Project 2016 for Beginners Part 14: How to Complete the Resource Sheet Video Lecture | MS Project: Become an Expert - Management

Welcome back to our course on Project 2016.
In this section we’re going to start to
look at Resources.
Resources include the people involved in a
project, they include equipment and materials
used, and various other types of resource,
notably cost associated with a project.
When you look at a Gantt Chart such as this
one you’re primarily looking at tasks.
The table on the left gives information about
the tasks and the chart on the right gives
a pictorial, a graphical representation of
the scheduling of the tasks, their durations,
dependencies, and so on.
Now tasks and resources are basically the
two building blocks of a project in Microsoft
Project 2016.
And we link the two together using what are
called Assignments or Resource Assignments.
In this section we’re going to look at Resources
and in the next section we’re going to look
at Resource Assignments.
One thing that you may have noticed when we
were using the View Tab before is that the
first two groups on the left are Task Views
and Resource Views.
And largely speaking when we’re looking
at a project we tend to be looking at tasks
or at resources.
But there are many views that enable us to
look at both.
And in particular to look at the relationship
between them.
Usually so far when we’ve been looking at
tasks we’ve used Gantt Chart View.
And for most people that is the view that
they use most of the time.
Of the Resource Views a very popular view
is Resource Sheet View.
And that’s the one that we’re going to
look at first.
So if I click on Resource Sheet, this spreadsheet
gives us information about all of the resources
in our project.
And at the moment as you can see we have no
resources in our project.
Now we’re going to start to add some resources
in just a moment.
But before we do just look down at the right
hand end of the Status Bar.
Two of the main icons there are on the left
here the button to take us to Gantt Chart
View and three to the right, the one that
looks just like a spreadsheet, that one takes
us back to Resource Sheet View.
So you’ll probably get used to switching
between those two.
The two views between them are also very commonly
used.
Task Usage which basically lists tasks and
shows which resources are used in a task.
And at the moment we have no resources so
there’s nothing being used.
And the next one is Team Planner View which
can enable us to look at how the work on a
project is distributed between a team.
Now at the moment we have no team because
we have no resources to put into a team.
So let’s go back to Resource Sheet View.
The two main projects that I’m using on
this course differ in many ways.
And perhaps the biggest difference is in the
resources that they use and the way that they
use those resources.
In the case of a wedding some of the people
resources involved which would, for example
be the bride and groom, won’t be charging
for their time.
And also the wedding won’t involve using
lots of consumable materials, not in any case
in the way that a building project, a bathroom
refit project would use materials such as
paint and floor tiles and that kind of thing.
The difference is going to be even bigger
when we start looking at costs because when
it comes to cost, for example, the bride and
groom wouldn’t expect to charge their time
on this project to people whereas the people
working on the bathroom refit will be charging
their time to whoever is paying for the bathroom
refit.
So there are many differences between these
two projects in relation to how they handle
resources and the associated costs.
But I hope that by dealing with two such different
projects we’re going to deal with many of
the situations that you’re likely to come
across in future when using Project 2016.
As we add resources to the Resource Sheet
each row on the sheet represents a resource.
And each column represents a property of that
resource.
The first resource that I’m going to add
to this project is the bride.
And first of all I need to say what type of
resource the bride is.
There are basically three choices, work, material,
and cost.
And as we’re going to see this is not always
a particularly easy choice to make.
Generally speaking people are entered onto
the resource sheet as work resources because
they do work.
And whether or not they charge for that work
is a separate matter.
But we expect them to perform tasks and complete
work rather than as in the case of say materials
be consumed by a job, used up in doing a particular
task.
Or a cost where we basically say with a task
that it has a certain cost but isn’t necessarily
performed by an individual or involve the
consumption of some kind of material.
Now we’re going to see examples of each
of these three resource types but we’re
going to work for the moment on the principle
that when we add people we’re adding work
resources generally.
Now when I choose a type for a resource I
will get a different accessible selection
of properties here.
So for instance, when I declare that a particular
resource is a work resource I can specify
their standard rate.
And the standard rate here is $0 per hour.
And I can specify their overtime rate.
Now as I mentioned just now the bride is not
going to be charging for her time on this
project so we don’t need to assign a standard
rate or overtime rate for the bride.
We do however need to declare how many brides
we have.
And we only have one and she is represented
by 100%.
If I were dealing with say bricklayers and
I was building a house I might say I’ve
got three bricklayers, so that’s 300%, and
I could say the standard rate that it costs
me to employ those bricklayers and then I
can also enter an overtime rate.
I also have here a cost per use.
So if a particular resource has cost per use.
So for example, if I’m dealing with something
where there’s a setup fee, perhaps a delivery
fee or a contract fee or a hiring fee or something,
a one-off cost I can specify that here.
And I will normally also specify an accrual
method.
Now for the moment I want you to ignore accrual
and I also want you to ignore the next column
which is the calendar that this particular
resource uses, which by default is our standard
base calendar.
Now we’re not looking at calendars at the
moment so just ignore both accrue and base.
Now when it comes to using any resource on
a project it’s always a good idea to give
that resource initials whereby we can identify
that resource, for example, on a Gantt Chart.
So for the bride I’m literally just going
to put Bride as the initials.
So that’s my first resource setup.
Now it would only seem right to add the groom
as my second resource.
So my project now has two resources.
The next resource I’m going to setup is
a little bit controversial really.
I’m not really sure you do it this way but
you certainly could do it this way.
And I’m going to add a resource, wedding
ring.
And I’m going to say that it is a material
resource.
You could actually work it that way.
It may seem a little bit heartless in a way
but let’s call it a material resource.
And I’m going to give it an initials of
Ring.
And note that when I chose material some of
the other fields, some of the other properties
changed.
So for instance Max was cleared out.
It no longer said 100%, the default for a
work resource because we’re not talking
about having a maximum number of rings.
We can basically buy as many rings as we want,
subject to available funds of course.
And similarly the standard rate changed from
being dollars per hour to just dollars because
we’re not talking about a rate of pay for
somebody for a work resource, a person.
We’re talking about the cost of a material.
When you’re dealing with cost for materials
you also declare what units the cost refers
to.
So if instead of wedding rings I was dealing
with building bricks I might record a cost
here for 1,000 bricks.
And what I would put here in the material
column might well be 1,000 for 1,000 bricks.
For the price for a ring will be a price per
ring.
And let’s suppose that the price I’m working
on here is $500 per ring.
And that is all the information I need to
setup that material resource.
So at whatever point I decide to buy one or
more wedding rings in my project the cost
will be recorded in the project as $500 per
ring.
Now for an example of a cost resource.
And it’s going to seem now as though I’m
disagreeing with what I said earlier in this
section.
Sometimes a person working on a project is
not really working on it as though they were
say a builder or in this case the bride or
groom, somebody who’s directly involved
in a number of tasks on the project.
What they are doing is more of if you like
a service.
So I might choose to make the photographer
or videographer for this project a service,
a cost to the project.
We’re not talking about paying this person
by the hour.
We’re talking about their standard charge
for photographing or videoing a wedding.
So in this case I’m going to add a resource
Photographer and not deal with the photographer
as though he or she is a person working on
the project but deal with them as a service
to the project, a cost to the project.
So on this occasion I’m going to make the
type cost.
The initials I’m going to apply are Photo.
Now you notice there that there is no highlighted
cost rate field with dollars, 0.00, whatever
as we had before for work or material resources.
And in fact the best way to record the cost
of a cost resource in a particular situation
is to assign that cost when you assign the
resource to the task.
And I’m going to show you how to do that
a little bit later on.
At the moment the important thing is that
we have listed our cost resource here, photographer,
and of course with this project there will
be many other cost resources.
It’s true to say in this particular case
that many of the resources, things like wedding
dress and even wedding ring might reasonably
be considered to be costs rather than materials.
But as I said earlier on in this section sometimes
it’s actually quite a difficult decision
to make and you’ll certainly find that you
have your own approach to determining which
is the best way of dealing with resources
on your own projects.
Having setup a few resources there we’re
going to do a little bit of resource assignment
in the next section.
But there’s one more thing to show you in
this section.
If I select one of the resources note that
there is a Resource Tab.
And one of the options on the Resource Tab
is Information and that brings up the Resource
Information dialogue which is a direct parallel
to the Task Information dialogue, except of
course this one relates to resources.
As with the Task Information dialogue you
have a number of tabs and these tabs have
already got the information we’ve entered
so far on.
But of course there’s other information
that you can add, some of which we’ll be
looking at a little bit later on in the course.
There are of course other ways of getting
at this Resource Information.
You can right click and there is an Information
option on the contextual menu.
And of course just double clicking on a resource
brings up the Resource Information dialogue
as well.
That’s it for Resources for the moment.
I’ll see you in the
next section.