All right, so we are going to start with a little bit of some hands on exercises on what software applications we could use to develop schedules. And on the way I'm going to show you either existing projects and we are going to create some of the examples that you've used and other parts Of the course. To do manually we're going to see how much faster that is to do automatically using software applications. So the first software that we're going to start with is Microsoft Project. So, I'm going to go in here, typically it's under the office platform if you use it a lot you're going to find it under your quick buttons menu. So, let's take a look at the interface here for For a little bit. So, what you will see in this Microsoft Project interface, it's very similar to Excel in terms of how you input data which makes it very simple and easy to use for a lot of people who use Excel typically. So what you have here is Typical format for viewing that bar chart. So you see tasks, so you can list all your tasks right here. You can start listing your duration. You can start adding dates, or you can start adding relationships. You can change the view so you can see a calendar view. You can see a Gantt chart view, a network diagram, a resource sheet, resource graphs, and so on. So let me stick with the Gantt chart right here. It's the most typical view used for scheduling. The other items, it's very simple Simple, similar to the other Microsoft Office tools with formatting and changing text sizes, and so on. And other more tasks specific items. So, let me start by creating a very simple schedule that's Similar to one of the examples that you had earlier, so I'm just going to put it on a screen real quick. If you want to take a screenshot or note it down to be able to follow along with doing that exercise yourself as well. So this is very simple, you've got a list of activities. Each one of them has a duration, and each one of them has some kind of predecessor or relationship with other activities. So, very simply, what we're going to do is go back to Microsoft Project here, and start listing these tasks. Now, you could copy-paste the tasks from Another spreadsheet, or an Excel spreadsheet, or even in the PowerPoint, or you can start typing it yourself. So what I'm going to do is just start typing these activities. So you've got Activity A [SOUND] Activity B, C, D, E, F and G. So now you've really started that, Starting point of I want these tasks. Then you're going to start listing the durations, so again very simple 196. So that just gives you that the activities and you'll notice here that they start popping up in the gap chart view as different bar charts. Different bars shown on that chart given their timeline. And then what you really need to do in order to have the correct sequencing of the work is really identify the predecessor. And one very main thing about Microsoft. Of project is that predecessors are assigned, per that number here, basically. So if I want b to be preceded by a, then I have to type in 1. I can't just type in a. I can't type in the task name. So within Microsoft Project, it's a task, it's not an activity. So that's the terminology for it and I have to type in that number. That's the ID that's identified. Now if I double-click here, then I can see a little bit more information about the task itself and about the predecessor. So it could be that the relationship doesn't have to be Doesn't have to be finish to start, it could be any other relationship. Right now we're assuming finish to start, that's the simplest form and the most typically used form of relationship, but that can be changed in here. So this shows you, okay, this is task B, Of course, this is probably just a baseline, so there's no percent complete yet. Manual and auto schedule I'm going to talk about in a minute. And then whether should I display it on the timeline, should I hide the bar? Should I roll it up so now we're not going to touch these options. And then if I look at the predecessors, I can start listing them here. So if I want to assign another predecessor and I don't want to do it the same way I did where I typed in that number I can click on this job down here and it would show me all the other activities that are within my project. So, I assign task A to be the predecessor for B. And then the type of the relationship I can change from here. So in here I'm choosing the finish to start. But of course you can choose any type of other relationship. And you can identify the lag. So it could be one day, five days, any number of days you would like to- To test. The Resources tab I won't touch today, but you can start assigning resources. You can start assigning either managers, human resources, equipment, material anything that will be utilized for the completion of this activity. There are other advanced settings. I'm going to to talk about that in a minute. And you can add any type of notes for the activity, whether it's a picture or it's a text describing what kind of activity that is. So I'm just going to hit OK. And then, I'm going to continue with assigning all the other predecessors. So c has a predecessor of a as well. So I'm just going to type one. D has a predecessor of a again. E has the predecessor b and c. So b and c is two and three. So in order to do that I'm going to have- Have to type 2, 3. Now notice if I type something else it's going to give me an error so let me try typing B and C actually. It's not going to do that, it's going to give me an error. So bear that in mind. So i'm going to type in 2, 3. And then for F same thing it's three so it's C and then for G it's actually E, F, and D. So four, five, and six. So now It showed me on this gant chart what is the actual schedule of the project. Now there are many things that I didn't set up in order to make sure that that schedule is correct, or that schedule is complete. First of all, because this is the default color for manually scheduled task So I would make all these tasks automatically scheduled. So I want it to auto schedule these tasks that makes it blue that means if I change this relationship, everything will change with it, all right? Let me put it back So that means that it is automatically scheduling these tasks. The other thing is maybe I want to set different settings about the project itself. There are certain things that we have to set up about the project. Prior to actually starting to schedule. Because of the ease of use of Microsoft Project sometimes we may not setup these settings correctly. But they're very important to note. So one thing is, about the project information. So if you go to this Project tab right here at the top, you need to set up this project information. So typically you will know when the start date of your project is. That's typically the notice to proceed of your contract. Or maybe it's earlier for negotiations or proposal set up or so on. So that's the first thing that you need to be aware of so I'm just going to set for example that start date to let's say it's a Monday, let's say it's October third. Current date is fine, finish date is automatically calculated based on the activities that are included. And then the calendar which is very important The calendar is how we specify what is the work week. So, working days are Monday through Friday, or sometimes we have 24 hour shifts or night shifts. So, I'm going to show you how to set that up. And then schedule from, what is is that I'm trying to achieve? Am I trying to schedule from the start date, which is typically what we do. And then we check whether the scheduled completion date meets the contractual requirements or not. But that's typically what we start with, scheduling from the start date. You could also schedule from the finish date if you are completely bound by that finish date. And you need to figure out, when can I start in order to finish by that date? So I'm going to keep this at project start date. And I'm going to click okay. The calendar here I'm going to talk about. In a minute. So this is how we setup the project information. This is just specifying the start date, so note that this became October 3rd. Because I set the project start date based on that. The other thing is, I can change right here if I click on change working time. That will show me the different calendars. So, if I'm looking at this calendar that I'm working with. This is the standard project calendar. So, looking at that, what I see here is that there is a legend. For these different color codes for the dates on that calendar. So, first you have grayed out are Saturday and Sunday, clearly that's the weekend, and then working times are specified from 8 AM To twelve PM and then there's a lunch break from twelve to one, and then there's work from one to five. This is the calendar that I'm using, so if I decide to change it, I need to change it from within this setup page. So, I can click here and I can create a new calendar. I can either copy a base calendar, which is highly recommended because it gives you a place to start So I can start that and say standard with holidays. So it's not only taking into accounts weekends and working hours, but it's also taking into account holidays. So I'm creating that, and let's say I'm going to add Christmas Day as a holiday. So, it's under exception right here and then I'm adding that date. So Sundays or let's say it's the 26th as well. The details of it Is that it's non working. It could be that I have limited working hours, I'm not going to complicate it right now, I'm going to make that day a non working day, so it's a holiday. And I could, right now, it's two days. So it ends after that or it ends on a specific date. So I'm going to make it end on the 26th. So that way, I created a new calendar and I can assign different calendars to different tasks. So let's say this task I double click on that task. And then I go to the advanced set up and I specify which calendar it's using. So this could be using standard with holidays. And this task could be using- The standard. So this task will continue to work on Christmas day, for example. So, it's just a sample of how you can use the calendar. The other interesting thing is note here that grayed out on Saturday and Sunday are grayed out just to visually represent that this is a weekend or this is a non-working time. But the bar continues to go through it. So you're continuing to pay for resources. You're continuing to have your activity as happening during that time period. But actually that time is a non-working time because no one is working during that time.
