Detailed Commentary: Chapter 1 of Project 2010 Step by Step

This week I continue the “highlights of highlights” series: I’ll include some excerpts from the  Project 2010 Step by Step chapters and elaborate on them. This week: Chapter 1, "A Guided Tour of Project."

 

We think you'll be able to recognize many of the scheduling problems that the project managers at Lucerne Publishing encounter and apply their solutions to your own scheduling needs. (pg. 4)

For me one of the most interesting aspects of writing in the self-paced tutorial genre is the creation of the tutorial's scenario. This is the fictitious but plausible background of Project users at a fake book publisher named Lucerne Publishing, and their approach to using Project. Developing a plausible scenario means that you, the reader, can see situations in the book and transfer them to your real-world needs. Developing a strong scenario substantially adds to the instructional value of the material.

                       

Let's walk through the major parts of the Project interface…(pg. 6)

Project 2010 adopts the Fluent interface (commonly called "the ribbon) first introduced in other Office 2007 applications. Overall I think the Project engineering team did a good job of using this new UI model to surface great Project features that often went unnoticed in the older pull-down menu UI design. 

        

The entry bar (also called the formula bar) is hidden by default…(pg. 7)

OK this is one decision on which I don't agree with the Project engineering team 's choices in the 2010 UI. Fortunately you can turn on the entry bar. Here's how: On the File tab, click Options. In the Project Options dialog box, click the Display tab. Under "Show these elements," click the "Entry bar" check box.

                                                             

One common concern with sharing project plans is they may contain sensitive information like resource pay rates. You can save a project plan as a template and clear such information…(pg. 10)

This came up in a sidebar about templates. It's very valuable to be able to generate a template from a project plan you have developed and fine-tuned. To generate the template but exclude sensitive data like pay rates or schedule actuals, do the following. On the File tab, click Save As. In the "Save as type" box, click Project Template, entehr the template file name you want, and then click Save. When the Save As Template dialog box appears, select the types of information you want excluded from the new template.

 

The working space in Project is called a view...In general, views focus on task, resource or assignment details…(pg. 14)

A key part of mastering Project  is mastering views in Project. A Project plan is multifaceted and complex. Views give you insights into specific focus areas. My favorite advanced views are the Task Usage and Resource Usage views.

Previous posts in the "Detailed Commentary" series:

• Introduction of Project 2010 Step by Step

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Comments

[Shrikant]

Hi
Where do i get the practise files mentioned in your book ? I do not see them at the address mentioned by you.

Regards
Shrikant

[Carl Chatfield]

You can download the Project 2010 Step by Step practice files from here:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=191765

Regards, Carl