 Hi, my name is Sandra Bitaekis and I'm here to take you through the basics of Microsoft Project. Now this course brings a lot of memories to me because one of the first sets of courses that I ever taught 20 years ago was Microsoft Project Version 1. At that time we had Project Version 1, we had Mac work branch for projects, but really that was all there was and some of the features, again, were fairly light. We could put up a list, we could do some links, but above and beyond then what we're seeing now is no comparison. So it's my pleasure to take you through this course and during this course teach you all the basics that you're looking for to get you started with your first projects. In this unit we'll get started with project. This means we'll go through project management concepts as well as the actual workspace. We'll go through the project window, we'll learn about project files and we'll also get a chance to see where the help menu is. In this topic we'll learn about the project management concepts. When you work with project management the key success to a project that you're trying to manage is a series of steps that you perform to reach a goal. So projects have a definite start and an end and they result in a product or service. So these projects are often critical components and a project really has three different types of constraints. We always have cost constraints, very rarely do we have a completely open budget to do anything we want which means we have to pay attention to how we get things done. Now we also have scope. Scope, of course, is what the customer requirements are. So we want to look at customer requirements, we want to look at quality specifications and what deliverables we're expected to come up with. So we're presented with a particular budget for our resources and a finite amount of resources. We have promises to the customer and then of course we have time and this is going to be our timeline which is the timeline for tasks and all of our specific start and all of our specific end dates. So a project's considered successful when it's delivered on time, when it stays in budget, when the customer's happy and here if you kind of break it into phases we do have a number of phases that will help us get there. We have an initial phase which is really where you initiate the task. It's within the initial phase that we really establish the beginning of the project and even the concept of creating this project. At this point all we're doing is defining our objectives and our scope. We're not planning yet, we're kind of planning for the plan. We also have the planning phase. During the planning phase this is where we look at the schedule. So we're trying to find a workable schedule so that we can meet all the objectives and business needs and within maintaining a schedule that schedule has tasks and resources that are involved in terms of what needs to be done and who or what is needed to get that done. We also have the implementation phase which means we'll execute the tasks themselves, we'll coordinate the people and resources and carry out the plan making adjustments where necessary. We also have the monitoring phase. This is where we start our tracking, we track and report the project's progress. Are we on budget? Are we on time? Sometimes this involves a lot of reviewing the progress of the project and again making some adjustments where necessary. We're going to compare the progress to plan as well as make those measures on an ongoing basis to correct things. And of course the closeout phase. It's not about the party at the end, that comes after we close it out which means we're going to come to a formal acceptance of the project and a formal ending of the project. So we have to make sure that everything is ended orderly, that personnel has been evaluated, lessons learned has been evaluated and all contracts have been closed out. So project management is really the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to accomplish activities or tasks so that you can meet your objectives. Now what you're going to find is with each one of these phases we have a lot of control and a lot of communication. So again from the initial phase where we've really established at the beginning of a project and we're starting to deal with the scopes, we're initiating the tasks, we're controlling those phases and communication, we're going to control how we plan them, we're going to control how they're executed, how they're monitoring and how they're closed. All of those really involve a high level of communication. So when someone is running a week late that it's somehow communicated back so we can accommodate, reschedule or even just move items around. Most projects have constraints and within those constraints we may go through the initial phase and say that Gish would really like that building by December 1st. That's our initial phase where we're starting to plan and create what we're trying to accomplish but during the planning phase we might see that that's really just not possible and it might not be done until February 1st. It's that plan that's going to give us that information. When you're planning a project we have some very typical project management tasks. We have the planning phase versus the monitoring and tracking phase. When you plan you're really building the plan which means we're going to decide on the project start date, we're going to add in all the tasks that need to be accomplished, we're going to link them and establish some relationships like this has to finish before this one can start. Once we have the tasks really outlined we start looking at our resources and we assign those resources and all of the costs to the tasks. Now this might mean that some tasks get divided, some get alleviated and some might actually have a few more put in. And of course at the very end of the planning phase there's a lot of fine tuning. When you realize you have one resource who's working a 24 hour day you might want to really adjust which areas he's working on. Once you're all done to the plan and you commit the plan what you want to do is you want to start really dealing with monitoring and adjusting and tracking. So we do this by setting a baseline. The baseline copies what we're currently planning into basically what's called a plan date or a base date. So that baseline gives us something to compare to. We then start adding in actuals, we track any variance that's happening and of course from there you might have to adjust the schedule. There's also a lot of reports that are available in project and this is a part where you start working with the reports, printing with the reports and of course there's a lot of communication with the team. Your default view always is Gantt chart view. Now Gantt chart view allows us to work within our tasks because yes if we're having problems with resources we do typically switch to resource views but in the majority of projects it's really the tasks that are starting to drive it. So in the tasks we have a division of screen. This right here is a table and it's known as the entry table. By default the table that you enter in all of your tasks. We have name, duration, start, finish and if we were to click our mouse right here you would see it would change shape and I could drag that to the right and you would find predecessors and resources and some of the other information. On this side you basically have your chart view or your Gantt view. This is going to show you a timeline where each bar resembles a task at its duration as you compare it right here to the timeline. We have summary tasks that summarize a group of tasks. We can have project summaries that summarize the beginning and end of the entire project. We also have because it's a split view if you'll notice right here we have scroll bars which means the table will scroll left and right independently of the chart so we can move things in and out of view. Here we also have an ability to scroll down through this list. Now there's only one so this vertical scroll will take everything with it so that we can navigate down to tasks below in this case 24. So within the Gantt chart view when you're viewing it you'll see specifically you have Gantt chart tools the format tab will be dedicated right to the Gantt chart and the things that you can format on the Gantt chart. Now if I was to have a different view then you would see that this area is going to change to represent that view and I'll have a different set of menus. You'll see the way to get to the Gantt chart is actually right there if you happen to be on any other view. A task list is a list of the things that you need to do. So here we have a task name but what you'll notice is we have a lot of pluses and minuses so this right here because I see that it's task zero is known as a project summary and you can choose whether or not you want a project summary in your project. Below here we have what's called a summary task which means it's got sub tasks underneath it but you'll see there's a plus number or a plus sign and we go from number one to number nine here so all of its details are hidden. However in the case of pre-construction it's a minus which means I could click on it and basically hide everything from get approvals to building permit. The pre-construction phase is going to take 41 days and that's because it's from the beginning of the first task until the end of the last task. Now these tasks are linked with the start and end dates so you'll see that pre-construction in 41 days goes everywhere from 8 to until the ending of ordering materials which is on 927. Any column you see can be filtered, reordered, added or removed without affecting the data inside. Last but not least we have our indicator column. This is where you see all the messages of things that you might want to know about whether it's an overallocated resource or a note that someone has added. The resource sheet view looks like a large spreadsheet. What it allows us to do is to enter in all of the information about our resources. Now notice here we have an orange tab that says resource sheet tools and that format would be directly dedicated to anything in the resource sheet. We have an indicator column, the name of the resource, what type of resource they are, is it going to be work, which of course is people who are working hours, is it a material, something that you're buying or is it a cost, something that it just has a cost associated with it. If it is a material you can add things like the description of a material so let's say we have paint, that might be where we put gallons. Initials just for shortcut. We can add it to groups so we can filter for groups. Let's say get everyone who's in project management or everyone who's in labor or anyone who's skilled labor and we can sort and filter on those groups. 100% means one unit, 100% of their time. Of course we get a chance to put in the cost information. The accrue ad is fairly important. Accrue means that I can either pay the money out as soon as that resource starts on a task. I can say when they end the task or prorate it means you work a day, we take a day out of the budget. And here's our calendaring based information.