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Practice makes Perfect Pt 1 – Timeline #MSProject #ProjectServer #Office365
I am often asked “why should we upgrade from Project Professional 2007 to Project Professional 2010”. My answer would be “Why not” Project Professional 2010 has some new features/functions that can make a Project Managers live a lot easier.
In the first part of Practice makes Perfect I am going to talk about one of these new features; the Timeline.
“With the new office version Project Professional 2013 coming out in preview I used that to create most of the images. Remember this is still a preview version so things might change.”
The timeline is a new feature that allows a Project Manager to create a graphical presentation of his project. He can do this over his whole project or just select a few tasks he wants to show. This enable the Project Manager to use the timeline in presentations, documents or just put it against the wall.
The timeline looks something like this:
Click to enlarge.
Pretty neat i would say.
In the timeline you can do a couple of things.
You can change the format of all the task in the timeline. For instance you can color the most important task red. You can also change the format of the text styles to make something clear within the timeline.
Why would i use the timeline? Like I said it enables the Project Managers to create a easy to use view of the project in minutes. Easy to use in for example Word or PowerPoint. They way the data is presented it is also easier to read then a normal project Gant Chart.
There a numerous ways you can use this feature and I am not going sum up all of them. When you have access to Project Professional 2010 experiment with it. Trust me it will be worth your time.
So how do I use it?
There are two ways to you can add tasks into your timeline.
1. Right click your task and the one of the last commands you can give is “Add to Timeline”
2. Go to “Task Information” or double click your task and on the “General Tab” you will fine “Display on Timeline”.
Easy as that.
Enjoy your timeline!
   I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain.
This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ |
#MSProject – Practice makes Perfect #ProjectServer #Office365
During a three day Prince2 Practitioner course with me being a consultant that implements Microsoft Project. I asked the six project managers the following question: “How many of you use Microsoft Project to plan your projects” The responds was as what I expected “I use Excel”, “I only use it to draw up my initial plan and hang it against a wall”. While I do not like Excel as a planning tool, I can understand a lot of Project Managers use it.
My follow-up question is then do you update your plan on a weekly basis. The answer I usual get then is no. I have it in my head and update the plan when I need to (which usual takes a lot of time).
This is an example on what I see on day to day basis. There are still a lot of Project Managers that use Microsoft Project to make a plan and then never use it again to update it.
My question would be why? Microsoft Project has great functions that a Project Manager can use to make it a really easy job to update a project plan. I think the answer lies in that a lot of Project Managers do not take the time to explore Microsoft Project and it’s functions and features.
The next question would be is it really needed? I suppose not and depends on your style as a Project Manager, but what I do know is, that it can really save you a lot of time and effort. And that as a Project Manager is what we all want. We have a lot of things to do on a daily basis anyway.
To help any Project Manager that is interested in Microsoft Project and use it or wants to start using it for their projects, I am going to start a series called “Practice makes Perfect” that will try to help to get the most out of Microsoft Project. For the series I will use Microsoft Project Professional 2010 or the new Project Professional 2013 (currently part of the Microsoft Office preview).
This series will include for example:
- Baseline usage
- Views (Think of easy views a project manager can use to update their plan)
- Reports
I hope that this series will help Project Managers to get more out of Microsoft Project and really help them on a day to day basis.
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I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain.
This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ |
SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans 