You enter your tasks, resources, assignments, and other project- ° You can use Microsoft Project to create a model, or blueprint, of your project.
#MS PROJECT WORK TASK PLANNER TEMPLATE PROFESSIONAL#
Furthermore, with Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, project management standards can be established and disseminated throughout your enterprise. In short, Microsoft Project can help you facilitate all processes in the project management life cycle, from developing your scope, modeling your project schedule, and tracking and communicating progress to saving knowledge gained from the closed project. And although Microsoft Project can't motivate an uninspired team member, it can tell you if that team member is working on critical tasks that will affect the finish date of the entire project.
Although Microsoft Project won't complete a difficult and time-consuming task for your team, it will help you find extra time in the schedule or additional resources for that task. The project plan helps you manage your project.Īlthough Microsoft Project can't negotiate a more reasonable finish date, it can help you determine what you have to sacrifice to make that date. You can then use the project database, schedule calculation, and charting capabilities to help facilitate your project management processes (see Figure 2-2).įinish Figure 2-2. To do this and more, you can create a similar table in Microsoft Project. Draw your project tasks as a Gantt chart or network diagram so you can get a visual picture of your project.Calculate how much of the budget you've spent so far.Alert you if you have an upcoming deadline.Inform you if assigned resources are underallocated or overworked.Indicate whether assigned resources are actually available.Calculate the start and finish dates for you.Such a table would not be able to perform the following functions: But it's likely that you'll end up working harder than you have to in an attempt to make the tool work right. In fact, that might very well get you started. By using a spreadsheet or word processing program, you could create a table that lists your tasks, durations, start and finish dates, and assigned resources. Because a project involves a myriad of tasks, resources, assignments, dates, and more, it's clear that you need some kind of tool to help you keep track of the details.