Conclusion

Quick reference

• 00:04 Thank you very much for taking this Microsoft Project Fundamentals course.
• 00:08 In this conclusion lesson,
• 00:10 I'm just going to recap some key takeaways from the previous lessons.
• 00:14 One of the most important things you can do when you're building a project
• 00:19 schedule is to make sure you work with the team.
• 00:22 Don't find yourself in a situation where you
• 00:25 are creating the project schedule by yourself without feedback.
• 00:30 Make sure you're doing that with all of the tasks, with the resources,
• 00:37 with their assigned time on the resources, with the duration.
• 00:43 With any costs that you might incorporate into your project, and
• 00:47 even when indenting the project to create a work breakdown structure and milestones.
• 00:53 It's very important that it's not just you that's bought into this project schedule,
• 00:58 but everyone involved.
• 00:59 And don't forget your project team also includes your sponsors and stakeholders.
• 01:05 These are the people that you should be working with to define metrics by which
• 01:09 you will track the project.
• 01:11 In our project, we created this percent cost variance and
• 01:17 percent duration variance.
• 01:20 And these are custom fields we created just for our sponsors and stakeholders,
• 01:22 in this case the homeowner.
• 01:23 And this homeowner, i.e our sponsor, and for that matter maybe even
• 01:28 members of our team don't necessarily know how to read a Gantt chart.
• 01:32 These screens might look foreign to them, and
• 01:35 they may not know what critical path management is.
• 01:39 Our job as a project manager is to know this, and then communicate
• 01:44 the information in a way that people can absorb it and can also make decisions.
• 01:50 So that's why Microsoft has provided you with two very important tools.
• 01:54 The first tool, if you recall,
• 01:57 is accessible from the View tab using the Timeline checkbox.
• 02:03 And this is a timeline where we can add important tasks and
• 02:07 milestones, remember we can copy this to PowerPoint.
• 02:10 And one thing that's important about this is that you keep the critical tasks,
• 02:15 the important tasks, the important deliverables on here.
• 02:18 I've seen so many people put nearly every task from the project schedule up here,
• 02:24 and it loses the amount of benefit that you get.
• 02:27 People look at it, and
• 02:28 they don't understand what they're looking at anymore.
• 02:31 So really focus on just putting things that are important for
• 02:34 the conversation to be had.
• 02:36 Also you have this Report tab, and
• 02:38 this reporting module is brand new in Microsoft Project 2013.
• 02:43 Don't forget that there are many reports available to you out of the box.
• 02:50 So I encourage you to look at these reports,
• 02:52 and see if there's anything that you might be able to use for your next project.
• 02:57 And of course you can always create new reports as well.
• 03:02 And remember that when you're formatting your reports, you want to try and
• 03:07 keep things up at the top left hand portion of the screen.
• 03:11 This way they'll print nicely, as opposed to just looking good on your monitor.
• 03:13 So finally I'd like to leave you with a few words of wisdom.
• 03:18 I've been using Microsoft Project for many years.
• 03:21 As a matter of fact,
• 03:22 I really started using it back when it was called Microsoft Project 98.
• 03:27 Even back then the features were incredibly powerful, and
• 03:31 most of the features that were available then are available now.
• 03:36 As a matter of fact,
• 03:37 most of the new features in Project are the reporting module and
• 03:41 the timeline feature, and simple things like multilevel undo and print previewing.
• 03:47 So really the same features were available back then.
• 03:50 I started managing my projects using nearly every available feature.
• 03:56 And there's lots of them, and we didn't even cover them.
• 03:59 So there's topics like earned value analysis, which is in and
• 04:03 of itself perhaps multiple courses.
• 04:06 In order to get your Project Management Professional Certification,
• 04:10 you'll need to learn about that.
• 04:12 I also use features like optimistic and pessimistic scheduling.
• 04:16 I started getting getting really advanced with managing my cost and
• 04:21 every detail of my budget inside of Microsoft Project.
• 04:26 So what happened was I ended up having these small three and
• 04:29 four months projects that had hundreds and hundreds of lines.
• 04:34 And so Microsoft Project started managing me.
• 04:37 I could have spent a lot more time working with my team to manage the team and
• 04:41 make sure things are going well, rather than just focusing on the tool.
• 04:45 So use this method that I like to refer to as the KYS method,
• 04:52 K-Y-S, and that stands for keep your sanity.
• 04:58 And it's really important that you just focus on the features that you need using
• 05:02 Microsoft Project.
• 05:03 Remember, it's the team that's more important,
• 05:06 not the Microsoft Project schedule.
• 05:09 That's important for you as a management tool, and it's certainly important for
• 05:14 your stakeholders, but it's not the end all be all.
• 05:17 So with that, thank you very much,
• 05:19 and I hope you enjoyed this lesson on Microsoft Project fundamentals.

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