rujan 2007 - Posts
Since MS Project 2007 is getting more and more popular, there is a great chance that someone will send you a project plan that was created in MS Project 2007. And guess what? YOU HAVE 2003 version!!!. Damn... Don't worry, Microsoft (better late then never J) created a converter that allows you to convert MS Project 2007 file to 2003 version.
Of course, this comes with a price. You will have to download the 3rd service pack for Office 2003 which was released 10 days ago. After you installed it, you will be able to open project plan but as read-only. Yeah, I know, you would rather have the ability to change the project... But look at the bright side, better have it as read-only then as unknown file format J.
If you really have to edit the project plan, you will have to contact the person that sent you the project plan, and ask him to save it in 2000/2003 format. As always, additional prices to pay... After the plan is resaved in the new "old" format you will loose some data and/or formatting:
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Budget information will be lost
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Information in cross-project deliverables and dependencies fields will be lost
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Cost resources field will be converted into material resources
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Assignment owner information fields will be lost
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Calendar exceptions will be lost
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New fields and custom fields will be lost
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Enterprise custom fields will be lost
Anybody who is involved in projects is aware of the existence of project triangle. Of course, MS Project covers all three segments: money (cost), scope (tasks) and most important time (duration). Quality is usually the result of those three factors, so MS Project itself doesn't recognize such concept.
I've been wondering for a while, why do they call it a triangle? Everybody talks all fancy about project triangle and draw it on the whiteboard or put the image in their presentations, but nobody talks about what happens with that image when scope creep happens, or when the client informs you that the project has to be finished one month before schedule (everybody experiences that sooner or later :) the sunny side of PM :) ).
After trying to find a geometrical explanations, googling and talking to people who are more experienced than me, I finally decided to ask Bob Gibson (World wide known project manager, that was lecturing on PM course that I took early this year). After a couple of minutes of thinking he turned back to me, smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said "You know Luka, I never actually thought about it, but I really think that there is no answer to your question...".
So the only thing that anyone can conclude from the image above is that the three fundaments of PM (money, scope, time) are closely related but you can't visualize changes in any of them through the concept of project triangle.
Just yesterday a colleague of mine started a discussion about task durations, and their implementation in MS Project. Since he is using MS Project for some while now, he is familiar with the measuring concepts of task durations (task may be entered in minutes, hours, days, week, and month or as estimated values by adding a question mark behind the task duration). In plain words he knew the basic concept of adding durations to tasks.
He mentioned that he was trying to assign duration for one task that required 3 whole days to pass before the project can continue. That task was not dependent on working / nonworking days and it had to start on Thursday.
This was a perfect case for elapsed duration task. Elapsed duration is the amount of time a task will take until the task will be considered finished. That time is based on 24h day and a 7 day week where all of the days are considered working days (no holidays and no nonworking days). This kind of duration can not be entered through wizards / dialogs but only manually by adding letter e (elapsed) in front of abbreviations m, h, d, w, mo (1 ed, 2 eh, 3 emo).
This is a nice feature to know if you are involved in construction working project, but I really doubt that you will use this kind of task on IT projects. If anyone knows of an example where this feature may be useful in IT project, I would really like to know. So post a comment…
Welcome to the first place on Croatian MS Community scene that will cover the Microsoft Office Project tool as well as its correlation to project management. I will try to bring you some information that will speed up your learning curve on Microsoft Project and provide you with some neat tips & tricks that I had to learn the hard way J. Since Microsoft Office Project tool is one of the most popular tools used in project management, this blog will devote some of its posts to the project management and its influence on the Microsoft Project itself.
As I improve my knowledge by using the Microsoft Project on my projects in IN2, reading books, writing articles, taking exams that cover these topics I will make sure that all of the vital information will be posted here. That way everybody can benefit by sharing these information all around the Croatian MS Community.
But before I start this long, but fun, journey I would like to say a couple of words about myself. My name is Luka Gospodnetic, and I am working in the company named IN2 since I’ve finished Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb. For 14 years I've spent most of my free time playing baseball in Baseball Club “Zagreb”, but now all of my free time goes to IT books, Google J and my beautiful fiancée. My main field of interest is project management in IT sector.
If you choose to travel with me on this journey called Microsoft Project, don’t hesitate to contact either by phone or by e-mail…