Software Engineering and project management lab Assignment 2K14/IT/127
introduction to MS-project
Microsoft Project is a project management software program developed and sold by Microsoft, designed to assist a project
manager in developing a schedule, assigning resources to tasks,
tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads. Project creates budgets based on assignment work and resource rates.
Project Management
MS Project is feature rich, but project management techniques are
required to drive a project effectively. A lot of project managers get
confused between a schedule and a plan. MS Project can help you in
creating a Schedule for the project even with the provided constraints.
It cannot Plan for you. As a project manager you should be able to
answer the following specific questions as part of the planning process
to develop a schedule. MS Project cannot answer these for you.
- What tasks need to be performed to create the deliverables of the
project and in what order? This relates to the scope of the project.
- What are the time constraints and deadlines if any, for different
tasks and for the project as a whole? This relates to the schedule of
the project.
- What kind of resources (man/machine/material) are needed to perform each task?
- How much will each task cost to accomplish? This would relate to the cost of the project.
- What kind of risk do we have associated with a particular
schedule for the project? This might affect the scope, cost and time
constraints of your project.
Strictly speaking, from the perspective of Project Management Methodology, a Plan and Schedule are not the same. A
plan
is a detailed action-oriented, experience and knowledge-based exercise
which considers all elements of strategy, scope, cost, time, resources,
quality and risk for the project.
Scheduling is the science of using mathematical calculations
and logic to generate timeeffective sequence of task considering any
resource and cost constraints. Schedule is part of the Plan. In Project
Management Methodology, schedule would only mean listing of a project's
milestones, tasks/activities, and deliverables, with start and finish
dates. Of course the schedule is linked with resources, budgets and
dependencies.
However, in this tutorial for MS Project (and in all available help
for MS Project) the word ‘Plan’ is used as a ‘Schedule’ being created in
MS Project. This is because of two reasons.
One, MS Project does more than just create a schedule it can
establish dependencies among tasks, it can create constraints, it can
resolve resource conflicts, and it can also help in reviewing cost and
schedule performance over the duration of the project. So it does help
in more than just creating a Schedule. This it makes sense for Microsoft
to market MS Project as a Plan Creator rather than over-simplifying it
as just a schedule creator.
Two, it is due to limitation of generally accepted form of English
language, where a schedule can be both in a noun as well as verb form.
As a noun, a Schedule is like a time table or a series of things to be
done or of events to occur at or during a particular time or period. And
in the verb form, schedule is to plan for a certain date. Therefore it
is much easier to say that, “One can schedule a plan from a start date”
but very awkward to say, “One can schedule a schedule from a start
date”. The distinction is important for you as a project manager, but as
far as MS project is concerned the noun form of Schedule is a Plan.
Of course, a project manager should also be able to answer other project-related questions as well. For example −
- Why this project needs to be run by the organization?
- What’s the best way to communicate project details to the stakeholders?
- What is the risk management plan?
- How the vendors are going to be managed?
- How the project is tracked and monitored?
- How the quality is measured and qualified?
MS Project can help you −
- Visualize your project plan in standard defined formats.
- Schedule tasks and resources consistently and effectively.
- Track information about the work, duration, and resource requirements for your project.
- Generate reports to share in progress meetings.
