Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Chapter 8. Building a Team for Your Project

Without people, projects wouldn’t start and certainly wouldn’t finish. To keep projects running smoothly in between the start and finish, you need the right people, and they need to know the parts they play. Otherwise, collaboration and communication is like a rousing rendition of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?”

You can start building your project team once you’ve identified the project tasks. You analyze the work and identify the skills and other resources required. Then you’re ready to look for resources that are both suitable and available. Whether you add generic resources or real people to your Project file, you can assign them to tasks so Project can calculate the schedule and the cost.

In this chapter, you’ll learn the difference between Project’s work, material, and cost resources, and when to use each one. People are almost always a project’s most important resource, and when this book says “resource,” that usually means “person.” However, projects also rely on help from nonhuman team members, such as equipment, materials, and training. In Project, work resources represent anything you assign by time—people, a conference room you reserve by the hour, a paper shredder you rent by the day, and so on. Material resources come in other units, like gallons of sports drinks or cubic yards of gravel. Cost resources (introduced in Project 2007) cover expenses that aren’t work or material, like travel or fees.

In this chapter, you’ll ...