Introduction: Working with MS Project

Instructions:

Project is one of the most popular software applications for planning, tracking and controlling a project. It is powerful, relatively easy to use and offers good integration with other tools of MS Office. However, MS Project can not conduct project management for you.

You, the Project Manager have to:

• define the scope of a project (WBS) and create a task list
• create the logical relationships between the tasks (linking and sequencing)
• estimate the duration for tasks
• specify the resources and assign the resources to tasks

The aim of this self-learning tutorial is to finalise the project plan for 'Writing a bachelor thesis' which we have developed in the first classroom lecture on MS Project.

Click on project plan to see how your plan should look like in the end.

You can navigate through the tutorial in various ways:

1. Click on the text link at the bottom right of each page in order to go to the next step of the tutorial
   
   
2. Click on the menu items on the left if you want to directly browse to a specific topic
   
   
3. Click the IMC Logo on top of each page to return to the start page of this tutorial.

The tutorial comprises altogether 7 steps, in each you will add additional information to the project plan.

The 7 topics are:

1. Adjusting task types
2. Setting up a resource pool
3. Adjusting individual working times for resources
4. Assigning resources to tasks
5. Adding additional resources to a task
6. Working with different reports to extract project information and to support project communication
7. A note on tracking the project progress

In the Resources menu you will find additional information if you want to deepen your knowledge.

Important: Unlike to other MS Office Programs, MS Project allows you to undo the last step only. Therefore, it is important that you work accurately and save your work in regular intervals so that you can always use a back up version.

Click on 'Step 1' at the bottom right if you are ready to go ahead with the tutorial.