Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Adding Resources

Open the Commercial Project you started previously.

On the Project Guide toolbar, click Resources. You will use the Project Guide to help set up the initial list of resources for the commercial project.

1. In the Resources pane, click the Specify people and equipment for the project link. The Specify Resources pane appears, and the Project Guide: Simple Resource Sheet view replaces the Gantt Chart view.
2. Select the Enter resources manually option.

Tip For your own projects, if your resource information resides in the right source on your network, such as a Microsoft Exchange address book or Active Directory, you can quickly import the resource information into Project. This saves you the effort of retyping the information and reduces the chance of making a data-entry error.

3. In the Simple Resource Sheet view, click the cell directly below the Resource Name column heading.
4. Type Garrett R. Vargas, and press Enter. Project creates a new resource.
5. Widen the Resource Name column by moving the mouse pointer to the vertical divider line between the Resource Name and Email Address columns and doubleclicking. Your screen should look like the following illustration:

6. Enter the remaining resource information into the Simple Resource Sheet.

• Jim Hance
• Scott Cooper
• Jo Brown
• Patti Mintz
• Peter Kelly
• John Rodman
• Jonathan Mollerup
• Jon Ganio

Your screen should look similar to the following illustration:

7. On the View menu, click Resource Sheet. The Resource Sheet view appears. This sheet contains more resource-related fields than the Simple Resource Sheet does.
8. In the Resource Name field below the last resource (Jon Ganio), type Electrician, and then press Tab.
9. In the Type field, make sure that Work is selected, and then press Tab several times to move to the Max. Units field.

The Max. Units field represents the maximum capacity of a resource to accomplish any task. Specifying that a resource such as Garrett R. Vargas, for example, has 100 percent maximum units means that 100 percent of Garrett’s time is available to work on the tasks to which you assign him. Project will alert you if you assign Garrett to more tasks than he can accomplish at 100 percent maximum units (or, in other words, if Garrett becomes overallocated).

10. In the Max. Units field for the electrician, type or select 200%, and then press Tab.

Tip When you click a numeric field, up and down arrows appear. You can click these to display the number you want, or just type the number in the field. The resource named Electrician does not represent a single person; instead, it represents a category of interchangeable people called electricians. Because the Electrician resource has a maximum units setting of 200 percent, you can plan on two electricians being available to work full time every workday. At this point in the planning phase, you do not know exactly who these electricians will be, and that’s OK. You can still proceed with more general planning.

Now you’ll update the maximum units value for Jon Ganio to indicate that he works half time.

11. Click the Max. Units field for Jon Ganio, type or select 50%, and then press Enter. Your screen should look similar to the following illustration:

When you create a new resource, Project assigns it 100% Max. units by default. You change the resource’s Max. Units here.

What Is the Best Way to Enter Resource Names?

In Project, resource names can refer to specific people (for example, Jon Ganio or Jim Hance) or to specific job titles (for example, Camera Operator or Actor). Use whatever makes the most sense to you and those who will see the project plan information you publish. The important questions are Who will see these resource names? and How will they identify the resources?

The resource names you choose will appear both in Project and in information published from Project. For example, in the default Gantt Chart view, the name of the resource, as you enter it in the Resource Name field, appears next to the bars of the tasks to which that resource is assigned. A resource might refer to somebody already on staff or to a position to be filled later. If you have not yet filled all the resource positions required, you might not have real people’s names yet. In that case, use placeholder names or job titles when setting up resources in Project.

Setting Up Equipment Resources Resource Information

You set up people resources and equipment resources exactly the same way in Project. However, you should be aware of important differences in how you can schedule these two types of resources. For example, most people resources have a working day of no more than 12 hours, but equipment resources might work around the clock.

Moreover, people resources might be flexible in the tasks they can perform, but equipment resources tend to be more specialized. For example, a director of photography for a film or video project might also act as a camera operator in a pinch, but a video camera cannot replace an editing studio.

You do not need to track every piece of equipment that will be used in your project, but you might want to set up equipment resources when

• Multiple teams or people might need a piece of equipment to do different tasks simultaneously, and the equipment might be overbooked.
• You want to plan and track costs associated with the equipment.

In this exercise, you enter information about equipment resources in the Resource Information dialog box.

1. In the Resource Sheet, click the next empty cell in the Resource Name column.
2. On the Standard toolbar, click the Resource Information button (or Shift-F2). The Resource Information dialog box appears.

   Tip You can also double-click a resource name or an empty cell in the Resource Name column to display the Resource Information dialog box.

3. Click the General tab if it is not already displayed. In the upper portion of the General tab, you might recognize the fields you saw in the Resource Sheet view. As with many types of information in Project, you can usually work in at least two ways: a table or a dialog box.
4. In the Resource name field, type Mini-DV Camcorder.
5. In the Type field, click Work.

Your screen should look similar to the following illustration:

Tip The Resource Information dialog box contains a button labeled Details. If you have an e-mail program that complies with the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) and the program is installed on the same computer as Project, you can click Details to see contact information about the selected resource. MAPIcompliant programs include Outlook and Outlook Express.

6. Click OK to close the Resource Information dialog box and return to the Resource Sheet. The Max. Units field shows 100% for this resource; next you will change this.

Tip You can also double-click on an empty cell in the Resource Name column to create a new resource using the Resource Information dialog box. Note that when creating a resource in this way, you cannot enter a Max. Units value. However, you can edit this value in the dialog box, as well as in the Resource Sheet, after you create the resource.

7. In the Max. Units field for the Mini-DV Camcorder, type or click the arrows until the value shown is 300% and press Tab. This means that you plan to have three camcorders available every workday.

8. Enter the following information about equipment resources directly in the Resource Sheet or in the Resource Information dialog box, whichever you prefer. In either case, make sure Work is selected in the Type field.

Your screen should look similar to the following illustration:

Setting Up Material Resources

Material resources are consumables that you use up as the project proceeds. On a construction project, material resources might include nails, lumber, and concrete. For the toy commercial project, video tape is the consumable resource that interests you most. You work with material resources in Project mainly to track the rate of consumption and the associated cost. Although Project is not a complete system for tracking inventory, it can help you stay better informed about how quickly you are consuming your material resources.

Comparing Work and Material Resources

Following are some ways material resources are similar to and different from work resources. For both material and work resources, you can edit and contour resource assignments, set up multiple pay rates, specify different pay rates to apply at different times, and share resources through a resource pool. (You will work with these subjects in later chapters.) In addition, cost calculations for material resources work just about the same way as they do for work resources.

Unlike work resources, however, material resources do not use overtime cost rates, resource calendars, or maximum units.

In this exercise, you enter information about a material resource.

1. In the Resource Sheet, click the next empty cell in the Resource Name column.

2. Type Video Tape and press Tab.

3. In the Type field, click the down arrow and select Material, and press Tab.

4. In the Material Label field, type 30-min. cassette and press Enter.

You will use 30-minute cassettes as the unit of measure to track video tape consumption during the project.

Your screen should look similar to the following illustration:

The Material Label field only applies to material resources.

Entering Resource Pay Rates

Almost all projects have some financial aspect, and cost limits drive the scope of many projects. Tracking and managing cost information allows the project manager to answer such important questions as

• What is the expected total cost of the project, based on our task duration and resource estimates?
• Are we using expensive resources to do work that less expensive resources could do?
• How much money will a specific type of resource or task cost over the life of the project?
• Are we spending money at a rate that we can sustain for the planned duration of the project?

For the TV commercial project, you have been entrusted with pay rate information for all people resources used in the project. In the information below, note that the fees for the camcorders, the lights, and the editing lab are rental fees.

Because the Southridge Video company already owns the reflector kit and camera booms, you will not bill yourself for them.

In this exercise, you enter cost information for each resource.

1. In the Resource Sheet, click the Std. Rate field for resource 1, Garrett R. Vargas.

2. Type 800/w ($800 per week) and press Enter. Garrett’s standard weekly rate of $800 per week appears in the Std. Rate column.

3. In the Std. Rate field for resource 2, Jim Hance, type 18.75/h, and press Enter. Jim’s standard hourly rate appears in the Std. Rate column.

Your screen should look similar to the following illustration:

4. Enter the following standard pay rates for the given resources: Your screen should look similar to the following illustration:

Note that you don’t enter a rate (hourly, daily, or weekly) for the video tape’s cost. For material resources, the standard rate value is per unit of consumption—in our case, 30-minute cassettes. Just type 5

End of Assignment 2