Book Image

Learning Microsoft Project 2019

By : Srikanth Shirodkar
Book Image

Learning Microsoft Project 2019

By: Srikanth Shirodkar

Overview of this book

Microsoft Project is one of the most popular project management tools for enterprises of all sizes thanks to its wide variety of features such as project scheduling, project budgeting, built-in templates, and reporting tools. Learning Microsoft Project 2019 will get you started with the basics and gradually guide you through the complete project life cycle. Starting with an overview of Microsoft Project 2019 and a brief introduction to project management concepts, this book will take you through the different phases of project management – initiation, planning, execution, control, and closure. You will then learn how to identify and handle problems related to scheduling, costing, resourcing, and work allocation. Understand how to use dynamic reports to create powerful, automated reports and dashboards at the click of a button. This Microsoft Project book highlights the pitfalls of overallocation and demonstrates how to avoid and resolve these issues using a wide spectrum of tools, techniques, and best practices. Finally, you will focus on executing Agile projects efficiently and get to grips with using Kanban and Scrum features. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with Microsoft Project and have the skills you need to use it effectively in every stage of project management.
Table of Contents (32 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Iron Triangle – a Quick Primer for Project Management
3
Section 2: Project Initiation with Microsoft Project
8
Section 3: Project Planning Like a Pro!
13
Section 4: Project Execution – the Real Deal
15
Chapter 11: Overallocation – the Bane of Project Managers
18
Section 5: Monitoring and Control with Microsoft Project
23
Section 6: Project Closure with Microsoft Project
Appendix A: Using This Book as a Textbook
Appendix C: Keyboard Shortcuts
Appendix D: Glossary

Understanding Project Calendars

By now, you have comprehensively examined the three dimensions of scheduling – work, duration, and Units. But which is the implicit fourth dimension that is hidden within all of these? This fourth dimension is Time. In this section, we will learn how to handle time through the Calendar feature of Project.

For the sake of simplicity, so far, we have started all our practice projects by directly entering the tasks into the Entry table. This is fine for practice projects, but not for your real-life commercial projects. In the latter case, you should always start by setting a start date for your project.

The proper usage of Project requires that you configure your Calendar. In the sections to follow, we will learn how easy it is to match the calendar to the working time conditions of your organization. Although this will be simple for you, Project, in turn, translates your configurations into internal rules for its algorithms.

When using...