Add Resources to the Project

Quick reference

• 00:04 We have been following some industry best practices.
• 00:08 And one of those is to start from left to right in our estimation.
• 00:13 Here on the left we estimated the task names.
• 00:17 Then, we move further to the right and estimated the duration.
• 00:21 And then we moved even further and estimated the predecessors for our tasks.
• 00:26 Successors got filled in for us, but we could've entered those as well.
• 00:31 Remember the start and finish dates are driven by the duration and
• 00:35 the predecessor successor relationship.
• 00:38 So we should never enter a start or a finish date.
• 00:44 We only do that in instances where there's an absolute requirement that something
• 00:49 must start on a certain day and must finish on another day.
• 00:53 We let Microsoft Project’s scheduling engine calculate the dates for us,
• 00:58 based on duration and the predecessor/successor relationship.
• 01:03 Now as we move further to the right, we need to add resources to our project, but
• 01:08 we can only do that by putting resources in what’s called the resource sheet.
• 01:13 Some might also refer to this as the resource pool.
• 01:17 So that's what we're going to do in this lesson.
• 01:20 Let's get to the resource sheet by going to the View tab.
• 01:25 In the View tab, there's a Resource Views section, and
• 01:29 you'll find a Resource Sheet icon.
• 01:32 Go ahead and click that icon.
• 01:35 And now you're in the resource sheet.
• 01:38 Here's where you can enter the names of resources.
• 01:41 You can also enter their costs and even add calendars to the resources.
• 01:48 For purposes of our fundamentals lessons
• 01:51 we're not going to add calendars to individual resources.
• 01:55 We're going to keep this very basic.
• 01:57 Now in the resource names
• 02:00 we want to enter the names of people that will be doing work on our project.
• 02:05 Since we're estimating the work though, we may not know who those people are yet.
• 02:09 In other words we might only know that there's generic
• 02:12 people working on the project.
• 02:14 So, in order to build this house we know that we need the homeowner.
• 02:21 We might want a project manager.
• 02:26 We may also want to include a general contractor.
• 02:32 Contractor, and an architect, and a designer.
• 02:41 If there's other resources we need along the way, we'll go ahead and add them.
• 02:44 Now if I double-click on one of these resources, I'm gonna do that now.
• 02:51 I'm gonna double-click on Home Owner.
• 02:54 You can see there's a number of details available to us.
• 02:57 And these are all columns that we can insert in the resource sheet.
• 03:01 But one of the ones I'm gonna point out here is Generic.
• 03:04 If I make a home owner generic,
• 03:07 then this is considered, from reporting purposes, not to be a human being.
• 03:12 In other words, it represents a human being, however, that's not an actual name.
• 03:17 So this makes sense.
• 03:19 The homeowner is a generic person.
• 03:22 If I was a home owner then this would say William Raymond, and
• 03:26 it wouldn't say Generic here.
• 03:28 So click OK.
• 03:28 And you can see that there's no column displaying whether or
• 03:34 not this is a generic resource.
• 03:36 We can add that column.
• 03:37 So right-click on the Type heading, choose Insert Column, and
• 03:42 type Generic, and press Enter.
• 03:46 Now you can see there's the Generic field and
• 03:49 some of these other resources aren't generic.
• 03:51 Just like Excel, I can come up here onto this Generic column,
• 03:55 and there's this little box here to the bottom right of it.
• 03:59 And I can click and drag this, and make all of these resources generic.
• 04:06 Now, I might also want to add a standard rate to these resources, so
• 04:10 I can do that by coming over here.
• 04:14 The home owner's probably going to be free,
• 04:16 because they don't charge anything for this project.
• 04:19 Let's say the project manager charges $150 an hour.
• 04:23 The general contractor charges $350 an hour.
• 04:28 The architect charges $250 and the designer charges $175.
• 04:37 Click the Save icon.
• 04:41 By the way, if you haven't been pressing Save, get familiar with that.
• 04:44 And the shortcut key is Ctrl+S, that's Ctrl+S to save your work.
• 04:52 At this point we've added some resources to our resource sheet, but
• 04:56 what we haven't done is added them to our project.
• 04:59 So if I come back here to the Gantt Chart, I'm just clicking on the view tab and
• 05:03 then clicking on the Gantt Chart icon.
• 05:06 You can see,
• 05:07 if I stretch out the screen here, there are no resource names assigned.
• 05:12 That's because we need to do this.
• 05:14 So, the resource sheet represents the resources that we can put in our project,
• 05:19 and the Resource Names column, represents resource assignments, and
• 05:24 that's what we'll do in the next lesson is assign resources.

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