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Chapter 1 - Project Management 101
Introduction
What Is Project Management?
Four Steps to Project Management Prowess
Project Definition
Your Project Plan: The Indispensable Tool
Tracking: Your Finger on the Pulse
Project Close

How Microsoft Project Helps
Calculate Most Schedule Details
Balance Critical Scheduling Factors with Ease
Flag Problems - Before They Impact Your Schedule
Create a Project Plan
Track a Project Plan
Close the Project

A Sample Listing of Project Management Reference Guides

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Introduction
Many people who spend part of their work time managing projects shrink from the words "project management." The very idea
sounds too big, too complicated, and too time-consuming. In reality, though, project management is nothing more than a
system for managing tasks, resources, and costs efficiently. A good system can help you improve communication and
coordination and reduce the overall amount of time you spend managing projects. Add Microsoft Project to your project team
and you can be even more effective in less time.
In this chapter we introduce you to basic project management concepts as well as to a tried-and-true, four- phase process for
managing projects. You can follow this process as is or adapt it to your particular situation. By no means is this chapter meant

to be a comprehensive thesis on project management; it’s an introduction only. If you want more information, take a look at
the list of project management reference books at the end of this chapter.

What Is Project Management?
Managing projects is a matter of keeping scope, schedule, and resources in balance. Generally this means planning,
organizing, and tracking a project’s tasks and identifying and scheduling resources to accomplish those tasks. Scope is the
range of tasks required to accomplish project goals. A schedule indicates the time and sequence of each task, as well as the
total project duration. Resources are the people and/or equipment that perform or facilitate project tasks. Resources usually
have costs, such as wages or operating expenses, that you may want to track.
When scope, schedule, and resources are in balance, you have just the right amount of resources to accomplish all your
project tasks on or before the project deadline.

When you manage projects, you want to be sure that specific project goals are met as efficiently as possible. The primary
project management tool for achieving this purpose is a project plan. But if managing projects isn’t the main part of your job
(or your favorite part), you might shy away from creating and using a project plan. That’s an option. But there is a downside to
this approach.
Without a formal plan, you reduce the likelihood of accomplishing project goals, such as staying within budget or on schedule.
If you can’t easily track who’s doing what, or when tasks should be finished, you jeopardize your chances of meeting those
goals. And if something goes wrong — a deadline is missed or a task takes longer than you thought it should — you may
encounter needless difficulties in determining the problem’s source, as well as its impact on the schedule.
Good project management helps you succeed. Everyone on the team will benefit from improved coordination and
communication, resulting in a stronger focus on results. You will earn that reassuring sense of having everything under control.

Four Steps to Project Management Prowess
There’s no single correct way to manage a project. In fact, if you ask 10 project management experts to explain the best way
to manage projects, you’ll probably get 10 different answers (all of them, of course, true).
To help you manage projects effectively, we’ve distilled the essence of project management wisdom down to these four major
steps.

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You can use Microsoft Project for steps 2 and 3, creating a project plan and tracking and managing a project. But no project
management program can give you much help with steps 1 and 4. For step 1, defining a project, you’ll need to write down
your goals and limits, such as the number of available resources or the project budget. And although you can use Microsoft
Project to help you evaluate and store a project at its close, most of what you need to do in step 4, closing a project, doesn’t
require the use of a project management program.

Project Definition
In the project definition stage, you make all the high-level decisions concerning the project; your conclusions create the soul of
your project. At this stage, you need to:
• Define the project scope. What goals do you want to accomplish? Which major tasks, and how many tasks, are
required to accomplish these goals?
• Determine your resources. What resources — in particular, people and equipment — are available to help you achieve
your project goals?
• Determine your schedule’s limits. How much time do you have to complete the project? What are the project’s
milestones and deadlines?
Once you’ve decided the goals and broad framework of your project, you flesh it out by creating a project plan.

Your Project Plan: The Indispensable Tool
The project plan is the heart of project management. It defines the scope, resources, and schedule in one place, thus enabling
you to keep these factors in balance throughout your project. A project plan spells out factors such as exactly how many and
what tasks need to be done, who’s going to do each task, the estimated cost of each task and of the entire project, the task
sequence, dependencies between tasks, the estimated duration of each task, and the length of the overall project.
To put together an effective project plan, you need to:
• Identify all the project tasks and who or what will do them.

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Get work and time estimates for tasks, preferably from the people directly responsible for those tasks.
Determine task dependencies. For example, find out if one task can’t start until another finishes, if several tasks must
start at the same time, or if two tasks must finish at around the same time.
Enter task and project constraints. For example, you might want a task to begin on a certain date.

The more accurate your information, the more accurate your plan.

Tracking: Your Finger on the Pulse
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When your project begins, your plan becomes a valuable tool in helping you direct and fine-tune the project. Wielding the plan,
you can:
• Track project progress, comparing actual data to original estimates.

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Review resource, scope, and schedule factors to balance your priorities.
Identify problems that could knock the project off schedule.
Analyze resource requirements throughout the project, making sure, for example, that no one on your team is
overloaded with work.
Make midstream changes that will help you reach your project goals sooner.

With a project plan, you can easily analyze what is going right and what is going wrong during the project.

Project Close
Once you’ve achieved your project goals and met all the criteria that signal the project’s end, it’s time to close the project. The
project close can be as important as the project beginning, if you can apply what you learn during this phase to future projects.
At the project close, you can:
• Compare your original plan to the actual course of project events.

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Analyze problems and identify areas for future improvement.
Archive the project file.

No project management program can close your project for you, but a project plan you create using Microsoft Project can help
set a successful course for your next project.

How Microsoft Project Helps
Microsoft Project is a powerful tool that helps you organize and track the myriad peculiarities of your project.
Calculate Most Schedule Details
Balance Critical Scheduling Factors with Ease
Flag Problems — Before They Impact Your Schedule
Create a Project Plan
Track a Project Plan
Close the Project

Calculate Most Schedule Details
You enter relatively few pieces of information, and Microsoft Project takes care of the rest. For example, if you specify a task’s
length, Microsoft Project calculates the task’s start and finish dates. Automatically. Or, if you define a resource’s workday as 8
hours, Microsoft Project can alert you if there are days when that resource will be working additional hours.
Moreover, when you change any factor, Microsoft Project recalculates the schedule so you can see the effect of the change

almost instantly. Keep in mind, though, that Microsoft Project’s scheduling competence is only as good as the information you
give it, so be sure your information is complete and accurate.

Balance Critical Scheduling Factors with Ease
On the project level, Microsoft Project helps you maintain a balance among scope, resources, and time: Have more tasks been
added to your project but not more time? A quick look at your Microsoft Project schedule shows you if existing resources have
enough free time to accomplish the new tasks, without extending the project deadline.
On the task level, Microsoft Project helps you maintain a balance between the hours it takes to complete a task, the assigned
resources, and the overall task length. For example, if a task that takes one person 4 days to complete needs to be done in 2
days, Microsoft Project makes it easy to assign a second person.

Flag Problems — Before They Impact Your Schedule
The ability to look ahead and avoid scheduling problems before they occur can mean the difference between project success
and failure. Your project plan helps you identify and correct problems such as overloaded resources, tasks that threaten to bust
your budget, and scheduling conflicts that could push out the project deadline.

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In these and other ways Microsoft Project helps you manage projects of any degree of complexity efficiently, ensuring that you
spend less time on project management details and more on the work that’s of most importance to you.
Once you’re ready to develop your project plan, Microsoft Project turns into your all-in-one project management assistant.
Although it can’t define your project — only you can do that — it does most of the work for creating and tracking a project
plan, and it smoothes project closing.

Create a Project Plan
During this phase you enter tasks, estimate how many days or hours it will take to complete each task, specify when one task
should start relative to another, and assign resources to tasks. Microsoft Project will:
• Schedule each task and calculate the project finish date.

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Calculate the time required to complete each task.
Balance scope, resources, and time — or show you where they’re out of balance.

Track a Project Plan
When you track your project, you monitor task progress and, often, compare what has occurred with what you planned. That
way, you know if you need to adjust the schedule so that you can keep to the original deadline. Microsoft Project will:
• Display both your original estimates — such as the length of a task — and the actual data.

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Calculate and display the difference between your original estimates and actual data.
Simplify the process for updating your plan with actual data.
Calculate the effect of updates on the schedule.

Close the Project
At the close of a project, you typically resolve outstanding issues, identify what worked well, identify problems and areas for
future improvement, and document your findings. Although Microsoft Project doesn’t provide direct support for these activities,
it can:
• Save a copy of your original plan to help you identify problem areas.

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Store notes about tasks and resources, which you can refer to when analyzing problems and performance.

Supply project information you need to document your findings.

When you use Microsoft Project to manage your project, you stay in control of your schedule during each project phase with a
minimum of time and effort.

A Sample Listing of Project Management Reference
Guides
This chapter briefly introduced one effective process for managing projects. In the space of one chapter we couldn’t begin to
cover project management in as comprehensive a manner as it deserves. To help you get more detailed information about
project management, we deliver you into the hands of top project management experts.
The following list represents only a small sample of the books available on project management. Inclusion of a book in the list
in no way implies a specific endorsement by Microsoft for that book. You may discover other books that you find to be equally
as helpful as the books listed here.
• Cleland, David I. Project Management: Strategic Design and Implementation. 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994.
A leading-edge guide to both the theory and practice of project management, this management assistant includes
new chapters on team management, product-process design teams, and the future of project management.

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Clough, R.H., and G.A. Sears. Construction Project Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1991.
This book describes a tested strategy for the management control of project planning, time, cost, resources, and
finance. It emphasizes the use of computers.
Kerzner, Harold P. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling. 5th ed. Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.
A long-recognized leader in the project management field brings you the fifth edition of his comprehensive guide to
project management. This roll-up-your-sleeves reference continues to provide in- depth, leading-edge coverage of all
aspects of project management.
Kimmons, R.L., and J.H. Loweree. Project Management: A Reference for Professionals. Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1989.
Chapters written by 116 internationally recognized experts address the full range of project management tasks and
responsibilities — from the project manager’s point of view.
Lientz, Bennet P., and Kathryn P. Ross. Project Management for the 21st Century. Academic Press, 1995.
The focus in this comprehensive reference is on how to use technology to deal with the economic climate of the near
future. It tells you how to set up and manage a project as well as how to deal with the 100 most common project
management problems.
Whitten, Neal. Managing Software Development Projects. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1995.
Armed with effective solutions to problems that afflict software development projects, this state-of-the- art guide
provides practical advice for project managers who want results.
Wideman, R. Max. Cost Control of Capital Projects and the Project Cost Management System Requirements. 2nd ed.
BiTech Publishers Ltd., 1995.
This comprehensive reference describes how to control costs from the beginning to the end of a project. It provides
guidelines for contracting strategies, work breakdown, project cost accounting and forecasting, and handling changes,
risk, and the impact of delays.

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