If you read my Guide to Network Analysis, made available last month, you hopefully gained a better understanding of a project’s “Network” and “Analysis.” The “Network” part being a logic diagram of connecting nodes (details of the individual tasks and the relationships between them), and the “Analysis” part describing the process of estimating the duration…

One of the most frequently asked questions when someone is about to start a new task is likely, “how much time will it take?” Time is limited. Our lives are limited, and unfortunately, we just cannot wish away time limitations. That is why duration estimation is one of the most important aspects of project management….

  Impact on Expected Duration, Criticality, and Finish Time Correlation Schedule simulation can be used to estimate project duration. In addition, it can measure how much a task’s scheduling will influence project duration. Two such measures are a task’s criticality and finish time correlation. Criticality measures the likelihood that a task will appear on a…

  Project Management Institute (PMI)® Professional Development Units (PDUs): This Webinar is eligible for 1 PMI® PDUs in the Technical category of the Talent Triangle.   Event Description: When to use them, how to use them, and why to use them. How they behave with different types of calendars (Standard, and Resource), and what we…

There are a lot of people who stop using MS Project before they even get very far into a project. The main reasons for quitting Project are: When they make a project plan and then change it, they get strange results. When they assign resources with their own calendars, they do not get tasks scheduled…

We all know that the heart of MS Project is the “magic” formula: Work = Duration * Units. This formula works with automatically scheduled tasks, but does it always work? Let me illustrate my point by creating a simple project with two tasks: As you can see, Work is 0 hours, because there are no…

When working within a new project, have you ever noticed those question marks in the Duration column for every task that has the default duration of 1 day? If memory serves me correctly, Microsoft introduced a new feature called Estimated Durations in Microsoft Project 2000. In fact, I distinctly remember how very experienced users of…

Much has been written about Critical Path, Slack, Constraints, and the various forms of Duration and Dependencies. But, have you looked for Negative Slack? This is generally defined as the amount of time required to complete a task or project beyond its scheduled finish date. Think of it as the minimum amount of time to…

Start a free trial to watch the full training session and earn 1.5 PMI®​ PDUs Event Description: In this video viewers will learn how to plan out their tasks within Microsoft Project. They will learn how to add tasks to a schedule, the difference between Auto and Manually scheduled tasks, how to estimate duration and work for tasks, and…

The following in an excerpt from chapter 4 of Microsoft® Project Do’s and Don’ts by Sam Huffman. Part of the MPUG Essentials Training. Download full version of chapter 4. Once the outline is entered in Microsoft® Project, you are ready to estimate and enter task durations. This is accomplished by typing the estimated duration in minutes, hours, days, weeks…