Microsoft Project For Dummies. Cynthia Snyder Dionisio

In project management parlance, the person who champions (and funds) a project is the project sponsor. Although the project manager may work for the project sponsor, the project often also has a customer — outside the project manager’s own company or within it — for whom the end product is produced.

      Common elements of a project charter are:

       Purpose

       Description

       Objectives

       Criteria for completion

       Summary milestone schedule

       Summary budget

      

Other names for the charter are project-initiating document and statement of work.

      The high-level information in the charter provides background information to help you plan the project approach and organize the work logically. Using the information from the charter, you can start to define the project’s major deliverables and its life cycle — and your approach to accomplishing all the project work.

Throughout this book, I use a project to demonstrate key concepts in Project. The project is part of a larger program to build a community called Desert Rose. It is a gated community that will have four neighborhoods and community spaces and activities. Our project is the Security for the Desert Rose community. The project charter for the Security sample project is shown in Figure 2-1.

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      FIGURE 2-1: The Desert Rose Security project charter.

Introducing the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

      If you have a small project, you may be able to start entering tasks into Project and organize them on the fly. But for any project with more than 50 tasks, consider how to structure and organize the work before you open Project. One best practice is to create the work breakdown structure, or WBS — a hierarchically organized representation of all the project work.

      

The concept of project work includes work that’s necessary to create the product and work that’s necessary to manage the project, such as attending meetings, managing risk, and creating documentation.

      Generally, you approach the WBS from the top down. In other words, you evaluate the entire project and then break it into large chunks, and then break the larger chunks into smaller chunks, and so on, until you have a defined deliverable. That’s where the WBS stops and project tasks begin.

      

The breaking of WBS deliverables into smaller chunks is known as decomposition.

      The WBS houses all deliverables for the project and product scope. It doesn’t include the tasks. Those are strictly for the schedule. Another way of thinking about the WBS is that it’s composed of nouns, whereas the schedule is composed of actionable verbs. For example, the Perimeter Fencing might be the lowest-level deliverable you would show on the WBS. Then define these tasks for the schedule using the “verb-noun” naming convention:

      1 Identify fencing requirements.

      2 Develop request for quote.

      3 Receive quotes.

      4 Select vendor.

      5 Develop contract.

      6 Sign contract.

      7 Oversee fence installation.

Organizing the Work

      Frequently, the most challenging aspect of creating a WBS is figuring out how to organize it. You have several options. For example, if you have multiple locations for a hardware deployment, you can arrange it by geography.

Another common way to organize work is by major deliverable. The needs and deliverables of the project determine how best to organize work. The WBS for Desert Rose Security is arranged by the type of work. You can see it presented in two different ways. One way looks like an organizational chart, and the other way is via outline. Either way works well; however, when you start decomposing past two levels, the organizational chart method becomes difficult to manage. After you delve into the detail, consider moving to an outline format. Figure 2-2 shows an organizational chart format for the high-level WBS.

      © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

      FIGURE 2-2: High-level WBS.

Using the high-level WBS, you can further decompose the work into outline format:

       Desert Rose Community Center

      1 Perimeter1.1 Entry gates1.2 Walls1.3 Guard houses

      2 Equipment2.1 Trucks2.2 Carts2.3 Communication2.3.1 Radios2.3.2 Phones2.3.3 Tablets2.4 Security system

      3 Asset Management3.1 Requirements3.2 Database3.3 Asset information

      4 Operations Readiness4.1 Staffing4.2 Operations manual4.3 Training

      After outlining the organization of the work, you can start defining the tasks that comprise the project schedule.

Starting the Project

      In Chapter 1, I discuss how to open a blank project. After you open a blank project, you can begin entering basic project information, such as the start or end date.

      Entering project information

      You can enter project information into Project in two ways:

       Choose File ⇒ Info. In the Project Information section on the right side of the screen, as shown in Figure 2-3, you can enter the start, finish, schedule from, current, and status dates for the project. All you have to do to make an entry or change an entry is click on it to display the controls — for example, to change the date, just click on the date picker. After choosing File ⇒ Info, you can click the Project Information down arrow, then click Advanced Properties. The Properties dialog box opens. Enter the name of the project where it says “Title” and enter your name where it says “Author.” You can also enter company name, keywords, and other information. This information is used in many of the automated reports that Project creates.

       On the Ribbon, go to the Project tab and click the Project Information icon. You see the Project Information dialog box, shown in Figure 2-4. It holds the same information as the Project Information section on the Info screen in the Backstage view.

      © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

      FIGURE