Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9. Assigning Resources to Tasks

So far, you’ve created tasks in Project (Chapter 6), put them in the correct sequence (Chapter 7), and told Project about the resources you need (Chapter 8). Now all that hard work is about to pay off. You’re ready to turn that Project file into a real schedule that shows when tasks should start and finish—and whether they’re scheduled to finish on time.

Although you may estimate hours of work or task durations early on (Estimating Task Work and Duration), you don’t see the whole timing picture until you assign resources to auto-scheduled tasks (Automatically Scheduling Tasks) in your project. The number of resources you use, how much time those resources devote to their assignments, and when they’re available to work all affect how long tasks take and when they occur. And if you’ve set up your Project resources with costs and labor rates, resource assignments generate a price tag for the project, too.

If you manually schedule tasks (Manually Scheduling Tasks), you’re in complete control over when they start and finish. Team Planner view (available in Project Professional) shows who’s doing what and when, which tasks aren’t assigned, or who’s overallocated. With manually scheduled tasks, you can change any of these situations in Team Planner view by dragging tasks to a resource or moving the tasks in the timescale.

This chapter clarifies how duration, work, and units interact, and explains how to use this information to create and modify resource ...