Extra Case MS Project

Adjust, Track and Communicate Your Project

Objective:
Make Adjustments to an existing Project, Save the Baseline, Track the Project
and Communicate Progress.

Assignment:
Download the file Apartments6 from the course website.  Follow the step-by-step instructions
below.  Resave and name the file that you
will turn in to your instructor as Apartments6-Your Initials.mpp.

Suggestions and Observations: Perform each instruction in the exact order
specified below or your results will differ in some areas.  Save your work often!

There will not be as much
step-by step instruction at this stage.
Try to do these steps without looking anything up, and when you need to
try the online help files.

Costs and resources have
been entered for you to save you some time.
In addition, a Notice to Proceed Task has been added and a General
Conditions Task has been set up to coincide with the duration of the
project.  To this task, personnel and
equipment have been assigned for what will be required for the duration of the
project, such as a Superintendent, laborers, trailers, vehicles, a warehouse,
etc.  These were entered as work
resources, since they have time-sensitive costs.  For example, trailers, leased vehicles, field
office overhead and the warehouse have either weekly or monthly recurring costs
that are assigned to the project; in other words, their usage is measured in
time, much like the labor resources.
Material Resources are used more for items that are measured in
quantities other than time, such as length, each, gallons, etc.

Subcontractors are
performing most of this project, so the costs for performing certain work are
entered as fixed costs per task, rather than by resource per use or per/hour
costs.  On a construction project, most
progress pays are based on how much work has been performed, and not
necessarily how long it took or how many people it took to do it; that is the
subcontractor’s problem and should have been factored into their estimates for
billing on their tasks.  Typically, you
may bill on a project for items in the schedule either wholly completed, or
in-progress.  This is
contract-dependent.  For this case, most
of these fixed cost items and resources are set up to be paid on a prorated
basis, except for the material resource of the Metal Stairs, which has a cost
that is accrued for payment when the manufacturing is complete.  If you had a contract that allowed for
payment only after a task on the project schedule was 100% complete, you would
probably break your schedule down into smaller parts, to allow for higher cash
flow on your progress payments.

Think of this another way:
if you set up your schedule with only 5 or 6 main deliverables, and your
customer will only pay as each deliverable is complete, you would be stretching
out your payments quite a bit on a large project.  If, however, you had set up 30 or so
incremental and smaller duration deliverables over a 6-month period, you would
be able to receive progress pays more often, thus improving your cash
flow.  For many projects in the
Information Technology industry, a schedule with a small set of deliverables is
agreed upon and bills are submitted weekly for hourly consulting fees.  As long as you are performing to schedule,
the customer agrees to pay the periodic billings.  Every scenario is a little different.  Many times, contractual payment rules drive
the granularity of the schedule as much as other factors do.  These are just some things to consider as you
build your own schedules.

A couple of problems have been
left out in the file and you are asked to correct them in ways that may require
you to research the solution in the help files.

Before beginning the steps
below, familiarize yourself with the Project file, paying attention to the
Gantt Chart Entry and Cost tables, the Resource Usage view, Task usage View and
the Resource Sheet.  Review the phases of
the project and look at the Network Diagram to see the logical flow of the
project.

Step-by-step Instructions to complete:

1.
Add a Project
Summary Task to the Project file.  (Hint: Use the Options Dialog Box)

2.
Go to the
resource sheet and see who is overallocated.  You should find the carpenter as overallocated.  Go to
the Resource Usage view and find the carpenter.
In the spreadsheet column insert a “Cost” column between the “Resource
Name” and the “Work” column.

3.
Stay in the
Resource Usage View after step 2.  On the
yellow detail grid, scroll to the right to find where the carpenter is overallocated.  You
should see that there is an indoor task and an outdoor task that are
overlapping on the same day.  Go back to
the Gantt Chart view and apply the Schedule table and
determine the task that is least critical.
For the task that is least critical, add a 1 eday
leveling delay in the Leveling Delay column of the appropriate Gantt View.  Verify that the carpenter is no longer overallocated.  (Hint: The task that is the least critical
is the one with the most Total Slack.)

4.
Switch to the
Task Usage View.  In the spreadsheet
column insert a “Cost” column between the “Task Name” and the “Work” column.

5.
Set the Project
Status Date to 4/2/2001.

6.
Save the
Baseline.

7.
Create a new
filter called “High Level Tasks” that shows only Summary and Milestone
Tasks.  Ensure the “Show in menu”
option is selected so the new filter appears in menus!  (Hint:
Remember, we want to see both Summary and Milestone Tasks.  Think about what the logical operator needs
to be in order to do so.  Trial and error
will show you if you are not sure.
Review the section in the book on making your own custom filters or
consult online help.  Review the existing
definitions of the “Milestones” and the “Summary Tasks” filters as a reference
or a starting point.)

8.
Create a new
Table called High Level Stats.  Review
the book or online help about making your own custom tables.  Be sure to select the “Show in menu”
option.  Show the following fields in the
table in the following order from left to right:

8.1  ID (far left hand column, “locked”
like the other tables do it)

8.2  Name

8.3  Start

8.4  Finish

8.5  Duration

8.6  Duration Variance

8.7  Total Slack

8.8  Cost

8.9  % Complete

9.
Create a new
view named High Level Gantt (Hint: base it on a copy of the Gantt Chart
View).  Ensure that the “Show in menu”
option is selected.  Use the “High Level
Stats” table for its default table and the “High Level Tasks” filter as its
default filter.  There will be no
grouping and be sure that the “Highlight filter” checkbox is NOT
checked.  Once complete, the High Level
Gantt will show up in the menu and in the View Bar.

Click back and forth between High Level Gantt and Gantt Chart
view.  If you applied the new table or
filter you created to the regular Gantt Chart view as
you created them, one or the other may still be applied to that view.  When on the Gantt Chart
view, be sure to choose the Entry table again and apply the “All Tasks” filter
to it.  Now, when you switch back and
forth between the Gantt Chart and High Level Gantt
views, you should notice the changes on the screen when the filter is applied
and unapplied and how the column names change from view to view.

10.
Remember that
each view has its own timescale and Page setup settings.  Return to the High Level Gantt view and
change the timescale major scale to Quarters and select the label titled “Qtr
1, 2000”.  Set the minor scale to Months
and use the default label of “Jan, Feb, …”.  Set the “Size” entry to 125%.

11.
Go to the Page
Setup settings for the High Level Gantt view. (Hint: Most of these can be found under the drop down box called
“General” and then added to the section by clicking the “Add” button”)

11.1  For the center Footer section,
adjust it to read “Page &[Page] of &[Pages]”

11.2  For the left Footer section add the
File Name and path.

11.3  For the right Footer section, put
in the Current Date (NOT the “Project Current Date”)

11.4  In the center Header section, add
the general item called “Project Title”

11.5  Change the font for the Project
Title to be Arial, Bold, 11.

11.6  In the
right Header section, type in “Project Status Date: “ and then add the Project
Status Date from the General drop down box.
It should look like this when you are done: “Project Status Date: &[Status Date]”.

After you save your changes, look at the Print Preview for the High Level Gantt
view and the regular Gantt Chart view and you can see
the page settings are view-dependent and not automatically the same for all
views.

12.
Now we are
ready to track the project and communicate results!  Set your Project Status Date to June 1,
2001.  Remember that the calendar drop
down will default to today’s date, so depending upon when you do this exercise,
your current date and June 1, 2001 may be far apart.  In these cases, it is often easier just to
type the date in the entry field.  So
far, all that should have taken place is the Notice to proceed and the start of
your general conditions.  Go ahead and
Update (the project) as Scheduled (Hint:
Use the appropriate tracking toolbar button or use the menus to get to the
option to “Update work as complete through 6/1/2001”).

13.
Task ID #4,
Interior Demolition began on June 4th, 2001 as scheduled but ran
into a snag.  There were unforeseen
conditions in the building that will delay demolition.  There is only a $10,000 increase in cost,
according to your Demolition Subcontractor, but the task will now take 10 days
to complete.  You received approval from
the owner for the change in cost, but they want to know what impact this delay
will cause to the project’s finish date.

Change the scheduled duration to 10 days for Task ID #4.  When prompted that this will cause a
scheduling conflict, which is certainly no surprise since demolition was a
critical task, do NOT cancel, choose the “Continue” option and commit the
change in duration.  The project finish
date should now be pushed back to 10/26/2001.
Change the Fixed Cost for this task from $110,000 to $120,000 and extend
your general conditions duration to match the duration of the project (look at
the project summary task).  Note that
this will also increase project overall cost as personnel, equipment and real
estate will be needed for a longer period.

It is now July 2nd,
and the interiors work on the project is on schedule as of the demolition
change.  However, under site work, the
concrete subcontractor was delayed due to labor shortages and could not begin
task 46 until June 25th.  This is not
currently a critical task, but the delay does need to be reflected in the
schedule, along with a written explanation to the owner of any task delayed
longer than 5 working days.  When you
enter the actual start date of June 25th 2001 for task 46, this will
cause a scheduling conflict.  As before,
Continue with the conflict, as we are entering actual data here and want the
impact to the schedule to be seen.  This
change makes tasks 46 through 48 critical, with task
48 finishing on 10/25/01.  It is now much
further behind, but still before the approved change in project finish date of
10/26/01.

This update will be a little trickier.
You will have to update many individual tasks.  Use the tracking table to enter the actual
start date for task 46.  Here are some
hints:

Very first thing, Change
your Project Status Date to July 2, 2001

Filter for a date range from 5/21/01 to 7/1/01 so you can focus on just the
June tasks to update

For tasks that went according to the current schedule, use the Update as
Scheduled button the only actual date you need to enter is the new Actual Start
for task 46.

After entering the actual start for 46, and choosing to “Continue”, Project
reschedules all impacted tasks

Be sure to make the remaining tasks scheduled for June
to be “Updated as Scheduled.”

Be sure to update all tasks that have any work to be done in June 2001 as
described

The total Actual Cost to date is $491,190.48.
If you have followed all of these steps in the correct order, this should
match the value in your file.  Use the
Statistics Dialog box.

14.
Your total cost
variance to the project is now $15, 931.43, before adding any general overhead
or profit.  This was caused by the
increased demolition cost and duration, which further extended the duration of
the project.  Since this increase added
duration to the project, you must increase the duration of the General
Conditions, which increases its cost as well.  The resources must be used longer, so the
cost to the project is greater.  In most
cases, you would enter cost information as it applies to the customer and not
to yourself, since you are submitting a cost and resource loaded schedule.  We will pretend for the sake of argument that
the increased values of General Conditions and Demolition include contractor’s
labor burden, G&A and profit.

Export the Earned Value data to an excel file and call it Apartment6Earned-Your Initials.xls.  Clean up your spreadsheet the same way those
exercises direct you to do and add a column for the CPI. Enter Your Name in
cell B82 and copy the CPI formula from K2 down
to cell K80.  You will have some #DIV/0! errors, but that is fine.
On Page setup, set the orientation to Landscape and Adjust to 75% normal
size.  With 1” margins, this should all
print now.  Your results may vary
slightly.  Turn this file in to your
instructor as well.

15.
Turn in your
completed Project file and Excel file as well as any additional printed views
or reports your instructor may require.
If you have access to a plotter, you may wish to plot the Gantt Chart and/or the Network Diagram just to see what the
graphics look like for a project that is in progress.