Planning with a Gantt Chart
(no this is not a spelling mistake!)
We have Microsoft Project at school, a very good program for developing Gantt charts. What follows is adapted from a tutorial found on the Microsoft office web site (9http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HA011361531033.aspx)
To open Microsoft Project - Start/Programs/Microsoft Office/Microsoft Office Project 2003
Create a Project plan in 8 easy! steps
Step 1: Setting up Microsoft Project
- Open Microsoft Project
- Look at the left of your screen and choose "Define the project" , Set start date.
- choose save and go to step 2
- Select No for collaborate on your project
- Define the work week - It is probably easiest to specify each lesson as 1 hour and give yourself 2 homeworks of 1 hour each. It makes the automatic calculation of hours and work days easier:
- You can specify the time that you estimate it will take to complete the tasks by entering duration or start and finnish dates
- Duration is the amount of actual time that will pass before the task is completed.
- It's important to understand that duration is measured in working days. For example, by default, 1 day = 8 hours, 5 days = 1 week, 20 days = 1 month. This means that if you type 30 days in the Duration field, it is calculated as 6 weeks rather than a month.
- If you change this as above to reflect the hours you work per week in Technology and the days you will do homework, then Microsoft Project will work a lot easier. Make sure you don't plan an activity on a homework day if you need the workshop! The table below shows a typical work week with two homework days (Sunday and Friday) and two classroom work days (Monday and Friday). Each day is 1 hour of work (Even though a double lesson would be 80mins - I hour of work is probably not far off the truth!)
- Use the Change working time link to set holidays and days that you can not work due to trips / school events etc.
- Note : You can also use the Change working time link to specify accurate lesson times and make homework adjustments, although this is probably not necessary.
- The WBS is the hierarchical list of the project's
- phases ( A group of related tasks that completes a major step in a project.),
- tasks ( An activity that has a beginning and an end. Project plans are made up of tasks.),
- and milestones ( A reference point marking a major event in a project and used to monitor the project's progress. Any task with zero duration is automatically displayed as a milestone; you can also mark any other task of any duration as a milestone.
To build your WBS, start by listing the major (summary) tasks of your project, and then map out the minor tasks
To enter major summary tasks
- On the View menu, click Gantt Chart.
- In the Task Name field, type a descriptive name for the first major phase of work.
- Continue to type descriptive names for each major phase of work until you have entered all of your project's summary tasks.
 When you enter new tasks, Project automatically creates a duration of one day and schedules them to start at the project start date.
Step3: Create Milestones
Milestones at the end of each major activity to help measure progress. It is a good practice to give milestone tasks a name that conveys completion or reaching an important point in your project, The posting of your process journal on the OLC would be an important milestone!
- After you enter tasks in the Task Name field, it's time to create the hierarchy.
- You can designate subtasks by using the Project outlining feature, based on indentation use the Indent
 and Outdent buttons on the Formatting toolbar.
- Subtasks are indented from the summary tasks.
- Subtasks represent the actual work a resource will do, and they don't have additional subtasks indented under them.
- Notice how the the task above the indented task becomes a summary task (the text and Gantt bar change automatically).
Notes
- You can highlight several tasks in a row and indent them all at once. Be sure to indent milestone tasks as well because they belong to the summary task.
- To quickly display the corresponding outline level numbers, on the Tools menu, click Options, click the View tab, and then select the Show outline number check box.
Here's an example of a complete outline, with outline numbers displayed.
Notes:
You can easily collapse and expand summary tasks to hide or show different levels of detail. Click Expand  or Collapse  beside a summary task to show or hide (respectively) its subtasks. You can also quickly show various outline levels by clicking Show on the Formatting toolbar.
- You can specify the time that you estimate it will take to complete the tasks by entering duration or start and finnish dates
- Duration is the amount of actual time that will pass before the task is completed.
- It's important to understand that duration is measured in working days. For example, by default, 1 day = 8 hours, 5 days = 1 week, 20 days = 1 month. This means that if you type 30 days in the Duration field, it is calculated as 6 weeks rather than a month.
- You should have changed this during step 1 to reflect the hours you work per week in Technology and the days you will work - don't forget homework!
To enter task durations
- On the View menu, click Gantt Chart.
- In the Duration field of the task you want to change, type the duration you want.
- Press ENTER.
- Repeat the preceding steps for each task.
The durations of summary tasks span to include the earliest start and latest finish of their subtasks.
 As task durations change, Project redraws the task’s Gantt bar to show the duration against a timeline.
- One of the most critical steps in scheduling is to create task dependencies, or links
- linking in a project is establishing a dependency between tasks. Linking tasks defines a dependency between their start and finish dates. This step makes the difference between a plan that can be used as an effective management tool and a plan that can only be used as a presentation tool.
- A dependency occurs when the start or finish of one task depends upon the start or finish of another.
- Most tasks are dependent upon other tasks.
- After the dependencies are set, you can easily identify the critical path - The series of tasks that must be completed on schedule for a project to finish on schedule. Each task on the critical path is a critical task.
- When linking tasks, you can specify different types of dependencies. The most common dependency is Finish-to-Start (FS), which means that the predecessor task must finish before the successor task can start.
To set dependencies in Project:
- On the View menu, click Gantt Chart.
- In the Task Name field, select two or more tasks you want to link in the order you want to link them.
- To select nonadjacent tasks, hold down CTRL, and then click the tasks you want to link.
- To select adjacent tasks, hold down SHIFT, and then click the first and last tasks you want to link.
- Click Link Tasks
 .
Step 7: The critical Path
To display the critical path
- On the View menu, click Tracking Gantt.
In this view, the Gantt bars of tasks on the critical path are formatted red.
This view is formatted to show tasks on the critical path with red task names and Gantt bars.
- Add resources to your project by using the Resource Sheet
- On the View menu, click Resource Sheet.
- For each resource, enter data in each field.
- Double-click a resource name to modify additional data in the Resource Information dialog box, such as availability, cost rate, and working times.
- After you add the resources to the project, you can begin to assign resources to tasks. To assign resources to tasks.
- On the View menu, click Gantt Chart.
- On the Tools menu, click Assign Resources.
- Select the tasks to which you want to assign resources.
- Under Resource from in the Assign Resources dialog box, select the resources that you want to assign to the selected tasks.
- Click Assign.
That's It!
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on the Gantt Chart