Author: Bonnie Biafore

Bonnie Biafore is the author of O'Reilly's Microsoft Project: The Missing Manual (2007, 2010, and 2013 editions) and Microsoft Press' Successful Project Management: Applying Best Practices and Real-World Techniques with Microsoft Project. She's recorded Project Essential Training (for 2010 and 2013), Project Management Fundamentals, Managing Small Projects, and other courses for lynda.com. As a consultant, she manages projects for clients and wins accolades for her ability to herd cats. She has also written a humorous novel about hitmen and stupid criminals. You can learn more at Bonnie's website or email her at bonnie.biafore@gmail.com.

Certification Insider: Analyzing Variance with Microsoft Project

Whether you’re still planning or in the middle of the project execution maelstrom, Microsoft Project calculates scheduled values, which are the forecast values at the moment you look at them. Once the project is underway, the scheduled values are likely to drift away from the baseline you set. And those variances are the clues that your project needs attention and about what you might have to do to restore it to health. The topic of comparing progress against a baseline is something you’ll want to understand thoroughly in order to pass Microsoft certification exams for Project 2010 (70-178). Scheduled values take into account actual values you’ve recorded and the forecasts for the work that remains. If you’re still planning, scheduled values are pure forecast. When the project is done, the scheduled values equal the actual values. Variances are the difference between scheduled and baseline values. One quick caveat: If all the variances are zero, chances are you haven’t set a baseline yet. You can’t have a variance between scheduled and baseline values if there’s no baseline. Looking at variances at the project level is a first step for sniffing out problems. You can see project-wide measures by looking at the Project Summary Task in a Gantt chart view. To see different variances in the project summary task row, apply the Variance, Work, or Cost tables to the view. (The screenshot shows the project summary task with the Work table.) You can also see variances in the Project Statistics dialog box (on the Project tab, click Project Information and in the Project Information dialog box, click Project Statistics) or by running the Project Summary text report. When Start, Finish, Duration, and Work variances are greater than zero, the project may be behind schedule. Work and Cost variances greater than zero could mean the project is over budget. Another way to scope out potential problems is by comparing the percent complete for Duration (% Complete) and Work (% Work Complete). If duration has a higher percent complete than work, the project has more work remaining than the duration to perform it in. (However, contouring tasks so more work occurs later on has the same effect. Finding delayed tasks can help you correct course before things get completely out of hand. Project has several filters and reports for looking for delays — even ones that haven’t occurred yet. The Should Start By filter and the Should Have Started Tasks report list tasks that should have started by the date you specify — such as your most recent status date — but haven’t. They look for tasks whose Start values are earlier than the task should-start-by date as well as those that don’t have any Actual Start values. You can also look for tasks whose finish dates are late or whose work hours are greater than the baseline work. Slipping tasks have finish dates that are later than their baseline finish dates. The Slipping Tasks filter and the Slipping Tasks report both show slipping tasks. The Slipped/Late Progress filter shows slipping tasks and tasks whose actual work is less than the amount that should be done. The finish date may not have changed, but it could if you don’t take action. If work takes more time than you estimated, task durations and costs can increase. The Work Overbudget filter shows tasks whose actual work is greater than the baseline work, so the tasks are already in trouble. You can’t do anything about completed tasks, but you should investigate why the work hours increased. If the issue is lower productivity, you might have to replace resources or eliminate obstacles for your team members. Similar to overbudget work, you can use Project tables (Cost), filters (Cost Overbudget), and reports (Cost Overbudget) to look for overbudget costs. Earned value analysis puts project progress into dollars and measures how much of the project cost you’ve earned so far through completed work. You have to set up a few things in Project before you can use earned value analysis. Set a baseline so you have baseline values to compare to. Enter actual values for the work that has been completed. Set a status date (Choose Project | Properties | Project Information. In the Project Information dialog box, choose the date in the Status Date box. Set the options for how Project calculates earned value. You can specify the baseline Project uses. You can also tell Project to use % Complete to calculate variance or Physical % Complete. In the Project Options dialog box, go to Advanced and look for the “Calculation options for this project” label. If you use the Physical % Complete field to calculate earned value, you have to enter values for your tasks. For example, you can set Physical % Complete to 0%, 50%, or 100% depending on whether tasks are unstarted, in progress, or complete. Or, you can copy the value from the % Work Complete field into Physical % Complete. Three measures represent the pillars of earned value analysis: Planned cost for scheduled work is also known as the budgeted cost of work scheduled (or BCWS, which is the name of the corresponding Project field). This is the cost you estimated for the work scheduled through the status date — in other words, the baseline cost for the work that should be completed as of the status date. Planned cost for completed work is called earned value, because it’s the baseline cost the project has earned with completed work as of the status date. The other name is budgeted cost of work performed or BCWP. Actual cost of completed work is how much you actually spent as of the status date. Because planned value, earned value, and actual cost are all measured as money, you can compare them to check schedule and cost performance. The Earned Value Over Time visual report, found in Project 2010, shown in the screenshot, presents all three measures over time. If earned value is less than planned value, less work is actually completed than you estimated, so the project is behind schedule. If the earned value is greater than the actual cost, the work you’ve completed cost less than you estimated so the project is under budget. Additional Earned Value Measures One tricky bit in Project is getting Cost Variance and CV fields straight. For example, if the Cost Variance field shows a variance of $1,000, then the CV field shows a variance of ($1,000) or -$1,000. The CV field is earned value minus actual cost; so when CV is a positive value, the project or task is under budget, a desirable (or positive) result. The Cost Variance field is the Cost field minus the Baseline Cost field, so it’s a positive value when the project or task is over budget. You can look at earned value measures in several places. The Earned Value table shows earned value measures for every task. The Earned Value Cost Indicators table includes basic earned value fields and adds CV% (CV as a percentage of the planned value), Cost Performance Index (CPI), and To-Complete Cost Performance Index (TCPI). The Earned Value Schedule Indicators table includes planned value (BCWS), earned value (BCWP), plus schedule-oriented measures, such as Schedule Variance (SV), Cost Variance (CV), SV%, and Schedule Performance Index (SPI). The Earned Value Over Time visual report initially shows the graph of earned value over time. You can modify this report to show earned value for specific time periods or specific tasks. Think You Know Variances? Test Yourself! The earned value graph for your project looks like the one here. Where does the project stand in terms of schedule and budget A: The project is over budget and behind schedule. B: The project is under budget and ahead of schedule. C: The project is over budget and ahead of schedule. D: The project is under budget and behind schedule. No peeking! Scroll below the book ordering information to read the answer to this quiz. Order the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-632): Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007. To learn more about Microsoft certification, read, “Microsoft Project Management Certification: How to Get Started.”   Bonnie Biafore is the author of O’Reilly’s Microsoft Project 2010: The Missing Manual and Microsoft Press’ On Time! On Track! On Target! Managing Your Projects Successfully with Microsoft Project. She’sdeveloping a Project 2010 course for lynda.com. As a consultant, she manages projects for clients and wins accolades for her ability to herd cats. You can learn more at Bonnie’s website or email her at bonnie.biafore@gmail.com.         The Answer to Test Yourself! In this example, the actual cost is less than the planned value, so the project is under budget. The earned value is also less than the planned value, which means that the project is behind schedule. A is incorrect. The actual cost is less than the planned value, so the project is under budget. B is incorrect. The actual cost is less than the planned value, so the project is under budget. C is incorrect. The actual cost is less than the planned value, so the project is under budget. The actual cost is less than the planned value, so the project is under budget. D is correct.

Certification Insider: Project Reporting

You’re always massaging project info into a form that communicates what’s going on with your projects. You need to see know what’s happening — or not, and you also have to keep lots of other people informed, too. When using Microsoft Project, one of the main things you need to know is when it makes sense to use different methods of communicating information. Here are the basics. First, a quick summary of ways to communicate Project info: Visual reports are ideal when you need to nimbly view your project information from different perspectives. The classic scenario is a management meeting in which you’re bombarded with questions. When did cost begin to exceed our estimate Which tasks are to blame Wait a sec! Are specific resources creating the cost overruns? Visual reports use Excel pivot tables or Visio pivot diagrams so you can flip data this way and that — by time period, by task, by resources, or even a combination of categories. You can change what these reports show on the fly to look at information in different ways or to drill down for a closer peek. Project’s text-based reports grab data from Project fields and then lay the info out in perfunctory arrangements of rows and columns. If a text-based report shows the information you want in a way that gets your point across, it’s quick and easy to generate. If it doesn’t, you must modify the report and regenerate it. Even then, text-based reports can only do so much. (They don’t do well if you want to group information by different categories at different levels of detail, for example.) Exporting Project data to Excel or another program is an option, particularly when you want to perform some hardcore number-crunching or include your info in a fancy presentation. A picture can be worth a thousand words. (It can also come across as gibberish, depending on the audience.) Sometimes, you can simply save a picture of your project, such as a Gantt chart showing the current schedule compared to the baseline, and copy that picture into a document, a PowerPoint presentation, or even onto a Web page. Now, let’s get to the fun stuff. Excel-based visual reports present information in bar graphs, pie charts, or line graphs. They’re great for comparing values side by side, such as baseline vs. actual values, or looking for trends, such as earned value over time. Visio-based visual reports are hierarchical, like a work breakdown structure. In addition to looking at detail level by level, you can use Visio data graphics to highlight good, bad, and indifferent values. When you select a visual report template (whether built-in or one you customize), the template gathers the data (that is, the Project fields and the time period granularity) and produces the initial view. On the Project tab, in the Reports group, click Visual Reports. Select the template and time period you want and click View. The type of visual report makes a difference. Usage visual reports include time-phased data. Assignment usage is the most flexible because these reports have time-phased data about both tasks and resources. Summary reports, on the other hand, show overall results, not time-phased data. It took some time before I got my head around how to tweak visual reports. For Excel visual reports, the secret is the two worksheets. The worksheet named Chart1 is the pivot chart, which displays the data in a graph. You can do some tweaking from the Chart1 worksheet. However, the second worksheet is the pivot table. You can expand, collapse, reorient, and reconfigure the pivot table to your heart’s content and the pivot chart displays the results. One nifty trick: create a second independent window so you can look at both worksheets at the same time. That way, you can immediately see if the changes you make in table produce the results you want on the chart. Excel’s pivot chart tools let you sculpt the report into the shape you want. Add fields to the graph and table. The pivot chart usually displays vertical bars for the fields you want to look at, such as cost or work. You change the type of chart as you would any normal Excel graph. The fields you select also appear as columns in the pivot table. In the PivotTable Field List, you can add, remove, or change the fields that appear in the pivot chart. Turn on a checkbox to include a field. In the Values box, drag a field to a new location in the list to reorder the fields. Filter data. Like filtering in Project, you can filter the information that appears in a visual report. To use a field as a report filter, drag the field into the Report Filter box in the task pane. In the pivot table, expand or collapse items or turn specific items on or off. You can filter in other ways by clicking the down arrows to the right of the other fields in the pivot table — for example, to the right of the cell that says “Year.” Categorize information. The rows in a pivot table typically represent tasks, resources, or time. Changing the category is how you change your perspective of your data, for example, to look at cost over time or by task. You can also add categories to break down the data further, for instance, to look at cost per summary task and by each resource working on that part of the project. Just add another category to the Row Labels box. Expand and collapse data. Click expand buttons (+) or collapse buttons () in the pivot table to drill down to more detail or summarize your info. Format the chart. You can change the chart type, use a different bar style, and format labels. In some cases, you can simply right-click the chart and choose the formatting you want. Or you can use formatting commands. Visio-based visual reports use a Visio pivot diagram, which starts with a single top node that represents your entire project. You can break the diagram down to additional levels by adding categories. The nodes in a pivot diagram can include field values as well as icons to visually indicate status. Similar to their Excel siblings, Visio pivot diagrams can display different fields and categorize in different ways from level to level. In addition to breaking the project down by category, changing fields within nodes, and filtering data, you can also combine nodes. For example, you can merge two summary tasks to show the total for both in a single node. Think You Understand Reporting? Test Yourself! The executive team wants to see the cost and effort for the top three levels of summary tasks in your project. They are interested in how much work is complete, whether tasks are on or behind schedule, and where cost stands compared to the baseline. You want to produce a hierarchical diagram that includes a progress bar for completion status for each task and icons to show schedule and cost performance. What must you do to generate this diagram? A. Generate the Earned Value Over Time visual report. B. Export the Project data to Excel and create a chart showing the status. C. Run the Task Status Visio-based visual report. D. Display the Tracking Gantt view. No peeking! Scroll below the book ordering information to read the answer to this quiz. Order the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-632): Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007. To learn more about Microsoft certification, read, “Microsoft Project Management Certification: How to Get Started.”           The Answer to Test Yourself! A is incorrect. The Earned Value Over Time report is a bar graph and doesn’t show progress by task as % complete. B is incorrect. A visual report can show the information you want more easily than building your own Excel graph. D is incorrect. You can customize the Tracking Gantt to show progress bars in the time scale and status icons in the table. However, the Visio Task Status visual report is already set up to show the information you need. In addition, you can quickly modify what you see in the report if the executive team asks questions. Answer C is correct. The Task Status Visio-based visual report shows a hierarchy of tasks. You can specify the number of levels you want to see. The nodes include the work and cost by default. A progress bar shows the percent complete. The nodes also include a happy face icon for status, as shown.

Certification Insider: Microsoft Project Budgets and Costs

Budgets can make or break a project, and, as it turns out, could be the difference between pass or fail on the Project certification test. So it’s no surprise that controlling costs tests your prowess as a project manager and as a Microsoft Project maven. This column reviews several cost-related features in Project, because knowing the right feature for the job is a big part of answering test questions correctly. In Project, it all starts with costs associated with resources, as you learned in my previous article, “Certification Insider: Resourcing Project Plans.” Project calculates task costs based on the rates and other expenses associated with the resources assigned. (Remember, you set the cost for a cost resource when you assign it to a task.) After the project begins, Project recalculates forecasts to incorporate actual costs for the work performed. Viewing Costs Whether you’re up to your elbows in planning or watching progress like a hawk, you can view cost information with a plethora of Project features. A snapshot of the bottom line is a good place to start when management has given you a price tag and you want to see whether the estimated cost is on target. The project summary task rolls up the costs for all tasks into an overall total. The project summary task takes the pole position in the first row of the project task list. With a task-oriented view visible, on the Format tab, in the Show/Hide group, turn on the Project Summary Task checkbox. Apply the Cost table. The Project Statistics dialog box shows bottom-line project information, such as when the project starts, when it’s forecast to finish, how much work it requires, and the cost estimate. On the right side of the File tab, click Project Information, and then click Project Statistics. The Cost cells show the current forecasted cost (Current), baseline cost, actual cost so far, and the remaining cost. The Project Summary text-based report shows the same information available in the Project Statistics dialog box, but you can print the report more easily. After you see the big picture, you probably want to check out task and assignment costs to find ways to reduce the project price tag. Task cost: Apply the Cost table to a task view. Resource cost: Display the Resource Sheet and then insert the Cost field in the table. The Cost value for a resource is the total cost for all of the assignments for the resource. This technique is a slick way to see how much you’re spending for cost resource, such as travel or training. Assignment cost: Display the Task Usage view or Resource Usage view and apply the Cost table. The Cost field in an assignment row represents the cost for the individual assignment. The cost in the resource name row is the total cost for all assignments for the resource. In the Task Usage view, the cost in the resource name row is the cost for the assignment. The cost in the task name row is the total cost for the task. Comparing Costs with Your Budget Project’s budget resource feature lets you define a budget for different categories of expenses. You can compare your budgeted costs to your scheduled costs to see whether your project costs are toeing the line by category. Budget resources make quick work of comparing the budget to planned costs for cost resources. For work resources, you enter budgeted work amounts, not costs, so you can’t accurately compare labor costs to a budgeted value. Setting up a project to use the budget resource feature is a multi-step process: 1. Create budget resources and designate them as such. Create the resources in the Resource Sheet. In the Type field, choose Work, Material, or Cost. In the Resource Information dialog box, on the General tab, turn on the Budget checkbox. Tip! Name budget resources so you can identify them as such. If you start budget resource names with a number, they appear at the top of a resource list that’s sorted alphabetically from A to Z. 2.  Assign the budget resources to the project summary task. A budget resource represents the overall amount for an expense category for an entire project. That’s why you assign them to the project summary task, not individual tasks. Use any method for assigning resources that you prefer. (Try as you might, you can’t assign a budget resource to anything except the project summary task.) 3.  Associate work, material, and cost resources with their budget type. You have to tell Project which work, material, and cost resources go with each budget category. You can use a text field or the Group or Code fields in the Resource Sheet. For every resource in the Resource Sheet (including budget resources), fill in the Group, Code, or text field with the name of the Budget category. That’s how you link resource costs and budget costs. 4. Enter budgeted cost and work amounts for budget resources. You can enter budget totals for the entire project in the Task Usage view. You add the values to the project summary task, which sits conveniently at the top of the list. Insert the Budget Cost field and Budget Work field to the table. If you want to enter budget values by time period, add the Budget Cost and Budget Work fields to the time-phased portion of the view (using the Detail Styles dialog box). 5.  Group resources in the Resource Usage view to compare budget cost and work with planned values. Set up a table to show budgeted (Budget Cost and Budget Work) and planned fields (Cost and Work). Group the view by your budget categories, as shown in the figure. With the Resource Usage view grouped by budget category, each group includes one budget resource and the work, material, and cost resources that apply to that budget category. In the group summary row, compare the Budget Cost or Budget Work values to the Cost or Work values. Figure 1. To pass the Project 2007 exam, you’d better know how to categorize costs by budget category. Think You Know Budgets and Costs? Test Yourself! You use several contractors for your project and the management team has given you a budget for external resources and travel. You want to compare your planned costs with the budget values you’ve been given. Which of the following steps help you achieve your goal? A: Use a custom text field to associate each resource in your Resource Sheet with a budget category. B: Create a custom cost field to store the budgeted costs for each task. C: Create a cost resource for each budget category. D: Create budget resources for work and cost. No peeking! Scroll below the book ordering information to read the answer to this quiz. Order the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-632): Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007. To learn more about Microsoft certification, read, “Microsoft Project Management Certification: How to Get Started.”   The Answer to Test Yourself! A custom cost field doesn’t let you link resources to budget categories. A cost resource is a type of resource that represents project costs, not budgeted values. Instead, you create budget resources in Project and associate them with the other types of resources to compare budgeted and planned values. The correct answers are A and D.

Certification Insider: Tracking Project Progress

After the powers that be approve your project plan, you may be tempted to sit back and rest on your… ahem… laurels. It turns out, the project execution phase is when you earn your salt as a project manager. Before you analyze performance, manage changes, and keep the project on track, you have to update your Microsoft Project file with progress data from your team. This is also a topic you need to master to pass exam 70-632, Microsoft Office Project 2007, Managing Projects. Whether you choose quick and dirty progress reporting or track every hour of every day depends on your project’s requirements and the level of detail the stakeholders ask for. Once you know the level of detail you need, picking a recording method in Project is almost a slam-dunk. First things first. It’s helpful (both for managing projects and passing the Project certification exam) to understand the difference between % Complete and % Work Complete. (The Summary table includes the % Complete field by default.) % Complete represents the percentage of task duration that’s complete. % Work Complete is the percentage of task work hours that are complete. And you probably know that time can pass without a corresponding amount of work getting done. Entering percent complete is the easiest tracking approach. It’s easy to obtain progress data and it’s easy to record in Project. No surprise, it’s also the least accurate. You’ve probably typed values in the % Complete column in the Summary table or Tracking table. Entering values in a table is perfect when you want to fill in progress for one task after another. You can type a value in one cell and then copy and paste or drag a value into additional cells. But there are two other easy ways to update % Complete: In Project 2010, the mini-toolbar is a great timesaver for standard percentages. Right-click a task, click the 100% down arrow, and then choose 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% from the drop-down list. A thin black bar within the task bar represents the completed duration. Alternatively, you can select tasks and then on the Task tab, in the Schedule section, click the Mark on Track down arrow and choose Update Tasks. In the % Complete box, type the percent complete for the selected tasks and then click OK. (If you don’t fill in the Actual Start field, Project sets Actual Start to the task’s scheduled start date (the date in the Start field). In comparison to the Update Tasks command, the Mark on Track command (simply click “Mark on Track” in the Schedule section) sets a task to 100% complete and the actual start and finish dates to the scheduled task dates, which says the task finished according to plan. For the next level of detail in progress reporting, you may choose to fill in actual start, percent complete, and other fields. The Update Tasks dialog box includes % Complete, Actual Duration, Remaining Duration, and Actual Start and Finish, so you can use it to report progress almost any way you want. Project calculates values for any progress fields you don’t update. If you fill in % Complete and Actual Duration, for example, the program calculates Remaining Duration. Entering actual duration and remaining duration is more accurate, because you can tell Project that you expect the task to take longer than you originally planned. (If you fill in percent complete and actual duration, Project calculates remaining duration.) For a task that’s complete, the actual start and finish dates are the best values to enter. In the Update Tasks dialog box’s Actual section, fill in the actual start and finish dates. If you get actual and remaining work hours from resources, you can record that info in the Task Details Form. In Project 2010, click the View tab and turn on the Details check box. In the drop-down list, choose More Views and then double-click Tasks Details Form in the More Views dialog box. To see the field for Work, Actual Work, and Remaining Work, right-click the Task Details Form table and choose Work on the shortcut menu. When more than one resource is assigned to a task, you can fill in progress values for each assignment for even more detail. For this level of detail, display the Task Usage or Resource Usage view. That way, the rows in the view show individual assignments and the timescaled grid shows values by time period. Choose View | Data | Tables | Work to apply the Work table to the view. To enter work values, double-click the assignment you want to update. In the Assignment Information dialog box, select the Tracking tab. When you enter progress for tasks, Project rolls down task values to the assignment level. If you want to record assignment values, choose File | Options, and then choose Schedule. Turn off the “Updating Task status updates resource status” checkbox. Percentage of work complete (% Work Complete) represents the work that’s complete based on the hours worked so far divided by baseline work hours. You can fill in % Work Complete for a task or an individual resource assignment. For an assignment, double-click the assignment. In the Assignment Information dialog box, fill in % Work Complete. If you get hours worked from resources, enter the actual and remaining work for the most accurate picture of progress (which also calculates the associated labor costs). In the Assignment Information dialog box, fill in Actual Work and Remaining Work. The value in the Work box is the sum of actual work and remaining work, that is, the scheduled work for the assignment. If necessary, change the actual start date. The ultimate in progress detail and accuracy is actual work by time period. You enter actual work in the timephased portion of a usage view, showing the hours worked on an assignment in each time period. To display the Actual Work field, right-click the timephased portion of the usage view and choose Actual Work on the shortcut menu. To change the time period in the timephased grid, on the Status bar, drag the Zoom Slider until the timescale shows the level of time detail you want. You can also right-click the timescale heading and choose Timescale on the shortcut menu. To display the cells for the assignment in the timephased portion of the view, choose Task | Editing | Scroll to Task. Globally Updating a Project Project has two ways to bring project status up to date in a jiffy. If a project was on hold and just got the green light to resume, you can quickly reschedule all the unfinished work. Here’s how: Open any task-oriented view. If you want to update specific tasks, select them. Choose Project | Status | Update Project. The Update Project dialog box automatically selects “Update work as complete through” and “Entire project”. If you want to update the tasks you selected, choose the “Selected tasks” option. Select the “Reschedule uncompleted work to start after” option, and fill in the date when work is supposed to resume. In-progress tasks resume on that date (and show a dotted line for the split between when work stopped and restarted). Unstarted tasks that were supposed to start before that date change to start on this new date. Of course, you have to reschedule tasks with date constraints and manually scheduled tasks. Another way to quickly update a project emulates a cat that falls off the sofa, lands on its head, and then acts as if that’s what it meant to do. You can tell Project to update your schedule as if all tasks went exactly according to plan. This approach compromises the accuracy of your project data, so you should turn to it only as a last resort. Choose Project | Status | Update Project. In the Update Project dialog box, select the “Update work as complete through” option and fill in the date for updating as scheduled. If you want to update tasks with partial completion, select the “Set 0% – 100% complete” option. If you want to update only tasks that should have been 100 percent complete before the specified date, select the “Set 0% or 100% complete only” option. Updating Costs If you set up work resources with standard rates, overtime rates, and costs per use, Project calculates actual cost based on the actual work you record for assigned resources. However, recording actual costs for cost and materials resources is a bit different. Sure, you already filled in standard rates and/or costs per use for material resources, so Project can calculate actual material costs. (The cost is based on the number of units used, or the amount per time period and the actual duration of the task.) Remember, if you use a different quantity, you update the quantity in the material resource assignment’s Actual Work field. When you record actual progress, Project doesn’t calculate actual costs for cost resources. For example, you could set a task to 100% complete, but an assigned cost resource would show remaining cost. (If a task has only cost resources assigned, Project calculates actual costs for cost resources based on the percent complete.) Start with the Task Usage or Resource Usage view to enter cost resource actual costs: 1. Double-click the cost resource assignment for the task to open the Assignment Information dialog box. 2. On the Tracking tab, enter the value in the “Actual cost” field. Think You Know How to Track Project Progress? Test Yourself! You get actual work hours and estimated remaining work hours from your team members. Which of the following is the best place to record this progress info? A: Display the Resource Usage view and then use the Update Tasks command. B: Display the Resource Usage view, display the Actual Work and Remaining Work fields in the timephased grid and enter the work hours there. C: Display the Resource Usage view and display the Work table. Fill in the Actual Work and Remaining Work columns in the Work table. D: Display the Task Details Form and right-click it to choose the Work table. No peeking! Scroll below the book ordering information to read the answer to this quiz.   Order the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-632): Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007. To learn more about Microsoft certification, read, “Microsoft Project Management Certification: How to Get Started.”         The Answer to Test Yourself! Answer C is correct. A. The Update Tasks command doesn’t let you fill in work hours. B. The time-phased grid is too detailed. You aren’t entering work hours by time period. D. The Task Details Form does let you fill in actual and remaining work hours, but the Resource Usage view with the Work table is faster.

Calendar Exceptions in Microsoft Project 2010

The following article is taken as an excerpt from the new book, Microsoft Project 2010: The Missing Manual, written by Bonnie Biafore and published by O’Reilly Media. Setting Aside Holidays and Other Exceptions to the Work Schedule Work weeks assign the same schedule of workdays and times over a period of time. As the name implies, calendar exceptions are better for shorter changes to the work schedule. Consider using calendar exceptions for the following situations: Single days with a different schedule. A company holiday and a half-day for a corporate meeting are perfect examples of single-day exceptions. Multiple days with a different schedule. For example, you can set a modified schedule for a multiday training class that someone attends, a conference, or a series of short days when the auditors are in town. Recurring changes. Use exceptions to specify altered work times that occur on a regular schedule, like company meetings or the monthly ice cream social. Altered work schedules longer than a week. You can use an exception for a schedule change that lasts longer than a week as long as all the days of an exception are either nonworking days or have the same working times. (For that reason, work weeks and exceptions work equally well for factory shutdowns and people’s vacations.) Here are the steps for defining an exception in a calendar: 1. In the Change Working Time dialog box, in the “For calendar” drop-down list, select the calendar, and then click the Exceptions tab. Project doesn’t set up any exceptions automatically, so all the rows on the Exceptions tab start out blank. 2. On the Exceptions tab, click the first blank Name cell, and then type a name for the exception, like Quiche Training. You can create as many exceptions in a calendar as you need — to set each company holiday in the year or to reserve vacation time for someone who frequently flits around the world, for example. 3. Click the Start cell in the same row, click the down arrow that appears in the cell, and then choose the first date to which the exception applies. Click the Finish cell in the same row, and then choose the last date for the exception. Start and finish dates can be the same day, a few days apart, or any two dates you want. 4. To define the days and times for the exception, click Details. The “Details for” dialog box opens. Because many exceptions are holidays and other days off, Project automatically selects the Nonworking option. If the exception is for nonworking time, just click OK. However, if you’re creating an exception for a few days of altered work times, select the “Working times” option, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. When an exception is for one or more days with working times outside the norm, select the “Working times” option. The working times table springs to life, and fills in the standard working times you set in the Project calendar options. As you do for work week details, fill in the From and To times that apply to every day of the exception, and then click OK. For one or more adjacent days, you can ignore the settings in the “Recurrence pattern” and “Range of recurrence” sections. Project automatically sets them to model your nonworking and working settings for every day between the start and finish dates. The next section explains how to create recurring exceptions. 5. If the exception specifies modified working times, click OK when you’ve finished setting the working times in the Working Times table. The Details dialog box closes, and the exception is ready to go on the Exceptions tab. Defining Recurring Exceptions Sometimes, exceptions to the work week occur on a regular schedule — like the quarterly half-days of nonworking time for all-hands meetings. Recurring tasks and recurring exceptions have the same types of frequency settings, as the text below explains. However, recurring tasks represent project work that repeats, while recurring exceptions represent repeating special work times. Up to Speed: Recurring Tasks vs. Recurring Exceptions The settings for recurring exceptions look like the ones for recurring tasks. However, recurring exceptions and recurring tasks do very different things. A recurring task is project work that occurs on a regular schedule, like a biweekly status meeting. When you add these tasks to your schedule as recurring tasks, you can track the work hours and meeting costs. A recurring calendar exception specifies a work or nonwork schedule that repeats regularly, like a half-day the last Friday of every month (so security consultants can sweep the office for bugs, for example). Project takes the exception days and times into account when it schedules project work for any project that uses that calendar. When you copy a calendar from one file to another, the exceptions and work weeks for the calendar copy over too. The details for a calendar exception specify whether exception days are nonworking or working days (along with the work hours). The lower part of the “Details for” dialog box has options to set a frequency for the exception and when it starts or ends. Here are the steps for defining a recurring exception in a calendar: 1. In the Change Working Time dialog box, select the calendar from the “For calendar” drop-down list and then click the Exceptions tab. The Exceptions tab appears. 2. Enter the name, start date, and finish date as you would for a regular exception. Recurring exceptions tend to span longer periods of time than exceptions for holidays or training classes. For example, the start and finish dates for an annual corporate retreat exception could be three years apart — if you’re scheduling the next three retreats at once. 3. Click Details and specify the nonworking or working time settings for the days in the recurring exception. With a Project calendar exception, every day of the exception must use the same settings. 4. In the “Recurrence pattern” section, select the option for the frequency, as demonstrated in Figure 2. Figure 2. For a recurring exception, you specify the recurring pattern as well as how long the pattern lasts. Project initially sets the pattern to every day by selecting the Daily option and filling in the “Every _ _ days” box with 1. Project also fills in the Start and “End by” dates using the exception start and end dates. The frequency options include Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly. The settings that appear depend on which frequency option you select. For example, the Weekly option has a checkbox for specifying the number of weeks between occurrences (1 represents every week, 2 represents every other week) and checkboxes for the days of the week on which the event occurs. The Monthly option has one option for specifying the day of the month, and another for specifying the week and day of the week (like first Monday). 5. In the “Range of recurrence” section, specify the date range or the number of occurrences. Project fills in the “Range of recurrence” Start box with the start date from the Exceptions tab — basically, the first date of the first exception. It selects the “End by” option and then fills in that box with the finish date from the Exceptions tab, the latest date for the entire recurrence. Suppose you want to carve out time from your project for a quarterly meeting every three months during the calendar year. You could set the Start date to 1/1/10 and the “End by” date to 12/31/10. If the frequency is set to Monthly on the first Tuesday of every three months, then Project automatically sets aside 1/5/10, 4/5/10, 7/6/10, and 10/5/10 for the meetings. Sometimes you want to specify a number of occurrences instead, which is in fact the easier way to schedule a specific number of meetings. You don’t have to change the Start date. However, to set a number of occurrences, select the “End after” option, and then type the number (4 in this example) in the “occurrences” box. If the Finish date you set on the Exceptions tab is too early to schedule all the occurrences, Project automatically changes it. For example, if the Finish date were set to 2/15/10, Project would change it to 10/5/10 to accommodate the four quarterly meetings. 6. Click OK. Whether you set dates or a number of occurrences, a recurring exception can repeat up to 999 times. If your recurrence pattern results in 1,000 occurrences or more, Project displays a warning when you click OK. Reprinted with permission from O’Reilly. 2010, O’Reilly Media, Inc. Order Microsoft Project 2010: The Missing Manual from O’Reilly directly, on Amazon, on Barnes&Noble.com, or your preferred bookseller. MPUG members, save 40% off the print edition and 50% on the ebook version by using code DSUG during checkout on oreilly.com..

Certification Insider: Resource Overallocations

If you overload resources, your project finish date may look good, but it’s probably bogus. Assigning 20-hour work days doesn’t mean your team members will stay up that long and work that hard. The secret to success is to balance workloads so resources are busy, but not burning out. This month, you learn how to spot overallocations and balance workloads on your own, a topic covered in Microsoft’s Project certification exam, 70-632. Finding Overallocations The first step to a well-balanced schedule is finding resource overallocations. Resource and assignment views are your best bet. Here’s a quick rundown of the best views for optimizing assignments. The Resource Sheet provides a sneak peak at overallocations. If a resource is overallocated at least once during the project, the text in the resource’s row is bold and red, and the Indicators column displays a yellow diamond with an exclamation mark. But this view doesn’t say when, how much, or on which assignments the overallocations occur. The Resource Usage view combined with the Resource Graph is a one-two punch for knocking out overallocations. It shows the hours assigned by assignment and period while the Resource Graph makes it easy to see which periods are overallocated. The left pane of the Resource Usage view has a summary row for each resource with the task assignments below. The timescale shows the assigned hours by period. Overallocated resources appear in bolded red text. Hours that exceed the resource’s maximum available time appear in red, too. If several tasks contribute to an overallocation, the individual task hours may be black, but the total hours in the resource row are red, as you can see in Figure 1. Figure 1. The Resource Graph showing overallocation. The Resource Graph shows allocation over time, resource by resource. A vertical bar shows the selected resource’s allocation during one time period. A horizontal line shows the resource’s maximum units. When the vertical bar is higher than the horizontal line and part of the bar is bright red (the overallocation), the resource is overallocated. Sometimes resources are overallocated for a day or so, but can finish the job by the end of a week. Increase the length of the timescale periods (for example, from days to weeks) to see whether overallocations work themselves out. (Right-click the timescale heading to modify the timescale settings.) After you find an overallocation, you can show other values in the Resource Graph such as Work or Remaining Availability. For example, switch to Remaining Availability to find someone to take some hours. Right-click the Resource Graph timescale, and then, from the shortcut menu, choose the field you want to display in the graph. Tip: To emphasize overallocations in any resource-oriented view, turn on the Overallocated Resources filter, which displays only resources that are overallocated at some point during a project. The Resource Allocation view displays the Resource Usage view in the top pane and the Leveling Gantt in the bottom pane, so you can delay tasks to resolve overallocations as you’ll learn shortly. Balancing Workloads The easiest way to eliminate overallocations is to ask resources to work longer hours. This approach is realistic only when overallocations are small and don’t last too long (no more, say, than 20 percent and two weeks). To officially schedule longer days so assignments don’t show up as overallocations, don’t change a resource’s maximum units in the Resource Sheet. Maximum units represent the percentage of the standard workday that the resource devotes to the project. Modify the resource’s calendar to set up a special workweek or exception to reflect the short schedule change. Replacing a resource with someone with more time (or adding additional resources) is the next best thing. You can reassign only the overallocated hours or an entire assignment. The Assign Resources dialog box makes it easy, because you can look for resources with the right characteristics or enough free time to complete the assignment. Click the plus sign to expand the Resource list options. Then apply a filter to find the type of resources you want or type the number of available hours you’re looking for. In a task view like the Gantt chart or Leveling Gantt, select the task you want to reassign. In the Assign Resources dialog box, the assigned resources for the selected task appear at the top of the list preceded by a checkmark. To reduce a resource’s assignment, type the new percentage in the Units cell (from 100 percent to 50 percent, for example). To add a resource to the task, type the percentage you want to assign in the new resource’s Units cell and then press Enter. To replace a resource completely, select the one you want to replace and click Replace. In the Replace Resource dialog box, select the new resource and click OK. Another way to eliminate overallocations is to delay one or more tasks so that assigned resources can work on the tasks one after the other. Project offers two types of delays: Leveling delay applies to tasks and pushes the start date for the entire task. The table in the Leveling Gantt view includes the Leveling Delay field. To delay a task, type the length of delay in the Leveling Delay cell. (You can type a value like 3d to delay a task by three days. Project changes the durations you enter into elapsed time, so 3d turns into 3 “edays”.) In the Leveling Gantt chart, Project shows leveling delays that you’ve added by a thin line at the start of a task. You can remove all leveling delays by choosing Tools | Level Resources, and then clicking Clear Leveling. Note: A leveling delay isn’t the same as lag time. Lag time is a period you need to wait between tasks, for example, an hour for paint to dry before you start the second coat. Assignment delay is a delay on an individual assignment for a task, so some of the resources start working right away while others start a bit later. To add assignment delays to tasks, display the Resource Usage view and add the assignment Delay column to its table. Or in the Task Entry form, right-click the table area and choose Resource Schedule. The Delay column represents the Assignment Delay field. Project optimistically assumes that resources work at the same level from the start to the finish of every task. To reflect how work really gets done, you can apply work contours to assignments. Like a sculptor, a work contour carves the level of effort that’s assigned over the duration of an assignment. Tasks tend to ramp up in the beginning, run at their peak in the middle, and then taper off at the end. Work contours reduce the hours for some time periods, so they extend assignment and task duration. The Flat contour, which is the default setting, schedules the same hours of work each day of an assignment. The other contours have high and low points; the highs matching the number of hours in a day as a Flat contour. The names for work contours make sense. Back Loaded starts off slow and pushes the effort toward the end of the task. The Bell contour ramps up to a peak like the Back Loaded contour and then trails off like Front Loaded contour. The Turtle has low levels at the beginning and ends with a full load in the middle. To apply a work contour to an assignment, display an assignment view like Resource Usage. Double-click the resource assignment you want to contour. In the Assignment Information dialog box, on the General tab, choose the contour in the Work Contour list (see Figure 2) and click OK. The Indicators column in a view table displays an icon for the applied contour. Note: If resources cost more for overtime, you can assign work hours specifically as overtime in the Overtime Work field. Keep in mind, Project doesn’t automatically switch hours past the normal workday to overtime hours, so tracking overtime in the program is tedious at best. Use overtime only when resources cost more for overtime work. Project calculates the cost of overtime work hours by multiplying those hours by the Overtime Rate in the resource’s record. Figure 2. Applying a black loaded contour. Think You Know Resource Overallocations? Test Yourself! One of the resources on your project is overallocated. After you celebrate your good fortune, you want to delay the tasks that resource works on to eliminate the overallocations. What’s the best way to do that? Answer A: In the Resource Usage view timescale, type hours to adjust the resource’s assignments. Answer B: Display the Resource Allocation view. Select the assignment you want to delay. In the Leveling Delay field, type the length of delay that you want to add to the task in elapsed days. Answer C: In the Resource Usage view, select the resource assignment you want to delay. In the Task Form, display the Resource Schedule table and type the delay you want to add in the Leveling Delay field. Answer D: In the Resource Usage view, select the resource assignment you want to delay. In the Task Form, display the Resource Schedule table and type the delay you want to add in the Assignment Delay field. No peeking! Scroll below the book ordering information to read the answer to this quiz.   Order the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-632): Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007. To learn more about Microsoft certification, read, “Microsoft Project Management Certification: How to Get Started.”     The Answer to Test Yourself! Answers B, C, and D are all correct. The Resource Allocation view displays the Resource Usage view in the top pane and the Leveling Gantt in the bottom pane. The table in the Leveling Gantt view contains the Leveling Delay column, so you can type the length of delay that you want to add to the task. You can also add delays in the Task Form. Right-click the Task Form and display the Resource Schedule table. Type a delay for an entire task in the Leveling Delay field. To delay an assignment, type the value in the Delay field. Answer A is incorrect. You can change work hours in the Resource Usage view timescale. However, these changes introduce date constraints to the task and you must manually adjust the work hours if your schedule changes.

Microsoft Project 2010 Feature Rally: Manually Scheduled Tasks

Although Manually Scheduled task mode sounds like heresy to hardcore project managers, it comes in handy in several situations. Scheduling activities like training classes with set dates is a snap with a manually scheduled task. And they’re great during planning, when you don’t know all the info about a task — fill in what you know and leave the rest blank, type TBD, or add a note about what you do know. Perhaps, manually scheduled tasks’ finest moment comes during top-down planning. Suppose management has given you timeframes for a project: 12 weeks for design, 18 weeks for development, and6 weeks for testing. In Project 2010, you can create manually scheduled summary tasks and specify their duration. Then, as you create subtasks under those summary tasks, Project keeps track of the duration you specified for the summary task as well as the total duration of its summary tasks. You can see whether the subtasks fit within the summary task duration or run past the allotted time. As shown in the screenshot, the black summary bar represents the summary task duration you entered. The red bar below it shows the duration of the subtasks. The red indicates that the subtasks take longer than the summary task duration. If the subtasks took less time, the bar would be blue. The length of the two summary task bars show you whether you have any buffer available.  

Certification Insider: Making Resource Assignments Realistic

Just as the clothes you buy never look like they do on the model in a catalog, your real-world resource assignments usually don’t fit quite right the first time around. Microsoft Project 2007’s resource assignment features can help you tailor resource assignments until they model reality. This month, you’ll learn how to assign part-time workers to tasks, assign people based on the amount of productive time they have each day, and assign people with different levels of output. These are all essential aspects of resource management and an inherent part of the objectives for passing Microsoft’s 70-632 exam, Managing Projects with Office Project 2007. Part-time workers take longer to finish tasks, because they don’t work as many hours as full-time folks. Someone working half-days puts in four hours per day, compared to a full-time eight hours, so their assignments take twice as long. To make sure you don’t over-assign part-timers, you adjust the resources’ maximum units and, in most cases, their calendars. If a part-timer works the same amount of time each workday, in the Max. Units field in the Resource Sheet, type the percentage that the person works (for example, 50% for a half-time worker.) Project assumes that resources are available every workday up to their Max. Units percentage. If someone works a part-time schedule that combines a few full days and more days off, leave the Max. Units field alone. The person works 100 percent on the days in the office, so 100% Max. Units still applies. To model this type of part-time schedule, change the resource’s calendar instead (read “Certification Insider: How Calendars Control Schedules”) Assigning a part-time worker is the same as assigning a full-time person. Project automatically fills in the resource’s Max. Units value in the assignment Units field, whether the percentage is 20 percent, 50 percent, or 100 percent. Or you can type a different percentage. Either way, Project calculates the task duration based on the resource units assigned to the task and the resource’s calendar. People are usually optimistic about how long it will take to get something done. A 40-hour work week doesn’t translate into 40 hours spent on project assignments. Paperwork, meetings, trekking across the corporate campus, excessive multitasking, and gossip-mongering can chew through as much as 25 percent of the hours in a day. If you assign resources at 100 percent, your people will have work longer to stay on schedule or the project will fall behind. Working longer hours leads to low morale and exhaustion, which means the project eventually falls behind anyway. You can tackle productivity problems in a couple of ways. To publicize your organization’s true productivity, assign resources at their real percentage of productive time (in the Task Form Units field, fill in the lower percentage). For example, to assign six hours of work each day, in the Task Form, set the resource’s Units field to 75%. Or you can change resources’ Max. Units (in the Resource Sheet) to 75%, so Project automatically assigns resources at that unit level. Then, when you look for resource overallocations, Project shows resources assigned at more than 75% as overallocated. When a stakeholder asks why people aren’t working full-time, you can pitch your solution to increasing productive time (assuming you have one.) The other approach is to reset Project’s standard eight-hour workday to fewer hours. However, this approach keeps the productivity problem hidden within Project’s calculations. Resources look like they’re assigned 100%, but Project assigns them only six hours of work a day. To shorten the workday, first change the “Hours per day” and “Hours per week” calendar options (refer to “Certification Insider: Configuring Tools and Options”), as shown in the figure. That tells Project how to translate person-hours into the correct duration in days and weeks. You can also redefine the default end time for each work day. You have to redefine the standard work week in the project calendar, too, for example, to set the work hours you want Project to use. If you have people who polish off work like Cherry Garcia ice cream, you don’t let them go home early. On the other hand, newbies and other slower resources don’t work double-shifts. The only way to handle people’s work output is by changing the hours of work you assign to people. Then, Project recalculates either the units or duration for the task (read, “Certification Insider: Mastering Duration, Work, and Units”). If you modify assignments based on people’s capabilities, keep track of your original estimate, in case you switch resources again. Add a note to the task to describe the adjustments you made. In a task view, right-click the task, and then, from the shortcut menu, choose Task Notes. The Task Information dialog box opens with the Notes tab visible. Think You Know Resource Modifications? Test Yourself! Your project is over budget because you’ve been paying overtime. To eliminate overtime costs for the rest of the project, you want to eliminate remaining resource overallocations. Which of the following views helps you see all overallocated resources and their assignments? Answer A: The Resource Allocation View. Answer B: The Resource Graph. Answer C: The Resource Usage view with the Overallocated Resources filter applied. Answer D: The Task Usage view with the Overallocated Resources filter applied. No peeking! Scroll below the book ordering information to read the answer to this quiz.   Order the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-632): Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007. To learn more about Microsoft certification, read, “Microsoft Project Management Certification: How to Get Started.”     The Answer to Test Yourself! Answer A is incorrect. Although the Resource Allocation view changes overallocated resource names to red, it displays all the resources in your project, not just overallocated resources. Answer B is incorrect. Although the Resource Graph view displays red bars to indicate overallocations, the view displays all the resources in your project, not just overallocated resources. Answer C is correct. The Resource Usage view shows a summary row for each resource in your project with the assignments for each resource below the summary. By applying the Overallocated Resource filter to the view, only overallocated resources and their assignments are visible. Answer option D is incorrect. The Task Usage view shows assignments, but it’s a task view, so you can’t apply a resource filter to it.