Microsoft Project 2010 Step by Step-Chapter2
Microsoft Project 2010 Step by Step-Chapter2
In this chapter, you will manage the scheduling of tasks in two different ways:
● Enter tasks as manually scheduled to quickly capture some details without actually
scheduling tasks.
● Work with automatically scheduled tasks to begin to take advantage of the power-
ful scheduling engine in Project.
Practice Files Before you can complete the exercises in this chapter, you need to copy
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24 Chapter 2 Creating a Task List
Important If you are running Project Professional, you may need to make a one-time setting
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As you might expect, Project focuses primarily on time. Sometimes you might know the
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with Project, you specify only one date, not both: the project start date or the project
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tions of the tasks, Project calculates the other date for you. Remember that Project is
not just merely a static repository of your schedule information or a Gantt chart drawing
tool; it is an active scheduling engine.
Most projects should be scheduled from a start date, even if you know that the project
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scheduled from a start date.
Notice the thin orange vertical line in the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view.
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4. On the Project tab, in the Properties group, click Project Information.
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Important If you are using Project Professional rather than Project Standard, the Project
Information and some other dialog boxes contain additional options relating to Project
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options. For more information about Project Server, see Appendix C.
5. In the Start Date box, type 1/2/12, or click the down arrow to display the calendar
and select January 2, 2012.
Tip In the calendar, you can navigate to any month and then click the date you want, or
click Today to quickly choose the current date.
Project Standard
users do not see
this portion of
the dialog box.
6. Click OK to accept this start date and close the Project Information dialog box.
7. On the File tab, click Save.
Because this project plan has not been previously saved, the Save As dialog box
appears.
Entering Task Names 27
8. Locate the Chapter02 folder in the Project 2010 Step by Step folder on your hard
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Microsoft Press.
9. In the File name box, type Simple Tasks.
10. Click Save to close the Save As dialog box.
● Use short verb phrases that describe the work to be done, such as “Edit
manuscript.”
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name in the subtask name unless it adds clarity.
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task names.
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to use concise, descriptive phrases that communicate the required work and make sense
to you and others who will perform the work.
In this exercise, you enter some initial tasks required for the new book launch events.
1. Click the cell directly below the Task Name column heading.
2. Assign launch team members, and then press the Enter key.
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it does not necessarily represent the order in which tasks occur. Your screen should
look similar to the following illustration.
28 Chapter 2 Creating a Task List
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no duration or date values appear, and the task does not yet have a Gantt bar in
the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view. Later you will work with automatically
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ally scheduled task as an initial placeholder that you can create at any time without
affecting the rest of the schedule. You might not know more than a task name at
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such as when it should occur, you can add those details to the project plan.
3. Enter the following task names, pressing Enter after each task name:
Design and order marketing material
Public Launch Phase
Distribute advance copies
Coordinate magazine feature articles
Launch public web portal for book
Entering Task Names 29
Entering Durations
In this section, you begin to work with task durations—the amount of time you expect it
will take to complete the task. Project can work with task durations that range from min-
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with task durations on the scale of hours, days, and weeks.
Tip Project determines the overall duration of a project plan by calculating the difference
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With manually scheduled tasks, you can enter regular duration values using the abbre-
viations shown previously; for example, 3d for three days. You can also enter text values,
such as “Check with Bob.” Such text values are replaced with the default 1-day duration
value when you convert a task from manual to automatic scheduling.
Entering Durations 31
Project uses standard values for minutes and hours for durations: 1 minute equals
60 seconds, and 1 hour equals 60 minutes. For the durations of days, weeks, and
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Schedule tab, as illustrated here:
1. Click the cell below the Duration column heading for task 1, Assign launch team
members.
Duration' 7
2. 1d, and then press Enter.
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task, starting at the project start date you previously set.
32 Chapter 2 Creating a Task List
For task 5, Coordinate magazine feature articles, '
and Project will calculate the duration.
4. In the Start'$ Q '% ^# 1/16/12, and
5. In the Finish' # 1/24/12, and then press Enter.
Project calculates the duration as seven days. Note that this is seven working days:
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lowing week. Project also draws the Gantt bar for the task to span these working
days plus the nonworking days (the weekend) between them, as shown here.
Entering Durations 33
6. For task 6, Launch public web portal for the book# "
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7. In the Start' #About two weeks before launch complete, and
then press Enter.
As with the duration value of a manually scheduled task, you can also enter a text
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● Overall project duration often correlates to task duration; long projects tend
to have tasks with longer durations than do tasks in short projects.
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tiyear project, for example, it might not be practical or even possible to track tasks
that are measured in minutes or hours. In general, you should measure task dura-
tions at the lowest level of detail or control that is important to you, but no lower.
For the projects you work on in this book, the durations are usually supplied for
you. For your projects, you will often have to estimate task durations. Good sources
of task duration estimates include:
Entering a Milestone
In addition to entering tasks to be completed, you might want to account for an impor-
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this, you will create a milestone task.
Tip You can mark a task of any duration as a milestone. Double-click the task name to
display the Task Information dialog box, and then click the Advanced tab and select the
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When a summary task is manually scheduled, its duration will be calculated based on its
subtasks, just like the duration of an automatically scheduled summary task. However,
you can edit the duration of a manually scheduled task and Project will keep track of
both the manual duration that you entered and the calculated duration.
Subtasks
Linking Tasks 37
Linking Tasks
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of writing a chapter of a book must be completed before the task of editing the chap-
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), which has two aspects:
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4 &#' $8"=% because it pre-
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because it succeeds, or follows tasks on which it is dependent. Any task can be a
38 Chapter 2 Creating a Task List
predecessor for one or more successor tasks. Likewise, any task can be a successor to one
or more predecessor tasks.
Although this might sound complicated, tasks can have one of only four types of task
relationships.
Tip You can adjust the schedule relationship between predecessor and successor tasks with lead
and lag time. For example, you can set a two-day lag between the end of a predecessor task and
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are two areas where the use of a scheduling engine such as Project really pays off. For
example, you can change task durations or add or remove tasks from a chain of linked
tasks, and Project will reschedule tasks accordingly.
● In the Gantt Chart and Network Diagram views, task relationships appear as the
lines connecting tasks.
● In tables, such as the , task ID numbers of predecessor tasks appear
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divider bar to the right to see the Predecessor column.)
Linking Tasks 39
You create task relationships by creating links between tasks. In this exercise, you use
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relationships.
When the mouse pointer is over task 5, note the link line and icon that appear.
Release the mouse pointer.
Project reschedules task 4 to start following the completion of its predecessor, task 3.
You might have noticed that the start of the Public Launch Phase summary task
does not respect its link to its predecessor, the Planning Phase summary task.
Clicking the Respect Link button with the Public Launch Phase summary task
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address this issue next by switching to automatic scheduling.
Switching Task Scheduling from Manual to Automatic 43
In this exercise, you convert some tasks and then the entire project plan to automatic
scheduling.
Notice that Project supplied a one-day duration for task 8, which previously had
a text note for its duration. Project did so because it requires a numeric time
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following the duration value indicates that this is an estimated duration; it has no
effect on the scheduling of the task.
Switching Task Scheduling from Manual to Automatic 45
Right now, this project plan is set to treat all new tasks entered as manually sched-
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matically scheduled. However, this project plan is developed enough now to switch
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needed.
7. On the Task tab, in the Tasks group, click Mode and then click Auto Schedule.
Tip You can also toggle the scheduling mode by clicking the New Tasks status bar text
and then picking the other scheduling mode.
Project links the two tasks. Notice that the duration of the Public Launch Phase
summary task was updated automatically from 10 to 11 days.
46 Chapter 2 Creating a Task List
1. If necessary, scroll the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view so the week of
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Tip If needed, you can schedule tasks to occur during working and nonworking time. To
do this, assign an to a task. You enter elapsed duration by preceding the
duration abbreviation with an # For example, type 3ed to indicate three elapsed days. You
might use an elapsed duration for a task that goes on around the clock rather than just
during normal working hours. For instance, a construction project might have the tasks
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might also want a task called ( % $
the forms until the concrete has cured. The task ( % to cure should have an
elapsed duration because the concrete will cure over a contiguous range of days, whether
they are working or nonworking days. If the concrete takes 48 hours to cure, you can enter
the duration for that task as 2ed, schedule the task to start on Friday at 9 A.M., and expect
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durations in Project.
In the Timeline view, you can see the project start and finish dates.
Tip If the Timeline view is not shown, on the View tab, in the Split View group, click the
Timeline check box.
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in Project support a wide range of text formatting options; you can even link to or store
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Documenting Tasks and the Project Plan 51
In this exercise, you enter task notes and hyperlinks to document important information
about some tasks.
4. Click OK.
A note icon appears in the Indicators column.
5. Point to the note icon.
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6. Right-click the name of task 8, Launch public Web portal for book, and then click
Hyperlink on the shortcut menu.
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52 Chapter 2 Creating a Task List
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shortcut menu that appears click Hyperlink, and then click Open Hyperlink.
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revised. Other properties include information that you might want to record about
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search. Project also uses properties in page headers and footers when printing.
In the following steps, you enter some properties that you will use later when print-
ing and for other purposes.
10. Click the File tab.
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thumbnail image and key statistics such as the start date on the right side of the
Backstage view.
11. Click the Project Information button directly below the thumbnail image. In the
menu that appears, click Advanced Properties.
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12. In the Subject box, type New book launch schedule.
13. In the Author box, type your name.
14. In the Company box, type Lucerne Publishing.
Key Points 53
Key Points
● Essential aspects of tasks in a project plan include their duration and order of
occurrence.
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which the completion of one task controls the start of another task.
● In Project, phases of a schedule are represented as summary tasks.
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● You use calendars in Project to control when work can be scheduled to occur.
● You can document additional details using task notes and create hyperlinks to
the Web.