Microsoft Office Project 2003 Inside Out

Overview

A project plan might make an impressive report or boardroom presentation. But without resources to implement the tasks , that lovely project plan is nothing more than fiction . As a project team member, you know that it falls to you to help achieve the goals of the task. You also know that it falls to you to regularly inform the powers that be of your progress so that they know how the project is doing overall.

This is where you and Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003 come into play. As a project team member, you use Project Web Access 2003, the Web-based companion application to Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 used by the project manager. You use Project Web Access to maintain a detailed list of the tasks under your responsibility, to know when they're due, and to understand how they fit into the larger project picture. You can also use Project Web Access to track your progress on assignments, and submit that information to your project manager.

Project Web Access doesn't limit you to just one project, either, but as many projects as you're contributing to. And if you're working for two or three project managers at a time on these multiple projects, you can keep all this information straight and keep all project managers well informed using Project Web Access.

With project management more automated like this, you can spend more time working on your tasks and less time worrying about keeping management up to date. To this end, this chapter is designed for project team members , team leads, and resource managers, all who use Project Web Access to carry out their project- related responsibilities.

To start using the Microsoft Project workgroup and enterprise features, you use your Web browser to connect to your organization's installation of Microsoft Office Project Server 2003. You can then log on to Project Web Access.

After your project manager publishes your set of assignments to the project server, you can see and work with the list of tasks to which you're assigned in Project Web Access. You can add more tasks and assign yourself to other tasks as needed. Project Web Access becomes the central location for all your project tracking activity.

With your assignments in place, your way is set to start working on those assignments, according to the established start and finish dates. While you work, you can record how far along you are on each assignment or even how much time you're spending on each assignment. Then you have progress tracking information in place when your project managers ask for a progress update or status report.

The microcosm of your own tasks draws your focus most of the time. But sometimes it helps you to see the tasks that others on the project team are working on at the same time. You can use Project Web Access to review the full project schedule, which shows who's doing what when.

If your organization is also set up with Windows SharePoint Services, you have access to project-related documents, issues, and risks as well.

In addition to everything else you do, you might have resource management responsibilities. This might be something as simple as needing to delegate a set of tasks to peers on your project team. Or, you might be the team lead or supervisor over a larger group of project team members. You might be a resource manager responsible for building teams and managing all resources on one, two, or many projects in your organization. Resource management features in Project Web Access make sure you have the tools you need.