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Building Schedules with Microsoft Project

At the heart of Microsoft Project is a powerful scheduling engine that is used to align your project's activities with resources. Scheduling projects is a complex task, even with software. In order to get the most out of building your schedules with MS Project, consider enrolling in Microsoft Project Training. In the meantime, here are a few pointers.

The more information that you can provide Project with, the better your results will be. For example, Project calculates the schedule based on the data that you input including task durations, dependencies, and constraints. For example, if a task has inflexible restrictions, you must include these constraints so that they are accounted for in the final schedule.

By default, Project sets the duration of tasks based on pre-defined duration units such as one day totaling eight hours. If you have different requirements, make sure to change the duration unit. You can do this by going to the Tools menu, choosing Options, and clicking on the Calendar tab. In here, you can change the default duration units as well as the default start and end times of each business day.

Project's scheduling features allow you to plan and control the project from start to finish. Using this software, you can identify the critical path and view it several ways. For example, you can view it in context with all tasks, show only critical tasks, use the Gantt Chart Wizard to view it, show multiple critical paths, and show the overall critical path across multiple projects.

Because Project is so powerful, you'll be better able to make decisions - however, mastering the software is a must. Depending on whether you have project 2003 or 2007, Microsoft Project 2003 Training and Microsoft Project 2007 Training courses are highly recommended.