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Project management is rarely easy. But this guide helps you understand project management while you use
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Project. Each link below goes to a page exploring that aspect of project management with articles and short
tutorials.

Initiate a project plan

The more complicated a project gets, the more you need to plan before you start using Project. During the
initiation phase of a project, use applications like Word, Excel, and SharePoint to help you with your thinking.
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Project goal DESCRIPTION

Initiate a project plan Projects often fail without enough early thinking during an initiation phase. At
this point, think about who your stakeholders and sponsors are, while you draw
up charter statements, early specifications, and perhaps a budget.

For smaller projects you can do much of this work in Microsoft Project. For
bigger projects, use Word, Excel, SharePoint, or even your phone to capture
your thinking.

Communicate plans Maintaining communication channels with stakeholders isn’t always easy. But it
with your stakeholders is critical to the success of a project.

Create and share To help with the time-consuming part of communicating, Project has numerous
project reports reports that are only a click away. Capture early plans, major project milestones,
budgeting requirements, staff needs, and so on.

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Build a project schedule

Building a project schedule can take time. Project creation can happen more smoothly if you break the steps
down into four categories:

1. Add tasks Was this information helpful?

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2. Organize them

3. Add people

4. Communicate with your team

Project goal DESCRIPTION

Create a new project After you’ve completed your initial thinking, it’s time to start Project and create a
schedule new schedule. You can start with a blank project, or use templates that other
project managers have created—some by experts in project management or in a
business similar to yours.

Add tasks Tasks are the activities that get done in a project. Learn how to add tasks,
change their properties and estimate their durations.

Organize them When you first add tasks, they might not be in the best order for managing
them. Learn how to organize them by using summary tasks and subtasks, and by
linking them.

Add people and After you’ve added tasks to your project, think about the people you want to
assign them to tasks work on them. Keep in mind, that adding people and assigning them to tasks are
different activities in Project.

Share resources using To help manage people across multiple projects, place all the people in your
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resource pools and projects into a single project file. This file works as a resource pool. From the
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Project goal DESCRIPTION

master projects resource pool file, you can share resources across multiple projects (without
Project Server).

Set up costs for your Handling project costs can be intimidating for any project manager. With
project Project, you may discover that this work isn’t so difficult at all. Learn tips to help
you stay on budget.

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Manage your project

Your work doesn’t stop after you build a schedule. Managing your project takes more time than building it.
For example, tasks change, people get added, the end date needs to move back in, and so forth. With
Project, you have all the tools to monitor progress and make changes to ensure a successful outcome.

GOAL DESCRIPTION

Choose the right To cut through the complexity of your schedule, find the right view. The Gantt chart
view of your gives you one view of where your project is going. You can also use a Calendar view,
schedule network diagram, or timeline to help you see different levels of detail.

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GOAL DESCRIPTION

Track the progress After you've created your initial schedule, it’s time to start seeing how things are
of your schedule going. Creating a baseline and using the right views will help you keep track of your
project's progress.

Track percent Tracking progress can seem complicated, but here’s a quick way to show percent
complete for tasks complete using progress bar on a Gantt chart.

Resolve resource To get the best performance and results from resources, you must manage resource
allocation workloads to avoid overallocations and underallocations.
problems

Bring in the A project manager’s worst nightmare is the end date slips after you make changes
project end date to the schedule. Learn strategies to take control of the project’s end date.

Report on project Communication is often difficult, especially when you’re reporting bad news. To help
status you communicate with your stakeholders and executives, Project has attractive,
professional reports that you can create and send in a few simple steps.

Manage project Are you going over budget? Do you need to adjust costs? Find out how to solve
costs cost problems in your schedule.

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GOAL DESCRIPTION

View earned value Earned value is an advanced tracking method. But it isn’t just for experts. You can
analysis reports use it, too, to help you monitor your project.

Manage risk Risks are everywhere in your project. Identify the trouble spots early and respond to
them before they get you into big trouble.

Work with Project provides tools to help you manage cross-project dependencies, even tasks in
multiple projects one project that are dependent on the completion of another project.

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