Microsoft Office Project for Mere Mortals : Solving the Mysteries of Microsoft Office Project

Microsoft Office Project for Mere Mortals® strips away the mysteries of Microsoft Office Project, giving you practical skills, methodologies, and best practices for building schedules and budgets that work.

Using the clear, concise, and friendly style that’s a hallmark of the For Mere Mortals® series, Jansen provides step-by-step instructions for every feature you really need to master, whether you’re using Project 2007, 2003, or 2002. You’ll learn why Project works as it does, so you can make the best possible decisions about how to use it. Realistic exercises offer extensive hands-on practice, and a start-to-finish case study covers the entire project lifecycle. Jansen shows you how to:

• Scope projects using work breakdown structures and task outlines

• Define projects rapidly with Microsoft Project templates

• Work with milestones, deadline dates, and task information

• Manage resource sharing across multiple projects

• Calculate accurate budgets

• Avoid common scheduling errors and oversights

• Tighten critical paths to reduce work overload and resource overallocation

• Use baselining to track variances, adjust projects “on-the-fly,” and become a more effective scheduler

• Uncover potential problems, identify alternatives, and avoid crises

• Discover little-known tips and tricks for better formatting and printing

• Use Project to close projects successfully, and learn from your experience

Whatever your title, organization, or project, this book will help you get powerful results with Microsoft Office Project―quickly, efficiently, and painlessly. The CD-ROM contains a searchable electronic version of the book and Microsoft Project (.MPP) files (available for Project 2002 and above) of the book’s step-by-step scheduling practices and case studies.

Praise for Microsoft Office Project for Mere Mortals®

“This book stands out of the ordinary, as it is the first one on Microsoft Office Project I know to be completely driven by project management methods.”

–Jan De Messemaeker, M.S., Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional

“Patti Jansen’s practice sessions are a great way to become familiar with Microsoft Project and the step-by-step instructions make it easy.”

–Kimberly Amaris, PMP

Patti Jansen, PMP, is a Senior Project Manager at QuantumPM, a leading project management consultancy that works closely with Microsoft. She has more than 10 years of senior project management experience, and is a well-known Microsoft Project and PMI instructor. She was a technical contributor to PMP: Project Management Professional Study Guide, Deluxe Edition, PMP: Project Management Professional Workbook, and PMP: Project Management Professional Certification Kit.

Foreword     xvii

Preface        xix

Acknowledgments  xxvii

About the Author   xxix

CHAPTER 1  Introducing Microsoft Office Project     1

CHAPTER 2  Revealing the Secrets of Microsoft Project     23

CHAPTER 3  Building Your Schedule: Scoping Your Project 87

CHAPTER 4  Understanding Task Information 137

CHAPTER 5  Sequencing the Work: Creating the Critical Path      195

CHAPTER 6 Understanding Resources and Their Effects on Tasks 235

CHAPTER 7  Using Project to Enter Cost Estimates 301

CHAPTER 8  Polishing Your Schedule    347

CHAPTER 9  Reviewing Work Overload and the Critical Path        389

CHAPTER 10 Baselining: The Key to Tracking Your Schedule        431

CHAPTER 11 Tracking Your Schedule    451

CHAPTER 12 Closing Down Your Schedule: The End Is Only the Beginning        521

CHAPTER 13 Project Mysteries Resolved!       535

APPENDIX    Answers to Review Questions    573

Glossary      591

Index 601

Patti Jansen, PMP, OPM3® Certified Assessor/Consultant is a senior project manager consultant and trainer with QuantumPM with over 20 years experience in the Information Technologies industry and 12 years in project and program management. She has managed multi-million dollar, multi-system integration projects for telecommunications and Internet companies. Through QuantumPM, Patti has been consulting, assessing, and training on project management processes and practices and Project Server implementations for 5 years. Most recently she has been giving Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 webcasts to students throughout the world. She has a BA from Colorado State University, a Master’s degree in Applied Communication, and a certificate in Program Management from the University of Denver.

Patti continues to write and edit as part of her professional endeavors. On staff at QuantumPM, she has written and edited numerous chapters of Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Unleashed and Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003. Patti is writing and editing several chapters of the soon-to-be updated versions of those books. She has served as the technical editor for The PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide, Project Management JumpStart, and Herding Chickens: Innovative Techniques for Project Management published by Sybex International. She co-authored PMP: Project Management Professional Study Guide, Deluxe Edition by John Wiley Publishing. Her first work for Addison-Wesley is Microsoft Office Project for Mere Mortals®.

Other professional experiences include teaching project management classes at Colorado State University, Denver Center and making project management and Microsoft Project presentations throughout the country. Patti is currently leading an international team responsible for updating the Knowledge Foundation book as part of the overall update of the Project Management Institute’s OPM3 standard (the organizational project management maturity model).