A Project within Microsoft Project 2007
| Author | Emil Cosma |
| Position | Lecturer, Ph.D., “Ovidius” University, Constanţa |
| Pages | 492-504 |
Page 492
A project is temporary. A project’s length of time varies from one week, for example, to even a few years, yet every project has a deadline. When starting to work at the project, there is the possibility of being unaware of its deadline, yet one knows that it occurs in the future. Even if they have a lot in common, the projects are not similar to the progressing operations. The name suggests the fact that the progressing operations continue indefinitely; one can not establish a deadline. For instance, one could mention the majority of the activities within the accounting and human resources departments. The projects are different from the processing operations because of an already established deadline.
♦ A project requires effort. Just like human and equipments, the resources also work. The effort is undertaken by a team or an organization, so that the projects appear as intentional, scheduled events.
♦ Every single product creates an unique service or product. The result or the project’s final product represents the reason for which the project has been undertaken. A gas refinery doesn’t produce a unique product. On the other hand, the commercial planes do stand for unique products.
Microsoft Project (or MSP) is a project management software program developed and sold by Microsoft which is designed to assist project managers in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets and analyzing workloads. The first version, Microsoft Project for Windows v1.0, started in 1987 on contract to a small external company. In 1988 the company was acquired by Microsoft, bringing the development project in-house where it was finished and released in 1990 as part of the company's applications offerings for Microsoft Windows 3.0. Microsoft Project was the company's third Windows-based application, and within a couple of years after its introduction WinProj was the dominant PC-based project managementPage 493 software. Further versions were released in 1992 (v3), 1993 (v4), 1995, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007. There was no Version 2 on either platform; the original design spec was augmented with the addition of macro capabilities and the extra work required to support a macro language pushed the development schedule out to early 1992 (Version 3). The application creates critical path schedules, although critical chain and event chain methodology third-party add-ons are available. Schedules can be resource leveled, and chains are visualized in a Gantt chart. Additionally, Project can recognize different classes of users. These different classes of users can have differing access levels to projects, views, and other data. Custom objects such as calendars, views, tables, filters and fields are stored in an enterprise global which is shared by all users. Microsoft Project and Project Server are the cornerstones of the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) product.
Schedules, budgets, communications, resources-projects big and small include them all, and Microsoft Project 2007 can help you control these variables - not be controlled by them. But Project is complex software, and learning it is, a project in itself. Over the years and versions, Project has collected improvements. Yet one feature has gottenworse: Project documentations. To use Project successfully, you need to understand something about project management, but that is an exercise Microsoft leaves to its customers. There are many Internet resources, books and papers which serve as manuals that should have accompanied Project 2007, for example: Bonnie, Biafore, 2007, Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual, Pogue-Press: O’ Reilly; Carl, Chatfield, and Timothy, Johnson,2007, Microsoft Office Project 2007 Step by Step, Microsoft Press; Dave, Gochberg, and Rob, Stewart, 2008, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007: The Complete Reference, McGraw-Hill Osborne; Dale, A. Howard, and Gary, L. Chefetz, 2007, Ultimate Learning Guide to Microsoft Office Project 2007, Soho Corp; Elaine, Marmel, 2007, Microsoft Project 2007 Bible, John Wiley & Sons. The purpose of this article is to present in detail an example of a project, using Microsoft Project 2007 called Dream House.
[SEE THE FIGURES IN THE ATTACHED PDF]
♦ The project’s “triangular” method
One may visualize the projects’ work in different ways, but the most favourite one is the so-called project triangle, having numerous options, however, the main idea is that every project includes a certain time restriction grade, a definite type of budget and requires a certain work tasks quantity (it has a defined objective).
Time. For many projects that create a product or a result when relating to an event, time represents the most important restriction that should be administrated. There is the possibility that the project’s budget or the work’s objective may be unknown, yet it is likely that one knows the project’s time limit.
Cost. The costs represent all necessary resources for the project’s realization. The cost includes people and equipments that work effectively, needed materials and all events and elements that require money or a person’s involvement within a project. For almost allPage 494 projects, the cost stands finally for a restriction; there is also the possibility of projects exceeding the budget, without being necessary to make eventual corrective actions.
Objective. One should take into consideration two aspects of the objective:
√ Project’s objective. Every single project results in a unique product: an element or a palpable service. Usually, customers expect a series of characteristics and functions regarding the products they consider to buy.
√ Product’s objective describes sometimes in details the qualities, the characteristics and the desired functions regarding the product. The documents that offer such information are sometimes called products specifications. The services and the events have usually a series of foreseen characteristics. On the other hand, the project’s objective describes the required operations of a product or service’s delivery, having the product’s desired specifications and objective. Even though the project’s objective focuses on the client or the product’s consumer, it is preoccupied mainly with the persons who will finalize the project. The project’s objective is usually measured by activities and phases.
The product’s objective and the project’s objective are very similar. The project manager who administrates the project’s objective should also realize that he/she should also know well the product’s objective or how to communicate with people who are acknowledged with this type of data.
♦ Restrictions administration in regards to projects
The most sensible aspect which concerns the project’s management is that of maintaining equilibrium between the restrictions of projects’ objective, time and cost. The project triangle shows the process of realizing equilibrium between restrictions because all three triangle sides are connected, and one triangle side’s alteration could affect at least one of the two remaining sides:
• If the project’s plan duration (time ↙) is reduced, it might need the budget (cost ↗) increase, due to the fact that one needs to employ many resources that do the same work within a short time period. If one doesn’t achieve to increase the budget, then it may need to reduce the objective (objective ↙) because the available resources are not able to execute all operations that are scheduled for a short time period.
• If the project’s budget (cost ↙) decreases, one may possibly need a little bit more time (time ↗) because it’s impossible to pay so much resources with the same efficiency. If the time period doesn’t increase, it is...
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