MS Project Tutorial -1

Are you frustrated with MS Projects because it's not behaving like EXCEL?

Are you sick and tired of watching video after video in Youtube but not getting the EXACT answer?

So, I decided to share these lessons for you based on my personal experience on large IT transformation program in last 20 odd years in IT & telecom industry across all continents.

Lesson 1:  Top 10 tips to new MS Project users 

1.    MS project is not Excel. If you think Excel is right tool ask yourself why Microsoft and IBM first created complex tool like Ms Project 13 or Rational tool concert (IBM) and create an update every year. So, by NOT using project tool is not an option.

2.    Work with subject matter expert to create a detailed activity list. You can create the list in Excel or Word.

• Identify which are fixed duration work and which are effort driven work (i.e. addition of resources might expedite delivery because it will shorten the duration). 

3.    Get the resource list ( i.e. people going to work)along with their availability ( calendar along with % of availability ) from each team.

• You need to add this resource information in the resource sheet.
• Never assign resource 100%.
• Always manage the schedule of experts in each group as they are the real accelerator of the program.

4.    Avoid using constraints (like Must Start On or Start No Earlier Than) to the extent possible it creates challenge during optimizing of the plan. It is important to identify the sequence of work before you the plan.

5.    Agree on a review schedule say weekly or fortnightly. Make sure to break all activity in smaller activity so that activity should complete between two reviews. Will discuss in detail during tracking of activity in future lessons.

6.    Familiar yourself with type of work like fixed duration, fixed work & fixed unit in the tool.

7.    Basic scheduling formula is duration = Work/Units. So, never adjust duration.

8.    Identify major milestones about which you need to communicate executive steering committee.

•        Get agreement on those milestones from all performing teams.
•        Avoid using milestones within summary tasks. 

9.    Identify all critical external dependencies like commercial, procurement in your program, deliverable from team whom your company outsource the work. Ensure a regular risk & issue management  because  these are major culprits for violation of project triangles  scope, time & budget

10.    Reduce the amount of slack (but never get rid of it all!) on individual tasks.

You  MUST  understand these 10  tips before you start making any plan with MS Project 13 or Rational Tool concert or anyother open source tool or online tool.

Initially, I will speak about system development life cycle. In future lessons I will explain how you can  customize Microsoft Projectc13 to support  Zachman enterprise architecture , methodologies of service CMMI, service transition, capacity planning.

I, personally follow critical chain for the overall program and extreme programming for team level service delivery. Will share with you how  you can write plug-ins in MS project to support theory of constraints and agile methodology.

Please note that  you can use "tutorial de project" is generic and you can even consider it for tutorial project 2007 or 2010.

Next article:  MS Project Tutorial  on best practices for building & tracking MS Project Plan.

Related Articles in our Project Tutorial :

1. Top 10 Best Practices for Making an IT Project Successful

2. Top 7 reasons why large IT projects Fail

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