Cluster 6.

2
IMPORTANT:
If you are in a Birkbeck cluster, the log in is as follows:
User ID
Password

ucluser
T34ch1ng

You should then be asked for your individual UCL credentials to sign
in.
Dear Student
Microsoft Project Cluster Session
The aim of this session is to get you started on Microsoft Project.
You will do a simple project plan with parallel activities and costed
resources.
As with any software, some activities are intuitive and easy to use,
others are more complex. The instructions below will guide you to
complete a project plan.
Please take time to come back and practice some more. The software
is available in cluster rooms.
Please ask the tutor for your session for any help you may need, but
it can be fun to try things out for yourself as well. Dont forget to save
your work every five minutes or so.
Ken Ring
Course Lecturer

(http://www.psdbucket.com/film-studio-vector-set)

Film Studio Summer Solstice and Film Release

Ceremony.
26 February 2018
Henry Morley is the Chief Executive of Prestige Awards Plc. a company
specializing in throwing award and announcement ceremonies for the
Technology and Entertainment Industries.
He has been asked by one of the largest Film Production Studios in
Hollywood to prepare an award ceremony in the UK for the summer
solstice (June 21st). This date corresponds to the release of the Studios
next big blockbuster, the first in a long anticipated and much hyped series
of films. A copy of different aspects of the film set is to be the stage at this
Ceremony, and images from the film will form the bulk of the Merchandise
provided for the event.
The studio and film director will not release any information about the film
and the set until the 26th of February 2018 in order to limit the possibility of
spoilers and leaks to the press.
26/2/18 is therefore the starting date of your project.
Prestige Plc runs events around the world, and Henry Morley has decided
to appoint Jeremy Bentham, a newly graduated UCL alumni as the
Manager for this project. Because this will be Jeremys first project as
Project Manager, Henry Morley has (very helpfully!) provided some
detailed notes to guide Jeremy in using Microsoft Project (MP) to plan the
projects. This includes a breakdown of the Tasks that need to be
completed, as well as suggested durations. These are shown in Appendix
A.

Jeremy is responsible for organizing his small team and the plan to supply
the Set and the Merchandising for the event. The material costs of
manufacturing, and delivery are outside the projects scope. The Set
design Subcontractor is charging a fixed rate of 5000, and the
Merchandise production company has offered to supply the merchandise
free as a way of enhancing brand awareness within the Hollywood Studio.
Henry has asked Jeremy to let him know the expected milestone end
dates (for both sub projects) and the total budget for her project. He hopes
that he can project manage this for 46,000 or less.
Lets start then:

The first thing to do is to set the start date.

Log on in the normal way. Click on the Start button and you will find
Microsoft Project 2013 (or 2016) in the Menu. (If not, it will be under
Programs/Microsoft Office)
If it is your first time opening MS Project 2013, on the standard screen a
welcome tutorial will appear providing some explanation how the software
works ignore that for now, you can explore the new features of this
version later in your free time.
Notice the layout; on the left is a space to list all your tasks etc. On the
right is a Gantt bar chart which will fill with information as you enter tasks
on the left.
Click on the Gantt chart button on the top left to see what other views are
available to you. Have a quick look through them all, particularly the
Resource views. When you are done, return to the Gantt Chart view.

Set the start date

Click on the Project Tab option

Click on Project Information
Change the start date to 26th February 2018 and press OK

Time is getting tight so Jeremy decides that he and his staff will work on
Saturdays as standard.

Change working week to include Saturdays

Staying in Project Tab, click on Change Working time, then click on the
Create New Calendar button

Name it Ceremony.
Click on the Create new base calendar option.
Press OK.
Click on the Work Weeks tab, and then click Details.
Highlight Monday to Saturday.
Click on the Set day (s) to these specific working times button.
Press OK

Jeremy has decided that the team wont be working bank holidays
(although he may have to change his mind later!).
Set Bank Holidays

Click on Exceptions Tab.

Type in Bank Holiday in the Name Column.
Input the days as 30th March to 2nd April 2018
Do the same for the Monday 7th May, and then for the Monday 28th
May
Press OK

Now that we have designed the Ceremony calendar, go back to Project

Information and change the calendar to Ceremony.
TIP:
Its very important that you change the calendar to Ceremony as it will
affect all your subsequent calculations, and may be difficult to correct at a
later stage!
List the tasks in the Project
You should now be back in the main spreadsheet (of you are not, click on
Gantt Chart in the top left corner.
In the Task Name and Durations columns copy the headings, task
names and durations from Appendix A. (The parts that you need to cut and
paste are in a box with a bold border!).
Do not worry about the resources yet.

When you are finished, click on done.

You might find it easier to cut and paste from the two columns from this
file.
You will notice that the bar chart is now automatically populated with the
durations, but that everything starts on the 26 th of February.
This is because MS Project does not know that certain tasks need to be
completed in a particular order to make sense. You need to tell the
software about these links.
Jeremy now needs to show which tasks need to finish before others can
start.
Organise Tasks into phases
Making sure you are in the Task Menu, we have to let the software (MP)
know that we have two headings (i.e. two sub-projects) in the list.
Highlight all the tasks (but not the heading) in the Set Design and
Construction Project and press the Green forward arrow Key in the
toolbar at the top. You should see all the tasks shift to the right, and the top
Task (of which all the ones which moved are Sub-Tasks) turn bold.
Do the same for the tasks in the Merchandise project.
Set the End of Project Milestone
Do not include the milestone at the bottom! At the moment the software
does not actually recognise this as a milestone. To do this, in the Duration
column, set the duration to 0 days. You will see the task bar become a
small diamond. This is the symbol for a milestone.
Set the Tasks to be Auto scheduled
In the Task Mode column:
click on the first cell in this column and a drop down menu will appear
select auto scheduled
Once you have done this you can copy this cell down to the rest of the
cells in the column (do this the same way you would in excel, by clicking
the small square in the bottom right hand side of the cell when it is
highlighted, and dragging down).
You will notice that the first sub-project has a duration of 42 days and the
second sub-project a duration of 16 days. This is because the software
has assumed that all the activities can be done in parallel and sets the
duration of each subproject at the length of the longest task.

Jeremy now needs to let MP know which tasks have predecessors, i.e.
what order do the tasks have to happen in?

Schedule tasks
Set Design and Construction project.

Highlight Agree budget and obtain funds down to Approve

Design and press the Chain link button in the Task tab. This
tells the software to link the tasks in sequence.
Whilst pressing and holding down control click on Agree initial
Concept then Award Design Contract and press the Chain link
button. (Do not include Agree design). Note: The order that you
click the tasks does matter!
Whilst pressing and holding down control click on Agree initial
Concept then Design and press the Chain link button. (Do not
include Agree design).
Highlight Approve Design down to Assemble Set and press
the Chain link button.

The total duration should be 96 days for this sub-project.

Merchandise project.

Highlight Agree Budget down to Agree design of merchandise

and press the Chain link button.
Highlight Agree design of merchandise down to Forecast
Quantity and press the Chain link button.
Whilst pressing control click on Agree Budget then Forecast
Quantity and press the Chain link button. (Do not include Agree
design)
Whilst pressing control click Agree design of Merchandise and
Write contract and put out to tender and press the Chain Link
button
Highlight Forecast Quantity and Write contract and put out to
tender and press the Chain link button.
Highlight Write contract and put out to tender down to Deliver
Merchandise to Ceremony Location and press the Chain link
button.

The total duration should be 72 days for this sub-project

Make sure that Task ID 20 Set and Merchandise Ready for Ceremony
has a duration of 0 days to identify it as a milestone.

1 after the other, using the Control key, Link Assemble set, and Deliver
Merchandise to Ceremony Location to the milestone.
The Milestone should have a date of 22/6/18.
TIP If you reduce the zoom level in the bottom right hand corner you can
get a complete view of the tasks in the Gantt chart.
You can check that you have the order correct by comparing the
Predecessors column on the software with the predecessors in Appendix
A.
Adding columns of custom information
In addition to the columns of information we have just been working on, you
can add extra columns.

Scroll the horizontal bar at the bottom of this area until you get to a
column where it says Add new column.
Click on this heading and scroll down and highlight Cost.
Note how many other options there are! The software can calculate
many useful metrics for a Project Manager. But today we will just
use cost.

Now we have to assign hourly rates to resources

First, go the View Menu and click on the Resource Sheet.
In the first row under Resource name Type in Project Manager. You will
find that some of the other columns populate themselves with information.
You need to change the standard and overtime rate to the values in the
table below, and change the Base calendar to Ceremony (if it has not
already done so). Input the other 5 resources using the information in the
table below.:
Standard rate ()
per hour
Project manager
40
Team Member
30
Design Manager
35
Contracts Manager
35
Set
Design 5000 fixed price.
Subcontractor
Client
0
To input the Set Design Sub-contractor:
Input the Name in the name column.

Overtime Rate () per

hour
80
60
70
70
0

Double click on the name.

Under the Type drop down menu, select Material. This tells the
software it is a single use cost (i.e. not per day).
Go to the Costs tab.
Input 5000 in the standard rate.
Click OK
Assign people to tasks
Go back to the Gantt Chart (click on the icon in the Top left hand corner).
Assign people as per appendix A:
To allocate people to tasks you highlight each task in the Task Name list
and double click. A dialogue box will appear. Click on the Resources tab.
OR
You click in the Resource Names cell on each task line, and select the
resources from the list that appears.
Work through each task as per Appendix A.

Were Not Finished Yet!

There are several problems with the schedule you currently have
Problem 1
As you added the resources, you will have seen that a red symbol has
appeared in the i column on nine of the activities. This means that these
tasks have a resource which is needed in two places at the same time.
You have a resource Clashes.
Problem 2
Click on the Project menu and the Project Information button. In the
dialogue box you will see a Statistics button. Click on this.
You will see that the project is costing 50,680.00. You are over budget as
Henry Morley wanted the project to come in under 46,000.
Problem 3
The final date is now 22nd of June 2018. You are late, as the Ceremony is
the 21st of June, and everything needs to be ready several days before
this.

TIP. If your date doesnt match up to the above, its likely that you have
made a mistake in defining the working week or setting bank holidays.
Check this stage again.
Before you tackle these problems. It might be a good idea to save this file
as the Baseline Plan 1. You can then save another version of it and call it
Baseline 2 which you can work on.
Apart of what Baseline 1 should look like is at Appendix B
You need to think of some options to save time and money. For example,
can you shorten the durations?
Change 1
Longer tasks can often be reduced (not always, use your judgement!). For
this tutorial we are going to assume that we can reduce the time needed
for the Design task (Task 6) in the first sub-project from 30 days to 20
days.
Notice that 2 of the Clashes have disappeared. Note that this has not
affected the price of the project, as it is a fixed price, regardless of
duration. (This will not always be the case). It has reduced the project
completion date. The project will now be completed by 11/06/18.
Change 2
Now reduce the duration of Task 14 (Agree design of merchandise) from
16 days to 8 days.
Notice that 2 new clashes (Tasks 7 and 17) have appeared, and that this
change has no effect on the Project End Date. Why?
To see why, go to the Format Tab, and click on the Critical Tasks box.
This will highlight the activities on the Critical Path in red on the Gantt
Chart.
Notice that even before we reduced the duration of Task 14, it was not
critical. Reducing the duration of a non-critical task will not reduce the
duration of the whole project.
So why do it?
Go to the Project tab, and click on Project Information, then click on the
Statistics button at the bottom of the pop-up window.
Notice that the cost has been reduced to 45,880.00. This is within
budget.
You have now solved 2 of the 3 issues.

Change 3
You also still have the problem of some of the resources being needed at
two places at the same time. MS Project (and most PM Software) will not
let this happen, as realistically it means the work will not be done.
To see where resources are over-allocated, click on the Task tab, then
click on the Gantt Chart icon in the top left corner. From the Drop down
menu, select Resource Usage. It will default to todays date, scroll across
until you reach the dates this project is running (just click on the bar at the
bottom).
This view lets you see how many hours of work you have assigned to each
resource. There are 8 hours of work available in a day (you set this at the
start of this exercise).
Notice that the Project Manager is scheduled to do 24 hours (3 days)
worth of work every day for the first week.
You will be coming back to this view a lot, so make sure you can switch
between this and the Gantt Chart view quickly.
In general there are 3 ways to deal with a clash.
1. Have someone else do one of the Tasks. Preferably someone
currently unused within the project team, but you may also hire
other people (but not a second Project Manager!).
2. Have the tasks linked so that they do not happen at the same time.
i.e. The second Task will not start until the first Task is finished. Do
NOT do this by manually entering a date!!
If you manually enter a date, you are adding a fixed time constraint
on the Task. This can really confuse all the really useful automatic
functions of the Software. Instead you should Link tasks using the
Chain link button in the Task Tab.

3. Have the resource work part time on each task, e.g. 4 hours in the
morning on 1 Task, 4 hours in the afternoon on the other Task. This
will double the duration of the Tasks while the resource is being
shared.

Change 3.1
Lets tackle the first conflict in the first sub-project. We are going to use
option 2 (from the above list).
Switch back to the Gantt Chart view.
You can see that the Project Manager is assigned to Task 2 (Agree Initial
Concept) and Task 3 (Agree Budget and obtain funds) at the same time.
Highlight these 2 tasks, clicking on Task 2 first! (The order you select the
tasks does matter!).
Click on the Task Tab, and click on the Chain Link button (it looks like a
).
This has not eliminated the clash fully, as there is more than 1 clash
occurring.
Now Click on Task 2, hold down Control (Ctrl) and click on Task 13. The
first Clash has now been resolved.
Because you have delayed the start of a task on the Critical Path, the
overall completion date of the project has been delayed as well. But
18/06/18 is before the Ceremony date of 21/06/18, so it is alright!
But there are 6 remaining, including some that have developed as a result
of you rearranging the schedule.
Change 3.2
Notice that the Team Member is highly under used. This Team member is
actually the daughter of the chairperson of the Production Committee. She
is just working on this for fun, and actually studying for a Masters in
Business. She is fully capable of agreeing the budget for the second subproject (Task 13).

Click on the resource cell in row 13. Deselect Project Manager and select
Team Member.
2 more clashes are now dealt with, leaving 6 left.
Change 3.3
Note that there is a lot of Float for the second sub-project (shown by the
long blue line to the right of Task 19). Because of this, there is capacity for
linking Task 5 (Award Design Contract) and Task 14 (Agree design of
merchandise) to remover the Clash on both the Project Managers and
Design Mangers time.
Click on Task 5, press and hold control (Ctrl), and click on Task 14. Once
both tasks are highlighted, click on the Chain Link; button.
This has removed 2 more clashes. Only 4 left!
Change 3.4
Do the same thing to Chain Link Task 7 and Task 17. This removes 2 more
clashes
Change 3.5
There are only 2 clashes left. The clash is for the Team Member on Task 8,
and Task 19. Both of these tasks are long in duration, and linking them will
delay the project past the deadline.
You realise that as competent as the Chairmans daughter is as a Team
Member, that she will need help. So you decide that for the last 2 months
of the Project, you will hire a second Team Member.
Go to the View tab, and click on Resource Sheet. Change the name of
the existing Team Member to Team Member 1 (initials T1).
Add a new resource called Team Member 2 (initials T2). Make the Pay
the same as for T1 (you can do this by copy and pasting the entire T1 row,
then simply change the name and initial).
Go back to the Gantt Chart view (by clicking on the icon on the top left).
Construction is not really the original team members (T1) area of
expertise. Team Member 2 (T2) is from a construction background.
Select the Resource cell for Task 8.
Deselect Team Member 1, and select Team Member 2 instead.
Both remaining clashes should now have disappeared.

Congratulations! You now have a working schedule. Do a quick check of

the project information (Project > Project information > Statistics). The
Budget is under 46,000 (it is 44,920.00), and you are scheduled to finish
3 days before the ceremony.
Why do you think the cost has dropped further from Change 2 despite
hiring another person? Please note that these clashes can be resolved in
other ways. Can you find a more efficient schedule than the one produced
here? Try!!
Ken Ring

Course Lecturer

Kenneth.ring.11@ucl.ac.uk

Appendix A
Task ID

Duration
(Work
Days)

Resource

6
6

PM
PM, DM

CM

PM, CM

2,4

30

Sub2,5
contractor
PM,
DM, 6
Client
TM
7

Set
Design
and
Construction Project
Agree Initial Concept
Agree Budget and
obtain funds
Write contract and put
out to tender
Award
Design
contract
Design

Approve Design

Construct
42
Prefabricated
modules
Quality Control Check 4
Transport
Prefab 1
modules to ceremony
site
Assemble Set
2
Merchandise Design
and
Production
Project
Agree Budget
12
Agree
design
of 16
merchandise
Forecast Quantity
4
Write contract and put 7
out to tender
Award Design and 8
Manufacture contract
Manufacture/Print
15
Merchandise
Deliver Merchandise 10
to Ceremony Location
Set
and Milestone
Merchandise Ready
for Ceremony
=
Project Manager
=
Team Member
=
Contracts Manager
=
Design Manager

2
3
4
5

9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

PM
TM
CM
DM

Predecessor

DM
TM

8
9

TM

10

PM
PM, DM

13

PM, Client
CM

13,14
14,15

PM, CM

16
17

TM

18
11,19

Appendix B

Set Design Sub Contractor