Use of project management tool Microsoft Project

When working with MS Project you either specify a start date or a finish date. Because once you
enter one of the two, and other project tasks, constraints and dependencies, MS Project will
calculate the other date. It is always a good practice to use a start date even if you know the
deadline for the project.

Launch MS Project
Windows 10 − Click on Start menu → All apps → Microsoft Office → Project 2013.

Create Blank Project

MS Project 2013 will display a list of options. In the list of available templates, click Blank
Project.

Project sets the plan’s start date to current date, a thin green vertical line in the chart portion of
the Gantt Chart View indicates this current date.

Project Information
Let us change the project start date and add some more information.

Step 1: Start Date

Click Project tab → Properties Group → Project Information.

A dialog box appears. In the start date box, type 09/12/22, or click the down arrow to display the
calendar, select September 11, 2019 (or any date of your choice).

Click OK to accept the start date.

Step 2: Set Up Calendar

Click Project tab → Properties Group → Project Information.

Click the arrow on the Current Date dropdown box. A list appears containing three base
calendars.

• 24 Hour − A calendar with no non-working time.

• Night Shift − Covers 11 PM to 8 AM, night shifts covering all nights from Monday to
Friday, with one-hour breaks.
 • Standard − Regular working hours, Monday to Friday between 8 AM to 5 PM, with one-
hour breaks.

Select a Standard Calendar as your project Calendar. Click “Cancel” or “OK” to close the dialog
box.

Now let us add exceptions.

Step 3: Adding Exceptions to Calendar

Exceptions are used to modify a Project calendar to have a non-standard workday or a non-
working day. You can also allot unique working hours for a particular resource as well.

Here is an example to create a non-working day, which could be because of a holiday or office
celebrations or events other than the standard office work effort.

Click Project tab → Properties Group → Change Working Time.

Change Working Time dialog box appears. Under Exceptions Tab click on the Name Field,
enter event as “Office Anniversary”. In the Start field enter 11/22/15, and then enter the same
date in the Finish field. This date is now scheduled as a non-working day for the project. You can
also verify the changed color indicated in the calendar within the dialog box as below. Click Ok
to close.

Step 4: Setting up Resource Calendar

Just like you can change a Standard Base Calendar, you can change the work and non-working
time for each resource. You can modify the resource calendar to accommodate flex-time,
vacation time, training time, etc.

Also remember, Resource Calendar can only be applied to work resources and not to material
and cost resources.

By default, when we create the resources in a plan, the resource calendar matches the Standard
base calendar. And any changes you make to the Project Calendar, gets reflected automatically
in resource calendars, except when you create an exception in the resource calendar. In that case
even if you update the project calendar, the exception in resource calendar is not affected.

Click Project tab → Properties group → Click Change Working Time

Change Working Time dialog box appears.

Click the down arrow for the “For Calendar” drop-down box.

Select the resource for whom you want to create an exception. In example
below I have chosen John.
Under Exceptions Tab click on the Name Field, enter event as “Personal holiday”. In the Start
field enter the date (example 9/15/2015), and then enter the same date in the Finish field.

Step 5: Change Working times for Each Resource

Click Project tab → Properties group → Click Change Working Time.

The Change Working Time dialog box appears.

Click the down arrow for the “For Calendar” dropdown box.

Select the resource for whom you want to change work schedule.
In the following screen you can see we have chosen John.

Click “Work Weeks” tab.

Double-click the [default] cell below the Name column heading.

Under “Selected Day(s)” choose any day you want to change the work schedule.
We have chosen Tuesday and Wednesday.

Click Set day(s) to these specific working times. Change the time.

Step 6: Create Non-working Days

Click Project tab → Properties group → Click Change Working Time.

The Change Working Time dialog box appears.

Click the down arrow for the “For Calendar” dropdown box.

Select the resource for whom you want to change work schedule. We have chosen
John again.

Click “Work Weeks” tab.

Double-click the [default] cell below the Name column heading.

Under “Selected Day(s)” choose any day you want to change the work schedule.

Click any day (we have chosen Friday) and use the radio button “Set days to
nonworking time”.

Click OK to close the Dialog box. You will now see all Fridays are greyed out
in the calendar.

AD

Change File Properties

With Microsoft Windows Operating system, right clicking a file and selecting “Properties”
brings up the file properties dialog box that contains version, security and other file details. You
can record some top level information for your .mpp project file as well. This can be done as
follows −

Step 1: Launch MS Project

• Windows 7 − Click on Start menu, point to All Programs, click Microsoft Office, and
then click Project 2013.
• Windows 8 − On the Start screen, tap or click Project 2013.
• Windows 10 − Click on Start menu → All apps → Microsoft Office → Project 2013.

Step 2: Save Properties

Click File Tab. Under Info Tab go to Project Information. Click arrow near Project Information
to click Advanced Properties. A dialog box opens, you can type in the changes as required. Click
OK and don’t forget to save by clicking on Save.

Build Task List

Before we start, let us assume you already have a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). In context
of WBS, “Work” refers to “Deliverables” and not effort.

WBS identifies the deliverable at the lowest level as work package. This work package is
decomposed into smaller tasks/activities, which is the effort necessary to complete the work
package. So a task is action-oriented, and the work package is the deliverable or a result of one
or more tasks being performed.

There is a significant amount of confusion between what constitutes an activity and what
constitutes a task within the project management community. But for MS Project, a task is the
effort and action required to produce a particular project deliverable. MS Project does not use the
term “activity”.

Enter Task
This is simple. In Gantt Chart View, just click a cell directly below the Task Name column.
Enter the task name. In the following screen, we have entered 5 different tasks.

Enter Duration
A duration of the task is the estimated amount of time it will take to complete a task. As a project
manager you can estimate a task duration using expert judgment, historical information,
analogous estimates or parametric estimates.
You can enter task duration in terms of different dimensional units of time, namely minutes,
hours, days, weeks, and months. You can use abbreviations for simplicity and ease as shown in
the following table.

Value you want to enter Abbreviation Appearance

45 minutes 45 m 45 mins
2 hours 2h 2 hrs
3 days 3d 3 days
6 weeks 6w 6 weeks
2 months 2mo 2 mons

Remember, Project default values depend on your work hours. So 1 day is not equivalent to 24
hours but has 8 hours of work for the day. Of course, you can change these defaults anytime you
want.

Value entered Value Project default Value

1 minute 60 seconds 60 seconds
1 hour 60 minutes 60 minutes
1 day 24 hours 8 hours (1 workday)
1 week 7 days 40 hours (5 workdays)
1 month 28 to 31 days 160 hours (20 workdays)

Change Default Time Dimensions

Click Project tab → Properties Group → Click Change Working Time → Click Options.

You can apply this to all projects or a specific project that you are working on currently.

One of the neat tricks MS Project possesses is, it considers duration of the task in workday sense.
So if you have a non-working day in between, it accommodates this and ensures a task that takes
16 hours to complete to end on the 3rd day. In other words, if you have a task that needs 16
hours to complete starting on Monday 8:00 AM (if this is the time your work day starts, and 8
hours being total work hours in a day), and Tuesday being a holiday, the task will logically end
on the evening of Wednesday.

Tip − With manually scheduled tasks, if you are not sure about a task duration, you can just enter
text such as “Check with Manager/Engineer” to come back to this later.

Enter Task Duration

This is simple in Gantt Chart View, click the cell below Duration column heading. Enter the
duration. (Task 1 in the following screenshot)
You can also enter Start and Finish date and MS Project will calculate the duration on its own.
(Task 2 in the following screenshot)

You can enter text as well when you don’t have a duration metric currently. (Task 3 and Task 4
in the following screenshot)

Note − In the above screenshot, Task 6 is scheduled to start on Sunday, which is a nonworking
day and ends on Wednesday. So essentially, one would believe that with these 3 days Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, the duration calculated would be 3 days. But MS Project 2013 calculates it
as 4 days. So one needs to be careful when choosing the start date of the task. Because for any
successive operation, MS Project 2013 considers that Task 6 will take 4 days. The next time, you
change the start date, the Finish date changes to reflect this 4-day duration.

Elapsed Duration
Elapsed Duration is the time that elapses while some event is occurring which does not require
any resources. Elapsed duration for a task can be used in instances where a task will go on
round-the-clock without any stoppage. A normal workday has 8 hours, and an elapsed day
duration will have 24 hours. The task also continues over non-working (holidays and vacations)
and working days.

You can enter elapsed duration by preceding any duration abbreviation with an “e”. So 1ew is
seven 24-hour days.

For example, when you are ‘Waiting for the paint to dry’. And it takes 4 days for this to happen.
It does not need a resource or a work effort, and all you are doing is waiting for it to dry. You
can use 4ed as the time duration, which signifies 4 elapsed days, the paint can dry regardless of
whether it is a weekend or if it falls on a holiday. Here in this example, the drying occurs over 24
hours over the weekend.

Create Milestones
In Project Management, Milestones are specific points in a project timeline. They are used as
major progress points to manage project success and stakeholder expectations. They are
primarily used for review, inputs and budgets.

Mathematically, a milestone is a task of zero duration. And they can be put where there is a
logical conclusion of a phase of work, or at deadlines imposed by the project plan.
There are two ways you can insert a milestone.

Method 1: Inserting a Milestone

Click name of the Task which you want to insert a Milestone

Click Task tab → Insert group → Click Milestone.

MS Project names the new task as <New Milestone> with zero-day duration.

Click on <New Milestone> to change its name.

You can see the milestone appear with a rhombus symbol in the Gantt Chart View on the right.

Method 2: Converting a Task to a Milestone

Click on any particular task or type in a new task under the Task Name
Heading.

Under Duration heading type in “0 days “.

MS Project converts it to a Milestone.

Method 3: Converting a Task to a Milestone

In Method 2, a task was converted to a Milestone of Zero duration. But one can also convert a
task of non-zero duration into a Milestone. This is rarely used and causes confusion.

Double-click a particular Task name.

Task Information dialog box opens.

Click Advanced tab → select option “Mark Task as Milestone”.