
calculations by entering actual costs for each resource assignment yourself. This option takes
more time but it can be the most accurate of all tracking methods.
In the following sections, you'll look at how you use Project's tracking facilities for each of the
tracking approaches just outlined. Most of this discussion assumes that you will update the task
fields and that you want Project to calculate appropriate actual values for the task assignments.
The choice between this and the alternative, for you to enter actual work for each resource
directly, is governed by a choice on the Calculation tab of the Options dialog box.

15.3 Collecting the Tracking Information

Before you get started, just a word about gathering the information you need to track progress.
You should decide in advance how you will collect the progress data. You might want to print
forms to be completed and sent to you on a regular basis or schedule meetings when the resources
can report their progress. If all your resources have access to a computer and share email, you can
use Microsoft Project's workgroup feature to automatically send notices of task assignments and
changes in assignments and to automatically request progress reports. Then, after reviewing the
progress reports sent by the resources, you can upload them automatically into Project to update
the schedule. However you do it, you need to establish the mechanism and level of reporting
detail needed in advance.

15.4 Enter Actual Start and Finish Dates for a Task

(Progress recording for completed tasks)
Tasks that start or finish behind schedule may affect the entire project due to their relationships
with other activities. Tasks that start or finish early can free resources to work on other tasks that
are behind schedule. Because actual start and finish dates can have such a big impact on your
project, they should be the number one tracking priority.

To enter actual start and actual finish dates for a task:

• Display the Gantt Chart.

• In the Task Name field, select the task you want to update.
• On the Tools menu, point to Tracking, and then click Update Tasks.
• Under Actual, type the dates in the Start and Finish boxes (see Fig 39)

Figure 39 – Updating tasks

You can also enter Actual Start and Actual Finish dates of several activities all at once, using the
Tracking Table. This is perhaps the most common method. When you do this it would be more
meaningful for you to display the Tracking Gantt View (see Fig. 40).
To do this:

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• On the View pull down menu, select Tracking Gantt.

• On the View menu, select the Tracking Table from the Table submenu.
• Enter Actual start dates and Actual finish dates in the relevant fields.

When you enter the actual finish date MSP performs several calculations, to supply values for all
the tasks actual fields.

• Percentage completion is set to 100% (which is the % duration completed) indicating that the
task in complete.
• Project changes the scheduled finish date to the actual finish date entered and tags the finish
field as fixed and not to be rescheduled by changes in other tasks.
• If the actual start date was not entered manually by you, project sets it equal to the scheduled
start date.
• MSP calculates the actual duration field based on the actual start and finish dates and enters
that value into the scheduled Duration field.
• If resources are assigned to task, MSP sets the actual start and finish dates of all assignments,
calculates the actual work for each assignment, and then calculates the actual cost for each
assignment.
• With the assignment work and cost calculated, MSP then sums those amounts and puts the
results in the task’s Actual Work and Actual Cost fields.
• Finally, if the task was a critical task, MSP changes that to non-critical as it is no longer a
candidate for project re-scheduling.

Figure 40 – Tracking Gantt Chart with Tracking Table

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