EGN 3012

Project Management Lab Report

Practical: MS Project Basics

Student Name Student ID Number

1. Introduction:

There are many useful Microsoft Project features that help in the project management
aspects. Here is the list some most important and useful features:
Planning and Scheduling: The most important stage of the project management is
project planning and scheduling. Microsoft project is very helpful in project planning and
scheduling and contains these features to help in project management:
 Task management
 Task prioritization
 Team calendar
Project Timeline View: Microsoft project has a timeline view feature that allows users to
create simple project summaries. It presents a top-down view of the entire work of the
project. The Gantt chart is used for Tasks scheduling over a project timeline.
Collaboration: Easy file sharing, Sharing of client data, Team dashboards
Reporting: MS Project contains different features to help reporting the progress of the
project i.e. burn down reports; pending tasks list; cost overview; achieved targets list;
resources and their utilization etc.
Resource Management: Helps the project manager in managing project resources and
their availability.
Co-authoring: Allows different team members to work together to edit and update
schedules and lists of tasks.
Different Views: Microsoft Project offers a number of different views i.e. Calendar view,
Gantt Chart, Resource usage chart, and much more.
Multiple Projects: It allows the project managers to work on multiple different projects
on the same platform.
2. Apparatus:

Auto Scheduling: Uses the powerful scheduling engine to calculates task schedules
based on the project start and finish dates, Selection of calendar, task dependencies, and
resource scheduling.
 Figure 1: Auto Scheduling

Gantt Chart: A Gantt chart illustrates a project schedule.

Figure 2: Gantt chart

Timeline: The Timeline gives you a bird's eye view of the entire project plan.

Figure 3: Timeline
Task Name: Is the column where you enter the tasks of the project.

Figure 4: List of task names

Start and Finish Dates: These two columns are used for scheduling the tasks. The user
enters the start date of the task in “Start” column and the finish date of the task in
“Finish” column.

Figure 5: Finish and Start dates

Predecessors: Predecessor of task indicates the task that must be completed before the
start of this task.
 Figure 6: Predecessors of tasks

Task Indent: Task indent function is used for creating project summaries.

Figure 7: Task Indentation

Task Mode: Task Mode field shows whether a task is auto scheduled or manually
scheduled.

Figure 8: Task mode

3. Objectives of the Office Move project:

 Finding the new premises for the office to relocate the office from its current location to
that a new location.
  Properly planning the office move project in order to ensure, seamless moving of the
office from one location to another new location.
 Making all the necessary arrangements for moving the goods to new location and
arranging cheap and best transportation for this purpose.
 Disconnecting computers and properly packing all the things in the boxes and loading in
the truck to move to new location.
 Reconnecting the computer, unpacking the boxes and setting everything properly in the
new office.

Figure 9: WBS of “Office Move” project

4. Procedure:
Step 1: Entering all the activities of WBS. Starting from top and adding all activities of each
branch.

Figure 10: Entering all tasks

Step 2: Creating project tasks summaries by indenting tasks.

Figure 11: Project summaries

Step 3: Adding durations of the tasks.

Figure 12: Task durations

Step 4: Adding predecessors of tasks.

Figure 13: Adding predecessors of tasks

Step 5: Generating the final Gantt Chart of the project.

 Figure 14: Project’s Gantt chart

Step 6: Generating WBS Codes.

Figure 15: WBS codes generation

5. Discussion and Conclusions:

Microsoft Project is very helpful tool for planning and scheduling different projects.
From this practice I have learned how to use Microsoft Project and its different functions. I have
created a complete project plan of our “Office Move” project in the Microsoft Project. It
represents the activities involved in the project from start of the project to the end of project,
durations of tasks and schedules of tasks. I have created a gantt chart which is very helpful for
anybody to easily understand the overall project plan and schedules. Microsoft Project provides a
very easy to use user interface. All the functionalities are pre-build, you just to need to click and
select the functionality you want you use. It is very easy tool and I do not feel any difficulty in
using it.

6. References:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdQVwQmNJOQ&ab_channel=annecrowleylecturer
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJLdFQuDpFM&ab_channel=TeachUComp
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJv2nxgikE8&ab_channel=SandorRethy
[4] MS Project Tutorial - Tutorialspoint. (2020). Retrieved 2 November 2020, from
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/ms_project/index.htm
[5] Microsoft Project Features – MPUG. (2020). Retrieved 2 November 2020, from
https://www.mpug.com/microsoft-project-features/
[6] Chart., C., Type a name in the first empty Task Name field at the bottom of the task list, a.,
Chart., C., In the Task Name column, c., subtask., C., & subtask., C. et al. (2020). Basic tasks
in Project. Retrieved 3 November 2020, from https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/office/basic-tasks-in-project-8fdbf020-a9e1-45e4-bf15-23a8d2b6797d
[7] Chatfield, C., & Johnson, T. (2013). Microsoft Project 2013 step by step. Redmond:
Microsoft Press.