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MS Project 2003 Example

This is intended to be read in conjunction with the MS Project 2003 Quick-start guide.
If you don’t understand a step, check to see if it is already explained there.
1. Create a new project with the following tasks and durations

Task Name Task Duration

Peel vegetables 5 day

Slice vegetables 1 day
Grind lime leaves 3 day

Thaw meat 12 day

Brown meat 1 day
Heat wok 5 day

Add Meat 1 day

Add curry paste 0.5 day
Add coconut milk 0.5 day
Mix liquids 2 day
Add vegetables 0.5 day
Simmer 20 day
Serve 2 day
Enjoy 0 day
• Note that the smallest time increment viewable on MS Project Gantt Chart is 15min, so for
the purposes of this exercise we are working with days. You can enter min, weeks, months
etc by typing “5 min” and so on.
• If a task can be done by multiple resources in parallel to speed it up, make sure the “effort
driven” box is checked in the task information page. If not, make sure it is unchecked.
• A milestone is a task of 0 duration.
• The time unit “day” is defined as 8 hours. If a work day is not 8hrs long, there may be
confusion later!
Check the effort driven box for “Peel vegetables” and uncheck the effort driven box for
everything else.
• If you did not leave spaces for subproject titles, just insert a new task and leave it blank
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2. Create WBS hierarchy by creating subproject titles and indenting tasks

Task Name Task Duration

Prepare Vegetables
Peel vegetables 5 day
Slice vegetables 1 day
Grind lime leaves 3 day
Prepare Meat
Thaw meat 12 day
Brown meat 1 day
Heat wok 5 day
Cooking
Add Meat 1 day
Add curry paste 1 day
Add coconut milk 1 day
Mix liquids 2 day
Add vegetables 0 day
Simmer 20 day
Serve 2 day
Enjoy 0 day

• Do this by indenting tasks under subprojects. You may need to outdent subproject
titles if they get indented to the level of tasks
• You can have a hierarchy of subprojects if you wish

3. Create resource calendars

• Construct an 8hr per day, 7 day per week calendar and save it as “8x7” to use later for the
resources “Chef” and “Assistant”
• “Materals” don’t have a working time; they are always available
NOTE: One flaw of MS Project is that tasks can not use machines or tools that assist another
resource. For example, we may allocate a Welder tool as a “resource” that is capable of working
24hrs/day and a Metal worker that is capable of working 12hrs/day, and make a task of “Fabricate
Box” require the Welder and the Metal worker, taking 6 work hours. Instead of saying that the
“Welder” requires the “Metal worker” to contribute any work, project will interpret this as the
“Welder” contributes 24 work hrs/day and the “Metal worker” contributes 12 work hrs/day for a
total of 36 work hrs/day, meaning the task “Fabricate Box” is completed in 1/6th of a day instead of
½.
One workaround for this is to set the tool as being a “Material” so that it does not contribute to
workload, and only the resource “Metal worker” hours count. You can still manually calculate and
set the “Welder” running cost as “std. rate” and correctly calculate the operating cost. This
workaround does not resolve the problem of having more workers requiring a particular tool than
there are tools available (for example, if after completing the fabrication the worker uses the shop
forklift to store the product. There may only be 1 forklift in the shop of 8 metal workers, but Project
will not realise this limitation and assume all metal workers have access to the forklift at all times).
This check of over-allocated resources is only performed on “resources”; for “materials” you have to
check this manually and carefully.
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4. Create resources in the resource sheet

Name Material Max Units Std rate Cost/use Accrue at Base Type
Label Calendar
Vegetables $0.00 $5.00 Start Material
Lime leaves $0.00 $3.00 Start Material
Meat $0.00 $8.00 Start Material
Curry Paste $0.00 $2.00 Start Material
Coconut milk $0.00 $1.00 Start Material

Chef 100% $0.03/h $0.00 Prorated 8x7 Work

Assistant 200% $0.02/h $0.00 Prorated 8x7 Work

Morter and $0.00 $0.00 Start Material

Pestle
Vegetable $0.00 $0.00 Start Material
Peeler
Knife $0.00 $0.00 Start Material
Stove *see below* $0.00 $0.00 Prorated Material
Wok $0.00 $0.00 Start Material

• Note that tools/machines are available at all times here, but resources that use them have
limited availability. Also, we have 2 assistants giving Assistant availability of 200%. This
means Project will only show an error if we allocate our resource “Assistant” more than
200% standard workload.
• Also note that the hourly cost of “Chef” and “Assistant” are very small to avoid dominating
the bill of material costs at the end. This is just for this example
*Note* Our stove is classified as a material, even though it is used in an hourly fashion, and its
cost accrues in an hourly fashion (see above to understand why it is a “material”). However,
since the operating cost is based upon how hot it is and how long it is used for we need to be a
bit clever to trick MS Project into doing what we want.
One method is to set the Material label as cost per unit of energy (kWd etc) and then tell the
project in the next step how much energy to use for each task (eg stove[1.6kWd], stove[1.2kWd]
and so on).
Another method is to leave the Material label as d. (note the “.” – for some reason MS Project
will not allow you to use time units such as “d” as a unit for a material) and then introduce
multiple cost rates with the cost rate table function. Multiple cost rates are used when the cost
of a resource is dependent upon the task the resource is doing, and requires the resource to be
assigned to task before you can make a particular task use a different cost rate.
• Open the “stove” resource information panel, go to the “costs” tab, set A standard rate
as $0.03, B standard rate as $0.02 and C standard rate as $0.01
• Once you have assigned the “stove” to its tasks (in the next step), view the task usage
page and insert the “Cost Rate Table” column if it is not already there. Then go to each
instance of “stove” and change the cost rate table to:
o Heat Wok – A (high power)
o Brown Meat – B (medium power)
o Simmer – C (low power)
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If you accidentally change any resource other than “stove” they will also use their B/C/etc
cost rate, which by default is $0.00 so that the cost for that task will not be included in the
final cost summary.
We will be using the second method for this tutorial - you may use either in your
assignment
5. Assign resources to tasks using WBS sheet
• This includes a mixture of “materials” and “work”

Task Name Resources

Prepare Vegetables
Peel vegetables Vegetables, Vegetable Peeler, Chef
Slice vegetables Vegetables, Knife, Assistant
Grind lime leaves Lime leaves, Mortar and Pestle, Chef
Prepare Meat
Thaw meat Meat
Brown meat Meat, Stove[1d.], Wok, Assistant
Heat wok Stove[5d.], Wok
Cooking
Add Meat Meat
Add curry paste Curry Paste
Add coconut milk Coconut Milk
Mix liquids Wok, Assistant, Lime leaves
Add vegetables Vegetables
Simmer Wok, Stove[20d.]
Serve Assistant[200%]
• Both “Assistants” will be doing the serving, so we set the workload to [200%] manually
(default is [100%])
• Note that you will have to manually set number of “d.” that the stove is used for.
Alternately, manually set the number of kWd if you chose that option.
6. Sequence Tasks as shown below

Peel vegetables – Slice Vegetables

Slice Vegetables – Add Vegetables
Grind Lime Leaves – Add Vegetables
Thaw Meat – Add Meat
Add Meat – Brown Meat
Heat Wok – Add Meat
Brown Meat – Add Curry Paste
Add Curry Paste – Add Coconut Milk [SS]
Add Curry Paste – Mix Liquids
Add Coconut Milk – Mix Liquids
Mix Liquids – Add Vegetables
Add Vegetables – Simmer
Simmer – Serve
Serve – Enjoy
• You may notice that “Heat Wok” is completed many days before “Brown Meat” starts. This is
obviously not correct as “Heat Wok” is defined as time to turn wok on before we wish to
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use it. We correct this by giving “Heat Wok” the “as late as possible” constraint on the task
information page.
• You can now set the “Enjoy” milestone time to be whatever time you wish to serve, and
everything after “thaw meat” and vegetable preparation should shift accordingly. Test this.
Setting the “Enjoy” constraint back to “as early as possible” will return to the previous
schedule.
• You may notice that the “Prepare Vegetables” subproject duration is not max{5+1,3}=6, but
a smaller number. This is because the subproject is using the project calendar to calculate
working time (which may exclude weekends etc) rather than simply end time-start time.
You may wish to change the project calendar to correct this
7. Check resource allocation
You may note that “Peel vegetables” and “grind lime leaves” are going on concurrently, and that
“Chef” is assigned to both. By default a resource is allocated to work fully on one task, so currently
the “Chef” is over-allocated; view the resource graph for “Chef” and you’ll see that there is a period
where allocation is 200% (we previously defined the allowable maximum to be 100%). There are two
ways of resolving this problem:
• Reduce the effort put in by “Chef” for each task so that they sum to 100%
- Be aware that you can’t vary effort during a task (another limitation of MS Project), so
the “Chef” will be working at reduced effort during the longer duration task increasing
overall project time (and potentially cost)
• Adjust the task timings such that they are not concurrent. You may do this manually or using
the “Level Resources” tool
8. Determine project Costs
• One problem not outlined above is that of bill of materials. If the material is consumed in the
task it is allocated to, the above procedure will work satisfactorily. However, in process
control where the material is modified by a task (such as “slice vegetables” ) the resource
“vegetable” is used both in “peel vegetable” and ”slice vegetable” and so the material cost is
applied twice. One way around this is to create a new resource “Peeled Vegetables” that
costs $0, and adjust the task sequencing such that any task using the resource “Peeled
Vegetables” must occur after the task “Peel vegetables”, and then replace the “Vegetables”
resource with “Peeled Vegetables” wherever appropriate. You can also add a material
“sliced vegetables” and so on if you wish. Try this, and repeat for other processed materials
such as “Meat” and “Lime leaves”
• A simpler but less reliable is to use multiple cost rates for the material, and have one of the
cost rates set to $0. You can then use this cost rate when you don’t wish to have the
material usage cost anything
9. Other details
From here you can go on to analyse other parts of your project such as network diagrams, critical
path analysis, slack calculations and so on. Explore the features of MS Project and adapt them as
necessary to fit in with the details you are trying to show. But remember that what ever changes you
make;
• Make sure your starting cost, final cost, cash flow and earned value projections are
defensible. This is the metric against which you will personally be measured. MS Project
projections are not robust in that they will often not stand up to real world conditions, and
you will have to do significant analysis to make them do so.
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• Don’t sacrifice physical meaning in your model to make MS Project do what you want. (You
may find it easier to do some tasks manually rather than introduce a real-world impossibility
to make Project behave)
• Don’t let Project violate OH&S restrictions. Even if Project can check these you should
double check manually.