The Cost Tables feature in Microsoft Project reflects a point which is particular to this program—it is, basically, time-sensitive. Since a business project takes a minimum, usually, of several weeks to run, the project must take time into account. And, no pun intended on this …
There’s a quirky thing about Microsoft Project, having to do with resources—more specifically, Cost resources. The other two types, Work and Material, are pretty easy to understand and use, but Cost takes a little bit of extra work to make do its thing. A Work …
Microsoft Project was designed with the idea that one might need to set up subprojects, or projects within projects. Think of a set of manuals, or a company-wide reworking of hardware and software, or a movie (such as Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy). …
When planning a project, one of the problems we run into fairly commonly is overallocation of resources. It’s not impossible to fix, but it sometimes helps to know exactly where the overallocation is. The Resource Usage view is one place we can see it fairly …
One small but important feature in MS Project is the Auto versus Manual Scheduling popup. It’s in the Status Bar at bottom. Here’s how it works: Manual Scheduling allows the user to control start date, finish date, and therefore, duration. And the program will not …
Microsoft Project is fairly easy to use at the basic level–entering tasks and resources, assigning one to the other, scheduling. But there are a few parts of the program that can take a little practice to use comfortably. One of these is the checkmark in …
If you’re used to changing the way currency values are displayed in Excel, you might want to exercise the same choices when viewing costs in Microsoft Project. Although changing the look of costs can be done in Project, it’s not as immediately obvious as to how.
When working with tasks in a project, it is common practice to display a duration as an estimate. Displaying an estimated duration prepares the viewer for possible changes in scheduling. An estimated duration takes the form of a question mark placed after the declared duration.
The issue is that some project viewers fail to notice the question mark; then when durations are updated, project viewers wonder why things have changed. One way to ensure that people’s attention is drawn to the estimated durations is to change the color of the Gantt bars to reflect an estimated status. There is no built-in state for displaying estimated durations in a separate color, but with a few short clicks this behavior can be achieved.