Manpower Planning Scheduling and Tracking - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Manpower Planning Scheduling and Tracking. Answer: Introduction Microsoft Project is software developed and released by Microsoft Corporation for its users (Products.office.com. 2017). It does not come in the office package along with other software like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. The users have to purchase and download it separately from Microsoft site. The software had been designed for assisting the project managers for developing project operations, allocating the budgets, making schedule for operations, and assigning resources. The following report had been made for developing the accurate and appropriate analysis of the Microsoft Project software. The report would provide a brief overview of the operations of the Microsoft Project and point out the various versions of the software that had been released till date. The usage and benefits of the Microsoft Project would be evaluated in the following report too. Microsoft Project is software of project management that had been developed and provided by the Microsoft Corporation (Sharma and Pathak 2015). The design of the Microsoft Project is made such that it would help the project managers with the activities of making project plan, resource allocation, progress tracking, budget management, and workload division. The software had become the most dominant PC-based application for project management used and preferred all over the globe. The software comes in 2 editions namely Standard version and Professional version. The project files made on the Microsoft Project Software is stored in .mpp file extension name (Virine and Trumper 2013). The Microsoft Project is largely used by project managers of all scale (small, medium, and large) of projects for planning their project operations. Versions and Updates of Microsoft Project The first Microsoft Project Software was developed in 1984 that was supported in DOS version (Stover 2014). The Microsoft Corporation bought its rights in 1985 and later in the year released its second version. After releasing four versions of the software for DOS platform, the software was redeveloped for Windows in the year 1990 with the label of 1. The following year 1991 saw the development of Microsoft Project for Macintosh and later in 1993 Microsoft Project 4.0 was released for Macintosh (Doskocil 2013). Microsoft Project 4.0 was used commonly and supported Windows 3.1x, Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.5 and all were 16-bit versions. In the year 1995, Microsoft Project 95 was released and it was the first 32 bit version of the software that was compatible with Windows 95 (Gido and Clements 2014). The successor version of the Microsoft Project 95 was Microsoft Project 98 that had the menu bar similar to all other Office Software of Microsoft. The Microsoft Project 2000 was the first version of the software to be equipped with Windows based package installer files. The Microsoft Project 2002 was built with the product activation function. The Microsoft Project 2003 was developed with integrated Windows XP style icon similar to all other office suite programs. Since then, no major development was made on the Microsoft Project Software (Howard 2013). The latter versions of the software like Microsoft Project 2007 (v12.0), Microsoft Project 2010 (v14.0), and Microsoft Project 2013 (v15.0) were built with addition of macro capabilities and some extra work to the original design of the Microsoft Project. Usages of Microsoft Project The Microsoft Project had been largely used by project managers for planning their project operations (Baumann and Trautmann 2015). The design of the Microsoft Project is made such that it would help the project managers with the activities of making project plan, resource allocation, progress tracking, budget management, and workload division. The usage of Microsoft Project are explained below, Project Plan Development: The main use of Microsoft Project is formation and creation of an effective project plan (Support.office.com. 2017). The project plan would be helpful for developing a proper estimation of the project activities and dividing them in terms of the duration, work, or resources. The Gantt chart is helpful for dividing the major activities of the project among different users. Resource allocation: The allocation of resources is another major use of the Microsoft Project (Baumann and Trautmann 2015). The various activities in the project and their sub activities can be assigned specific resources for the development of project operations. The tab of resource usage and resource sheet could help the users for adding the required resources in the project. Progress Tracking: The use of the Microsoft Project is also helpful in assisting the activity of tracking the project operations (Gido and Clements 2014) The schedule of the project would also provide an appropriate work duration bar chart. The bar chart would help in tracking whether the activities of the project are progressing as planned or not. Budget Management The management of budget information is the most evitable function that had helped a number of project managers for keeping their projects right (Virine and Trumper 2013). The budget management can be done in the Gantt chart section of the Microsoft Project. For example- if the expense of any resource used in the activity is high, the user can minimize the expense by decreasing the number of days the resource is used. Workload Division: the Microsoft Project is very helpful for dividing the workload among the various resources available for the project (Howard 2013). There is also an option for subdividing any activity in between shared resources or group resources for minimizing the load of activities of the project. Benefits of Microsoft Project The Microsoft Project helps the project managers with the activities of making project plan, resource allocation, progress tracking, budget management, and workload division (Microsoft Store. 2017). There are several benefits of using the Microsoft Project such as Interoperability, user controlled scheduling, team planning, generation of reports, and server compatibility. Interoperability: The Microsoft Project is helpful for providing the benefit of storing data in a centralized SQL based database. It had also shown the use of independent projects, and shared pool resources. User Controlled Tracking: The use of Microsoft Project is helpful for developing the user controlled tracking for the users. The development of tracking methods would be helpful for keeping track of the activities of the project. Team Planning: The team planning is helpful for the forming the allocation of team resources for the operations of the project. The team planning would be developed for improving the team operations. Reports generation: The generation of reports had been eased by the deployment of the Microsoft Project for the project schedule. The report section of the Software is helpful for developing the various reports in terms of resources and work package. Server Compatibility: The integration of the server compatibility had been deployed for the inclusion of the Microsoft Project Server. The SQL database can be stored in a dedicated server for the operations of the project scheduling. Conclusion The report had been developed for the accurate and appropriate analysis of the Microsoft Project software. The report completion had been helpful for forming the successful completion of the analysis of the Microsoft Project. The Microsoft Project had been largely used by project managers for planning their project operations and the usages of Microsoft Project are project plan development, resource allocation, progress tracking, budget management, and workload division. The Microsoft Project had provided several benefits to the operations such as Interoperability, user controlled scheduling, team planning, generation of reports, and server compatibility. References Baumann, P. and Trautmann, N., 2015. Resource-constrained project scheduling with project management information systems. InHandbook on Project Management and Scheduling Vol. 2(pp. 1385-1400). Springer International Publishing. Doskocil, R., 2013. Microsoft project as a knowledge base for project management. In22nd International Business Information Management Association Conference on Creating Global Competitive Economies(pp. 1412-1418). Gido, J. and Clements, J., 2014.Successful project management. Nelson Education. Howard, B., 2013.Microsoft Project 2013 Plain Simple. Pearson Education. Microsoft Store. (2017).Microsoft Project - Microsoft Store. [online] Available at: https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Project/categoryID.69407700 [Accessed 2 May 2017]. Products.office.com. (2017).Project Management Software | Microsoft Project. [online] Available at: https://products.office.com/en-in/project/project-and-portfolio-management-software?tab=tabs-1 [Accessed 2 May 2017]. Sharma, A. and Pathak, K.K., 2015. Manpower Planning, Scheduling and Tracking of a Construction Project Using Microsoft Project Software. Stover, T.S., 2014.Microsoft Project Inside Out: 2013 Edition. Microsoft Press. Support.office.com. (2017).View project cost totals - Project. [online] Available at: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/View-project-cost-totals-0d3a2451-fb1e-4ba0-826e-20ee3b3d60cc [Accessed 2 May 2017]. Virine, L. and Trumper, M., 2013. Quantitative Risk Analysis with Microsoft Project.Project Decision and Risk Analysis Whitepapers,2007, pp.1-5.