After you complete the initial thinking about your project’s objectives, it’s time to put together a schedule.
When you start a new schedule, you add tasks and organize them efficiently so that the project end date occurs as soon as possible.
For more articles in this series of project management instructional guides, see The Project Road Map
Project management tips before you start . . .
- Make sure you’re starting at the right place. If you’re early in the planning process, you might not want to use Project at all. Perhaps you have a simple list on a SharePoint site, or in Excel, or on a paper napkin. Share those ideas with other people first before you start Project and put a schedule together. Learn more about the early stages of project planning.
- Make sure you know what a project is and what it isn’t. In the early phases of project creation, your project might lack clarity or be too broadly defined. Here a few examples to help you narrow down the objectives of your project.
|Projects too broadly defined|Projects defined with more clarity|
|:--- |:--- |
|Reduce cost overhead|
- Project to upgrade a manufacturing plant to increase efficiency.
- Project to locate maintenance plant closer to manufacturing facilities.
|
|Reduce risk from competition| - Project to replace security software.
- Project to recruit risk specialists from related industry.
|
- OK, everybody has bought off on your great idea. Now what? Start Microsoft Project and get going. Add tasks, organize them into an outline, and set up a project calendar so you know what the working hours are. You could also start adding people at this point, but this typically happens later. Learn more about adding people to your project.
Step 1: Create a new project
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Step 2: Add tasks
| Options |
Description |
| Add new tasks |
Add tasks to a schedule to break the work down into manageable pieces. |
| Set the length of task duration |
Set the time span (or calendar time) a task should take. You can enter a number or just type in a placeholder duration like “TBD” or “Talk to Sarah first”. |
| Set the amount of work that people perform on tasks |
Set the amount of time (or person-hours) for a task to be completed. This is the amount of time regardless of the number of people on the task. |
| Import Excel data into Project |
If your tasks are already in Excel, you can copy them from Excel into Project. Project will keep the formatting and organizational structure of the task list. |
| Add a milestone |
Mark the end of major portions or phases of your project with milestones to show progress toward major deliverables. |
| Inactivate a task, rather than delete it |
You can cancel a task but keep a record of it in the project plan. This is a useful way to test how changes could affect your project. |
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Step 3: Organize tasks
| Options |
Description |
| Link tasks in a project |
Link any two tasks in a project to show their relationship (also called a task dependency). Linked tasks reflect project realities. When one task changes, so does the other. |
| Outline tasks into subtasks and summary tasks |
Show task hierarchy by creating an outline with the Indent and Outdent buttons. |
| Split a task |
When there are interruptions in a task, you can split it into sections to show when it stops and starts. |
| Create WBS codes |
Use Work Breakdown Structure (or WBS) codes to outline tasks numerically so that work matches your business’s accounting practices. |
| Top-down planning |
Set up the major phases first and then break them down into individual tasks. |
| How Project schedules tasks: Behind the scenes |
Learn more about how Project works with tasks and their relationships to help calculate the schedule. |
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Step 4: Set up the project calendars
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Step 5: Save and publish the schedule
Return to the Project Road Map
