msproject 3

Consumer Market Study Project – Assignment #3 This is a continuation of the Consumer Market Study project. You will need your project file from Assignment #2. To retrieve your project information, on the File menu, click Open and locate “Consumer Market Study – 2” from Exercise 2. NOT the final file that you turned in for a grade. You need the file that you saved halfway through the instructions. In this assignment, we will discuss how Microsoft Project can be used to support the techniques discussed in Chapter 6 based on the Consumer Market Study example. We are now ready to add additional resources, manage the time assignment on a task for a resource, evaluate task usage, level resources that are overallocated, and create resource reports. Figure 1

Figure 1 shows a resource sheet for the consumer market study. To obtain the resource sheet, on the View ribbon, click on Resource Sheet in the Resource Views group. The Resource Sheet allows you to enter information about your resources, including specific work calendars for each of your resources. Resources other than human resources can also be entered into this table. Human resources are entered as Work resources. Other types of resources are entered as Material or Cost resources. The Type column of the Resource Sheet shows the type of resource as Work, Material, or Cost.

The Consumer Market Study requires two material resources and one cost resource, in addition to the four work resources. Material and cost resources are added by entering the name in the Resource Name column and selecting the type as material or cost in the Type column by clicking on the down arrow in the Type column for the entry as in Figure 2. Enter these now into your Resource Sheet:

 Resource: Travel Expense, Type: Cost  Resource: Questionnaire Printing, Type: Material  Resource: Questionnaire Mailing, Type: Material

Figure 2

Additional information can be entered about each resource by double-clicking on a resource name in the Resource Name column. You will see the Resource Information window with four tabs: General, Costs, Notes, and Custom Fields, as shown with the red arrows in Figure 3. Add the same note to your Resource Sheet to provide additional information about the cost resource. Figure 3

Next we need to assign the new material and cost resources to tasks. We do this in the Gantt Chart Entry Table view. Recall the Gantt Chart Entry Table can be viewed by clicking on Gantt Chart on the View ribbon in the Task Views group, see the blue arrows in Figure 3. Then go to the Data Group and click on Tables as shown in Figure 4. Select Entry in the drop-down menu. Figure 4

To add a material or cost resource to a task, double-click the task name (green arrow, Figure 5) to open the Task Information window as shown in Figure 5. Figure 5

You can enter the resource name or select from the resource list by clicking on the down arrow in the cell in the Resources tab. You will need to click into the cell (red arrow, Figure 5) to see the down arrow. Now let’s add the following:

 Add the cost resource, Travel Expense, to the Pilot-Test Questionnaire activity.  Add the material resource, Questionnaire printing, to the Print Questionnaire activity.  Add the material resource, Questionnaire mailing, to the Mail Questionnaire & Get

Responses activity. If you have issues getting these to stick, you can also try the dropdown menu under the Resource Names column. Select the cell for the task that you want to add the resource. Then add your resource to the task from the dropdown list (blue arrow, Figure 6). You will also note that MS Project indicates all the resources assigned to a task in this column. (green arrows, Figure 6). Figure 6

In the Gantt Chart Table Entry View, we are going to enter three new columns (Figure 7, red arrows). You add them by either scrolling the list or typing in the name.

 Click on the Add New Column (blue arrow, Figure 7) and select E ort Driven from the menu for the first column.

 Click on Add New Column and select Type for the second column.  Click on Add New Column and select Work for the third column.

Figure 7

Microsoft Project has the option to make the duration of a task dependent on the e ort necessary to complete the task and to set the type of task as Fixed Units, Fixed Work, or Fixed Duration. We’re going to change the Type column to Fixed Duration for the tasks Print Questionnaire and Mail Questionnaire & Get Responses. We make the change from Fixed Units to Fixed Duration by clicking on the down arrow in the cell (Figure 7, green arrow). For the Consumer Market Study, not all the work resources will work the entire duration of a task. For the activities Print Questionnaire and Mail Questionnaire & Get Responses, Steve will not work the entire duration of the tasks. For the Print Questionnaire activity, he will work one day, and for the Mail Questionnaire & Get Responses activity, he will work five days. To show this, we need to edit the time in the Work column for Steve to work on the Print Questionnaire activity to eight hours and on the Mail Questionnaire & Get Responses activity to 40 hours, as shown in Figure 7, yellow arrows. Microsoft Project will enter in the time for each of these times to be a percentage of time. Both of these tasks need to be completed As-Soon-As-Possible. Open the Task Usage sheet by selecting the View Ribbon, then in the Task Views group click on Task Usage (purple arrow, Figure 7). This will bring you to the view in Figure 8. You may need to expand some columns to look exactly the same.

Figure 8

First, we will add the columns E ort Driven, Type, and Work to the Task Usage screen the same way we just did it in the Gantt View. Next, we need to confirm that the activities Print Questionnaire and Mail Questionnaire & Get Responses are not e ort driven (red arrows, Figure 9), have fixed duration (blue arrows, Figure 9), and have the correct amount of work assigned (green arrows, Figure 9). If any of yours do not match, go back in these instructions and correct. Figure 9

Now we need to scroll across to March 7 in the schedule details (yellow arrow, Figure 9). Enter 8h for the work to be completed by Steve for the Print Questionnaire activity, and delete other times entered across the duration of the activity (purple arrow, Figure 9). Check that the time for Questionnaire printing remains at 1 unit (black arrow, Figure 9). If it is not at one, then enter a 1 in the cell. For the Mail Questionnaire & Get Responses activity, scroll across to the activity start date of March 21(red arrow, Figure 10). Enter 8h in each cell for March 21 to March 27 for Steve (blue arrow, Figure 10). Now delete the remaining times for the task in all other cells (green arrow, Figure 10). They go out quite far so make sure to scroll far enough to the right to get them all. Check that Questionnaire Mailing remains at 1 unit (purple arrow, Figure 10). If it is not at one, then enter a 1 in the cell. Figure 10

The indicator column on the Gantt Chart View includes two red figures for tasks 9 and 10 alerting you that the resources for these tasks are overallocated (yellow arrows, Figure 10).

Since we have overallocated resources we will want to see the Resource Overview and Overallocated Resources reports that are available in MS Project. Go to the Report Ribbon and in the View Reports group select the Resources link down arrow. Select the Overallocated Resources in the drop-down menu. This report (Figure 11) provides information about any resources that are overallocated. Figure 11

To view details of the overallocation, click on the link in the Overallocated Resources report for the Team Planner view (red arrow, Figure 11). Now scroll to the dates indicated for the overallocation, the week beginning March 4, 2018 (red arrow, Figure 12). Figure 12

In this example, note that Steve is assigned to Prepare Mailing Labels on Thursday 3/7/18 for 8 hours each day. He is also assigned to Print Questionnaire on the same day. In other words, this

report indicates that Steve is assigned to work 8 hours per day on Wednesday (March 7) on two di erent tasks. The overallocated resource needs to be leveled. To perform Microsoft’s version of resource leveling, on the Resource ribbon, click on Level Resource (blue arrows, Figure 12) to open the Level Resource window (Figure 13). Figure 13

In Microsoft Project, the resource-leveling tool basically just looks at overallocated resources and typically resolves those overallocations by extending the project deadline. When this leveling is done, Microsoft Project does not change resource assignments, and it does not change task information; it only delays tasks that have resources that are overallocated. The leveling can be performed by selecting the name of the resource to be leveled and clicking on the Level Now button. Select Steve from the Level Resources box and then select Level Now button at the bottom (red arrows, Figure 13). This is for your information, do not do this: Leveling can be removed by clicking on the Clear Leveling button in the Level group on the Resource ribbon (blue arrow, Figure 13). This is for your information, do not do this: Another technique in MS Project is to click on Level All in the Level group on the Resource ribbon (green arrow, Figure 13). Options for how Microsoft Project levels the resources can be selected by clicking on Leveling Options in the Level group on the Resource ribbon.

Note on the Team Planner view (Figure 14), that the time for Steve to work on Prepare Mailing Labels has shifted to start on Thursday, March 8 (red arrow, Figure 14). Figure 14

The Resource Overview report displays an overview of all Work resources on your project along with the number of hours of work assigned, percent of work completed, and the number of hours of remaining work. To display the overview of your work resources, go to the Report ribbon, and click on Resources in the View Reports group (blue arrows, Figure 14). Next, choose Resource Overview from the drop-down menu. The Resource Overview report is displayed in Figure 15. Figure 15

There is also a Resource Usage sheet that displays an overview per day of the total amount of work assigned to a work resource and the number of units assigned to a material resource. To display the

Resource usage sheet (Figure 16), click on the View ribbon, and then click on Resource Usage in Resource Views group. Compare the Resource Usage sheet to the Task Usage sheet in Figure 10. Note that Steve is now assigned eight hours each day. Figure 16

It is important to periodically save the baseline of your project to monitor changes. To save baseline project data, on the Project ribbon, click on Set Baseline in the Schedule group, and click on Set Baseline. Save your file and place it in the Dropbox. This will be the file you will use to start Project Assignment #4.