At this point, you might want to know how long the project is expected to take. You haven’t directly entered a total project duration or finish date, but Project has calcu lated these values, based on individual task durations and task relationships. An easy way to see the project’s scheduled finish date is via the Project Information dialog box. In this exercise, you see the current total duration and scheduled finish date of the project, based on the task durations and relationships you’ve entered.
1
On the Project menu, click Project Information. The Project Information dialog box appears.Note the Finish date: 1/25/05.
Tip
This tip describes enterprise project management (EPM) functionality. If you are running Project Professional, you will see a slightly different dialog box. The Project Information dialog box in Project Professional includes an Enterprise Cus tom Fields section. Enterprise custom fields are used only with Project Server. For more information about Project Server, see Part 4, “Introducing Project Server.” You can’t edit the finish date directly because this project is set to be scheduled from the start date. Project calculates the project’s finish date based on the total number of working days required to complete the tasks, starting at the project’s start date. As this project plan is now built, any change to the start date will cause Project to recalculate the finish date.2
Click the Statistics button.The Project Statistics dialog box appears:
You don’t need to pay attention to all these numbers yet, but the current finish date and the current duration are worth noting. The duration is the number of working days in the project calendar between the project’s start date and finish date. You can visually verify these numbers on the Gantt chart.
3
Click the Close button to close the Project Statistics dialog box.4
Click the Show/Hide Project Guide button on the Project Guide toolbar.Show/Hide The Project Guide closes. Next you will look at the complete project by changing the Project Guide
timescale in the Gantt Chart view.
5
On the View menu, click Zoom.You can see the project’s overall duration in the Gantt Chart view.
Tip
You can also click the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons to change the time- scale of the Gantt Chart view.Zoom Zoom In Out
CLOSE: the Wingtip Toys Commercial 2 file.
Key Points
■ Essential aspects of tasks in a project plan include their duration and order of occurrence.
■ The Project Guide can help you develop a good initial task list.
■ Task links, or relationships, cause the start or end of one task to affect the start or end of another task. A common task relationship is a finish-to-start relation- ship, where the completion of one task controls the start of another task. ■ In Project, phases of a schedule are represented as summary tasks.
■ The Project Information dialog box (Project menu) is an excellent way to see the key values of a project plan, such as its scheduled finish date and duration.
Change a resource’s capacity to perform work, page 60 Enter resource cost rates, page 64 Change a resource’s working time, page 66
3
Setting Up ResourcesŽ
In this chapter you will learn to:Ž✔ Set up basic resource information for the people who work on projects.
✔ Enter basic resource information for the equipment that will be used in projects. ✔ Enter basic resource information for the materials that will be consumed as the
project progresses.
✔ Set up cost information for resources. ✔ Change a resource’s availability for work.
✔ Record additional information about a resource in a note.
See Also Do you need a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the quick refer- ence entries on pages xxi–xxii.
Resources are the people, equipment, and material needed to complete the tasks in a project. Microsoft Office Project 2003 focuses on two aspects of resources: their avail- ability and and their costs. Availability determines when specific resources can work on tasks and how much work they can do, and costs refer to how much money will be required to pay for those resources.
In this chapter, you will set up the resources you need to complete the TV commercial project. Effective resource management is one of the most powerful advantages of using Project over task-focused planning tools, such as paper-based organizers. You do not need to set up resources and assign them to tasks in Project; however, without this information, you might have less control over who does what work, when, and at what cost. Setting up resource information in Project takes a little effort, but the time is well spent if your project is primarily driven by time or cost constraints. (And nearly all complex projects are driven by one, if not both, of these factors.)