No way you can make that happen with the resources you have available to you and then you can plan and make sure that everything runs smoothly instead of wondering what am I forgetting about which is the normal way of doing things the software does require some careful thinking in the beginning and you'll probably spend more time planning your projects than you did before but really this is a good thing because the time that you spend planning.
Will be made up many times fold on the back end from not making mistakes and poor time estimates my name is David Lieberman I run the e-learning department here at learn at any time and we use Microsoft Project pretty extensively it's incredibly helpful in our day-to-day operations and also when we plan bigger projects so it's really my pleasure to show you how to use Microsoft Project just so you know this class is designed for you to follow.
Along with it's not just watch it on TV it's experienced at like real class so there'll be times where I'll advise you to press pause and go try things yourself but you can feel free to do that at any time until you feel comfortable also once you get to the point where you feel like you can do something go ahead and build yourself little mini projects as you go now it's best if you pick something to practice with that's real-world education studies show really conclusively that if you practice on.
Real-world projects that what you learn sticks much better however let me recommend that you don't pick anything very complicated while you're learning how to use the software you don't want to have to think too much about the projects that you're working on so pick something easy but that's real to you so maybe this is something you did before already or something that you've really got down pat great are you guys ready okay let's go learn Microsoft Project.
Years people have used Microsoft Project and they didn't really understand how to use it they picked it up and said well it looks like Excel and so they used it as a fancy calendar program to where they type in a task and then just set a start and finish date and so a couple of versions back the people at Microsoft decided that okay well by default and that's the way the program's going to come most professionals that use Microsoft Project change it so that the tasks aren't by default manually scheduled instead they're automatically scheduled based on the tasks and.
Durations and relationships between the tasks that you tell Project exist so we're going to go change that right now in the options this is something you absolutely want to do as well if for whatever reason you're not in front of Microsoft Project right now make a big note put it on a sticky stick it to your monitor do something because most of the things that we'll do today will rely on this happening a little bit so here's how it works we're going to go up to the file tab and we're going to go down to options.
Where all of the options are after were there remember that what we're setting is the way that Microsoft Project schedules the project right which is why it makes sense that we're going to go up to schedule after we click schedule here in the middle you'll see a couple of things going on first off you've got this pull down that says scheduling options for this project it's got project 1 in there or all new projects will put it on all.
New projects so that it changes all of the projects coming out and not just this one we're on now and underneath that it says new tasks created by default you'll see it says manually scheduled we're going to change that to auto schedule so this is what you'll want to do go ahead and pause the video go up to file down to options click schedule and change scheduling options for this project to all new projects and new tasks created for auto schedule go ahead I'll wait.
Okay now that you've done that go ahead and hit okay now you might note that it said all new projects should be like that that's why this current project is still set up in the old way manually scheduled you can actually see that right down here where it says new tasks manually scheduled if you want to you can change this one project by opening that up and choosing Auto scheduled or you can just start a brand new project by going up to file.
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And clicking new and choosing a blank project either way let's make sure on
Yours that down in the corner you've got new tasks being auto scheduled and then we're ready to start building when looking at project you'll probably notice that it looks a little bit like Excel doesn't it Microsoft Project actually is based in Excel and you can do some of the same things in project that you can do in Excel so that's nice but navigating through these cells is.Pretty easy as well once you start putting in tasks you'll notice that some of these columns are automatically filled in with placeholder information and there's a graphical side over here that kind of gives you a graphical view of the project you notice we're starting on Friday and there's Friday this graphical side is called the Gantt chart a representation of the way that people use to map out projects by hand.
More columns underneath here and later we'll learn how to change those columns but you can move around this little line to reveal or hide columns a nice thing to keep in mind is that when you print Microsoft Project it prints the same view that you're looking at right now so if I get rid of the Gantt chart begin tart and won't print or vice versa if I only love pretty pictures I can do something along the lines of that make sense.
Now up on the top you see the standard ribbon that most Microsoft programs have you'll notice there is no Home tab instead the Home tab is the tasks tab because primarily we're working on tasks right and then the other tabs just sort of makes sense for example if you're looking to print reports you'll probably head your way over to the report tab if you're changing the view you've got view formatting we'll do later the project tab is made specifically for things that you'll set project wide for example if.
We go to the project tab here we'll see information about the project like when it starts and things like that and change working time where we'll go to change project-wide calendar settings make sense either way we'll spend most of our time on task couple of other little things down in the lower right hand corner there's a little zoom e tool so you can zoom in for all your zoom.
Needs you'll notice that what's actually zooming here is the calendar itself is the Gantt chart but not the text to change the text size you actually change the text size up on the top so you can zoom in on the Gantt chart you can get pretty far in or pretty far out it's up to you and later we'll explore more view options up in the View tab now one other.
Thing about Microsoft Project to keep in mind and this is new for the 2016 version basically the help menu is a lot more helpful and now it's called tell me what you want to do so for example if I clicked up there and typed print two reports yeah I see all the different things that I can type he had view recent reports we haven't really made any so you don't have a bunch of things there let's decide that I just wanted to go to print instead so I click it and it brings me.
Right to it so one of the really nice things with this is that you don't have to memorize where things are in fact memorizing your way through it is kind of a losing game anyway you can use the new help menu which they call tell me you can re-watch parts and learn at anytime or remember Google knows most of these things as well now speaking of Google sooner or later you'll probably have a question about Microsoft Project that you can't readily.
Answer or find on the web that's why it's nice to know that you can always come in and search for Microsoft Project forum to find the online message boards now almost every piece of software has a forum and you generally have to sign up but they're all free and you go ask some question and some nice person comes along and answers you project is a pretty deep program so often people wonder oh could I do this or that and often the answer is yes that doesn't.
Mean that it's always readily apparent being willing to check Google and then ask a question in off forum is really a
Way you climb into the high level choices here ok if you guys are feeling ready let's start making ourselves a project okay now remember these lessons really are made to be followed along with it's very difficult to just watch something on the screen and then really be able to do it later.Now you can download the file that we're going to build together in the resources tab so if you want to take a deeper look that's fine however looking at a finished file doesn't always help much but when you build something now you can really do it we're going to pick a kind of easy project that maybe everybody can relate to and because life should be good why don't we have a party you've all been to a party that was poorly planned and.
You've also been to a party that was very well planned and executed and so let's make sure that we're well known for throwing great parties now in real life Microsoft Project is designed for you to get in and put in every task that you're going to do even if they're tasks that you'll know you'll remember the idea is to build a firm schedule and to think of everything so it's not uncommon for projects to have 300 500 2,000 tasks.
Sometimes because we'd all like to learn project sometime soon well shorten our tasks for brevity but in real life you pretty much want to put in every task that you can possibly think of as long as it's not something super silly like turn on the computer or close the door and later we'll give you guidelines as to how deep do you want to go good so normally the way it works is you put your tasks in chronological order or at least as best.
You can and you break them into phases you can create the phases later or at the beginning if you know what they are let's go ahead and type I like to type my phase names in all uppercase letters that's not really best practice or otherwise it's just that it's easier for me to see so I'll have a planning phase then I'll hit enter in the planning phase we'll have to make the guest list you don't need to use title case or sentence case just go ahead and type and then maybe we'll create the.
Invitations we'll get AG marketing or graphic design team to do that for us and we've learned the hard way before that we want to proofread the invitations and then we're good so next we'll go ahead and do our shopping phase and as soon as we type the shopping phase we recognize oh I forgot to write anything about mailing the invites it's not going to be a very fun party if no one comes.
So there are a number of different ways that you can insert a task on the ribbon you've got a pulldown menu up here for tasks and you can insert a task like that you can also right click just like you might in Excel or my favorite way on the keyboard you know the insert key on your keyboard up in the upper right hand corner if you press the insert key voila new task nice isn't it so let's make sure we mail the invites thing phase we'll buy food and drink and.
We'll buy decorations then let's go ahead and have our party phase my party phase was most of my 20s and and 30s really and in the party phase we will greet our guests and then we'll have fun after we have fun the party will be officially over good now here's the thing what we're effectively doing here is building an outline just like you might build an outline in Microsoft Word right but when.
You build an outline you would normally have tasks indented under other tasks right well you do in project is we'll here's how it works you basically highlight the tasks that you want to indent and then if you look up here on the ribbon you'll see there's a little arrow pointing in right so check it out indent notice they all popped in and now project recognizes planning phase as a phase when Microsoft Project calls a summary task you might notice that the Gantt chart changed as.
Well so I'm going to indent tasks there and I'll indent these now you can have phases within phases and you can have phases within those phases you can go pretty deep there's no real practical limit for today just to keep it simple we're going to keep it like this but underneath buying food and drink in real life there'd be a number of tasks that you need to complete right okay note that now project thinks these are.
All happening on the same day we'll have to fix that later and it thinks they're all taking the same amount of time but what we've done here is the first thing that you do when planning a project now it's important to keep in mind that project managers are not really expected to know how everything works really you're the organization get it done person so as a project manager you might be doing an awful lot of walking around and having meetings and sitting down with people and saying okay what comes.
Next and what comes next in what comes next please resist the urge to plan out everything all at one time generally when you keep your eye on one task like just making a big list of tasks then you can come back and focus on how long those tasks take and who will do those tasks focusing on one thing at a time gives your brain a chance to really get in the zone you know in the zone.
Studies have shown that multitasking really doesn't work okay so go ahead and pause the video you can leave the screen up so you can see mine and let's make a list of phases and tasks make sure that you indent your tasks as you go if you want to experiment and make a project on your own that's a pretty good idea and let's also do this one because we're going to do some situational things as we go that will fit much better with this project pretty easy so far right okay okay so we.
Made a great big list of all the tasks we needed to complete and we broke them into phases once they're broken into phases you can roll those phases up to get them out of your face or you can leave them open if that's the kind of person you are just so you know what we just did normally can take quite a long time but when you're done it feels so much better you've really moved the project forward quite a bit now okay so after we've got our list then we're going to come back.
And say here's how long these things take let me ask you a question let's say that tomorrow you had to sit down and write a one-page paper all about everything you learned in Microsoft Project how long do you think it would take you to write that one-page paper you know some people type fast they say 10 minutes some people say half an hour back when I was in college it used to take me about an hour per page because I'd go back and check it carefully and freaked out about wording okay now think about the way.
That it really is in the workplace you know people come by and bug you or ask for help or the email goes ding or the phone rings you know all those little things that happen now how long are we talking about to get this one-page paper it might be all day right in fact it wouldn't be strange at all to say I'll get that to you by tomorrow what we're talking about here is the difference between man-hours and duration man-hours is the number of hours that people put.
In and duration is how long does it take between you started the task and when you've actually finished the task you see people inherently are very bad at estimating time because most of the time we jump right away to man-hours and don't really think about duration so as a project manager that little speech that I just gave about okay now think about the way it really works around here where people come by and talk to you and ask you to do things the email goes Bing you know now now how long do.
You think it's going to take that'll be a speech that you'll become pretty comfortable with giving and then after people have heard it a bunch of times and you've educated them on how to raishin works you'll be able to slow down just so you know the official term for man-hours in Microsoft Project is called work in the normal project nomenclature man hours are officially referred to as effort and again the time between start to finish is duration so we're going to roll down our duration.
Column here and put in durations for our tasks now this parts important you won't put in a duration for the phases the phases are basically just categories or intellectual structures they're not really things that you do the tasks underneath are the things that you'll do the phase durations will be automatically calculated based on the duration of the tasks underneath and the order in which they need to happen ready to go okay let's do it so let's say that.
Making the guest list is being done by a committee so even though there might be just an hour or two of work in there we're gonna give it three days to actually happen days of the default duration in Microsoft Project because that's how it works so if you just type 3 and hit enter it'll say 3 days and you'll notice the little question mark has gone away because you actually put any an input if you've ever asked a marketing department or a graphic designer to do something you know those things take a lot longer than you would.
Think and they're probably already busy so let's say that we go talk to the director of marketing and they say yeah you better give us three weeks to make those four weeks you type W okay here's what you get you've got days weeks with W hours with H minutes RM now you can actually do months with mo and years with year but in general when you ask someone how long something's going to take and they say oh three weeks that's just a guess.
So in the next section here we'll talk about what to do when that comes up but usually it means digging further down let's saying proofreading the invites takes three days and again remember that's not sitting down for three days straight it's just give me three days to do it and mailing the invites is going to take half a day so I'll put point five days if I'd prefer I could say 4-h for four hours.
Buying food and drink will give someone half a day to do that and people will probably be driving all over earth and ordering things from the internet to buy decorations so let's give people three days now we're in our party phase these times are going to be a little tighter because it's in real-time let's greet guests for two hours hopefully everybody will be there then and we'll have fun for four hours now the party over is not really a task it's a moment in time a moment in time.
Is referred to as a milestone other milestones might include the beginning of the project a contract being signed first payment coming in reviews for the project those types of things either way the way you make a milestone is you tell it how long it takes and remember a point in time takes zero time to create a milestone you just put in zero in duration and when you hit enter notice you've got zero days here and also a fancy little graphic over in the Gantt chart.
Okay so the most important part here is that duration and man-hours are not the same and that we tend to estimate with man-hours the second most important part is that you don't set durations for the planning phases if you did it would let you do it look if I came in here and said 10 days it would allow you to do it you might get some graphical representations he had turned red and also the task has changed to a manually.
Scheduled task you can see that over there with the little pushpin to change it back you can just click the little pushpin and change it to auto schedule okay so on your project let's roll down and make it look like this one and if you haven't made one yet go ahead and start a little project on your own remember to keep it simple and pick something that's real to you when you're ready come back press play and we'll move on.
Okay so in real life sometimes you'll be faced with the task and when someone asks you how long is that going to take or you ask a subject matter expert the real answer is I'm not sure so for example a little while ago I had to in my personal life replace a garbage disposal I figured it would take a couple of hours but it ended up taking me all day if instead of just guessing I stopped to think we'll how long is it going to take.
Me to clear the underneath of the sink and then how long is it going to take me to take the old garbage disposal out and then how long is it going to take me to go to Home Depot on a Saturday and so on and so on I would have broken the task into smaller more manageable tasks that I would have been able to estimate good durations for so when asking yourself how far should I break down this task what's officially called decomposing the task best practice is to.
Break it down until you can accurately and with confidence estimated duration those are the important words accurate and confidence you might even use those words when talking to your subject matter experts if they give you a duration you can say okay are you confident that that's accurate and if they say well that's when you start breaking the task or decomposing the task down further for.