MS Project: Establish Start and Finish Dates

Name: MS Project: Establish Start and Finish Dates
Author: Elissa Smith

How to complete your project on deadline

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Course: On-Demand

In this lesson, we're going to explore whether to schedule our project from a start date or a finish date. We're also going to look at the default calendars that come with Microsoft Project. Now, at this point, we've entered a few tasks into the task table, and an interesting thing begins to happen as these tasks get put in. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and enter a task. Notice that even in my new task, all the tasks are beginning on the same day. This is the day that the project was created. So by default in a brand new project, as you begin to enter tasks, every new task will start on the same day that the project was created. Now, how do you go in and adjust this? For this, we need to come to the Project Ribbon tab, and from the Project Ribbon tab in the Properties group, we're going to find the Project Information box. Now, in the Project Information box, there are two different choices that you can make. Are you going to schedule your project from a project start date or a project finish date? You can't do both. The default is, as you see here, to schedule from a start date, and you'll notice it's already telling me that when you schedule from a start date, all tasks begin as soon as possible. This is Project's built-in scheduling engine that tries to get your tasks done as quickly as you can when you schedule from a start date. You can also select, however, to come in, and rather than being focused on your start date, you can be driving towards a finish date. And when you do this, you'll see that the start date field grays out, and that's because the project finish date is the focus. Now, when you schedule from a finish date, you'll notice here that it tells you all tasks will begin as late as possible, because the goal is to get to the finish date. In our case, I want to go ahead and schedule from the start date, so that will be our focus. Now, over on the top, I can also come in and actually pick the specific date when I want the project to begin. A few additional fields in this project information box to be aware of. The current date comes from the current date on your computer. The status date is another date that you can use to mark important times inside your Gantt chart. Now, there are three calendars that come with Project. The first one is the Standard Calendar. This is a Monday through Friday 8 to 5 calendar, and it's the default for all new projects. There's also a night shift calendar to help you manage night shift projects, and then a 24-hour calendar. We're going to stick with the standard calendar at this point. Now, the priority field lets you know that all your tasks will have a priority of 500. You can adjust that and give some tasks a higher priority if you'd like. Now, I want you to see what happens now that I'm adjusting my start date. When I click on OK, notice that if I look over at all the start dates for my tasks, they've all shifted to that date. And if I come over into the Gantt chart, the Gantt bars have adjusted as well. So now this project will start on the date that I've selected and move forward. Thanks for joining us. Please stay tuned for the next lesson where we're going to look at how you can adjust the working times of your project. Stay tuned.

Beginner Provider : Elissa Smith 3 Lessons · 9m in English

Course Description

Microsoft Project is a project management software product that helps project managers complete their work. MS Project is used when developing a schedule, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads. Meeting deadlines is one of the most important and challenging parts of project management, and MS Project can help you stay on target for success. You can set start and finish dates and account for non-working time. This impacts a project's progress. So how can you use MS Project to stay on track and meet deadlines?

In this course, you’ll learn the essentials of managing start and finish dates and how your organization’s working days and non-working time impact your project deadlines. At the end of this course, you’ll know how to adjust these factors to keep your project milestones on track for completion.

What You'll Learn

Establish your project's start and finish dates in MS Project
Set a project to schedule from either the start date or the finish date
Change the working time that defines your project's working days
Account for non-working time and understand how it impacts project deadlines
Adjust working and non-working time to keep project milestones on track

Key Takeaways

Microsoft Project helps project managers develop schedules, assign resources to tasks, track progress, manage budgets, and analyze workloads.
Setting start and finish dates and accounting for non-working time directly impacts a project's progress.
An organization's working days and non-working time affect project start and finish dates and deadlines.
Adjusting working time and non-working time helps keep project milestones on track for completion.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this course?

You'll learn the essentials of managing start and finish dates and how your organization's working days and non-working time impact project deadlines. By the end, you'll know how to adjust these factors to keep your project milestones on track for completion.

What topics are covered in the lessons?

The course covers setting the project start or finish date, changing working time, and non-working time.

What is MS Project used for?

Microsoft Project is a project management software product used when developing a schedule, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads.

What skills does this course help build?

It supports skills including ability to meet deadlines, financial project management, project cycle management, project management, project management life cycle, and software project management.