Mike McShaffry

Bend MS Project to your will – again.

Mike (game programmer, author and as he says "MS project hater until 2005") already gave an earlier version of this session at GDC 2007. This talk is an improved version of the previous one (that's the explanation for the "again" part).

If you ever had any chance to manage a team or some resources before, there is a good chance that you ended up using the well-known MS Project.

Speaking of MS Project, Mike told us that he spent too much time struggling with it. To be honest, this software has many problems. For instance, you have to get version 2007 to get a simple feature that can change your life: undo. As a producer, it's a trapping tool – you can end up spending your whole time using it, but this is not your job. It's a bit slow too.

But there is good stuff in it: the versatile calendar, it's Gantt view, the possibility to get a history of your project, and the extensibility of the program. Mike spent some time to develop a toolbox to extend MS Project.

So, how is it to be used? Mike gave us a list of tips to use in order to master the master.

• Put every feature you often use in the toolbar.
• Setup the project start-up date.
• Change the leveling order to "priority, standard". This is not the default value.
• Only after that you can create your task inventory. To do this correctly, start with what you know, ask a lot of questions. Given his experience, Mike identified a few key areas that are always present in every project. But remember that leveling is slow, so you should limit the number of tasks to a reasonable count (1500 tasks per file is good, split your project into multiple files if needed, but do not use master files).
• Organize tasks as features in categories and sub-categories, using custom cells.
• Don't forget non-development tasks.
• Use task properties to distinguish between tasks.
• Estimated times make good clues – a task with an estimated duration have to be followed more closely than a normal task.
• Don't use the link button – it's the most dangerous feature in MS Project. It will add constraints to the project where you should use priority (0 to 1000). Of course, predecessors and links have their utility – especially if they mirror what will happen in reality (a critical deliverable that moves from one person to another).
• The second most dangerous feature is the constraint type on tasks. It induces problems that are hard to understand, so you should constrain tasks only when you have to.
• Milestones (0 day tasks) can be scheduled easily using predecessors in a different way. For example, 2SS+4wks says that the milestone is supposed to be at 4 weeks after predecessor 2. Again, there is no need to link a milestone to another task – milestones are linked together using this specific predecessor notation.

Matt Hoper