Site Search

Microsoft Project 2007

Consider this lab as a minimalist user's guide to Microsoft Project 2007. The contents contain enough information to get you started on your Project Schedule assignment.

Microsoft Project is part of the Microsoft Office family of software. While the latest version is Project 2007, the changes between Project 2007 and Project 2003 are mostly in additional advanced features.

The Hebeler labs have Microsoft Project 2007 available. Should you wish to use it at home, the latest version is also available as a free trial download from Microsoft. In addition, Mr. Fred Stanley has installation disks of Microsoft Project 2007 available for CS majors to checkout as part of the departments's MS academic alliance subscription.

To learn more about Microsoft Project 2007, here are some links to free tutorials

As usual, a quick search with google will turn up many online resources. In most cases, Project 2003 resources apply to Project 2007 as well. I find that the built-in Help feature (upper-right text box) in Microsoft Project is excellent.

Today's Learning Objectives

After today's class, you should be able to use Microsoft Project 2007 to

Create a New Project

  1. Create a new blank project and save it as CS480.mpp
    • MS Project provides a number of templates for creating new projects; in particular, the Software Development Template is convenient to use for projects following the waterfall process model
  2. Use the Project Guide Tasks options to Set a date to schedule from at October 23, 2007, the kick-off date for your CS 480 team project
  3. Define the general working times to be Monday - Friday from 3:00-5:00 PM
    • That is, everyone works 5 days a week at 2 hours a day or 10 hours per week of work per team member
    • At this schedule, a four-person team can work the equivalent of 40 hours per week
  4. Set Holidays and Days Off to give yourself as non-working days
    • Monday, Nov. 12 (Veterans Day)
    • Wednesday, Nov. 21 through Friday, Nov. 23 (Thanksgiving)
  5. Set the default time unit for duration and work from days to hours
    • From the Tools menu, select Options ..., click Schedule tab, and change Days to Hours
    • This is merely a convenience and useful for display purposes. If you enter a unit of effort as 3, it will now refer to 3 hours rather than 3 days
  6. Add the WBS outline number (1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc.) to the display view
    • from the Tools menu, select Options ..., click View tab, and check show outline number

Work Breakdown Structure

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) shows the work you must perform to complete a project, broken down into progressively smaller tasks. Using Microsoft Project, there are three that make up a task list:

  1. Summary tasks used to summarize subtask, milestones, and/or lower-level summary tasks
  2. Subtasks, sometimes referred to as work packages. This is the actual work that needs to be done
  3. Milestones - intermediate accomplishments along the way to completing the project

Entering Tasks

When entering tasks in MS Project, the Task Sheet is a handy data entry view (From the View menu, select More Views..., and apply the Task Sheet)

Creating Summary Tasks and Subtasks

For assignment 1, Team Website, you need to create five web pages and post them on a publicly accessible Web server. To receive credit for the assignment, you need to turn in printouts of all five pages (as displayed in a browser).

Turn the Team Website task into a hierarchy of summary tasks and subtasks by inserting the following rows

  1. Design web page layout, navigation, and look and feel
  2. Create Home page
    • Draw Logo
    • Write Vision Statement
    • Code Home page in HTML
  3. Create Members page
    • Collect member, client, and faculty advisor information
    • Code Members page in HTML
  4. Create Meeting Minutes page
    • Write meeting minutes in Word
    • Code Meeting Minutes page in HTML
  5. Create Document Archive page
    • Collect team documents in native format
    • Code Document Archive page in HTML
  6. Create Process Model page
    • Decide on team's process model
    • Determine regularly held meeting days and times
    • Code Process Model page in HTML
  7. Post pages to Web server
    • Obtain web space on publicly accessible server
    • Post team documents to Web server
    • Post meeting minutes to Web server
    • Post web pages to Web server
    • Test links and inspect for errors
    • Print out web pages
  8. Turn in printouts of web pages in class

Estimate Task Durations

You will only enter durations for subtasks. Microsoft Project will automatically calculate durations for summary tasks by adding its subtask durations.

For CS 480, I recommend entering duration estimates in hours (e.g. 3h) or minutes (e.g. 30m). Since we set the workday to 2 hours, a task taking 6 hours of effort will require 3 days of effort (at 2 hours per day).

Examine the project schedule Gantt chart to view your dependencies. Because you have not yet scheduled the tasks, they all start on the same date, which is the project's start date.

Milestones

Milestones are important accomplishments or events that occur during the project. Milestones are indicated in MS Project by entering duration of 0 (zero)

Deadlines

Deadlines permits Microsoft Project to visually indicate when the schedule fails to meet the deadlines.

In general, it is best to avoid setting start or finish dates and constraints. Rather, allow Microsoft Project to calculate the start and finish dates for tasks based on the durations and task dependencies that you enter and have tasks occur as soon as possible.

Indicating Task Dependencies

Use task dependencies to indicate that work on a task cannot begin or end until work on another task begins or ends. For example, coding the Home page in HTML cannot begin until the team logo has been drawn and vision statement have been written (the default constraint).

Microsoft Project allows you to specify four different types of task dependencies (links). First, select a predecessor task, next select a successor task, and then select a task dependency.

  1. Finish (predecessor) and then Start (successor) (FS default dependency and used most often)
  2. Start both (predecessor) and (successor) at same time (SS dependency)
  3. Both Finish (predecessor) and finish (successor) at same time (FF dependency)
  4. Start (predecessor) at the finish of (successor) (SF dependency, seldom used)

Add task dependencies to the Team Website subtasks

Examine the project schedule Gantt chart to view your dependencies. Because you have not assigned people to the tasks, they all start as soon as possible (assuming unlimited resources)

Assigning People Resources

Resources are the people, equipment, and materials used to complete tasks that make a project. For CS 480-481, the only resources we will assign to a project are the team members

Examine the project schedule Gantt chart to view your resource allocations and changes in schedule. Since everyone is limited to 2 hours per day of work, the schedule needed to be extended. Verify that the milestone is completed by its deadline.

Use the Report menu, select Workload, select Resource Usage and verify that everyone's workload is fairly allocated.