Category: Best Practices

In the category Best Practices you will get introduced with ways of working that I’ve found to generate the best results. Most of these best practices are related to Microsoft Project and Project Online. But might sometimes cover more tools as well such as the Best tools for Project Managers series on TPC.

The content I write about is gathered from own experiences and things I read or hear about in the field. And it started all with a series you might want to start with called the 5 incorrect ways of using Microsoft Project Stand alone.

Take your time and soak in that Best Practices goodness. Then you will make sure you do not fall into traps others have already fallen into. Let me know if there’s a best practice you don’t agree to or if you have a practice of your own by reaching out to me in the comments.

Using units instead of the resource calendar

Hi Readers, This is it, the third (and final?) post related to Max. Units in Microsoft Project. I wrote two posts already that can be accessed through these links: Post 1 and post 2. This is a Do it Yourself post and will teach you how to use Max. Units correctly in the situation where you want to accurately portray the resource availability, but don’t care about specific days off or non project work. I frequently use this method at municipals or companies that do high level capacity management. Continue reading Using units instead of the resource calendar

Units vs Peak units in Microsoft Project

Hi readers,

Here is a follow up post related to the post Using max units in Microsoft Project. In that post I talk about the max units of a resource in length. However as the post got bigger and bigger I knew I needed to do some follow up posts. This will be the first follow up.

I try to keep the post short because there is a lot of great content already available on the subject (to which I will happily refer at the end of the post). Continue reading Units vs Peak units in Microsoft Project

Using max units in Microsoft Project

Hey readers, Here is another post for you to bite into. This post is about using Max units in Microsoft Project. And if you are not familiar with the term max units, don’t worry I’ll start with a little explanation. Here we go. Continue reading Using max units in Microsoft Project

The Office templates within Microsoft Project

Hi there readers,

First of all, let me thank all of you. I just reached 11K views since I started this blog in Q3 2013. Amazing, thank you all for reading the blog.

This post has been on my mind for quite some time now, ever since I wrote the 80-20 blogpost. Microsoft offers a number of standard templates trough their service Office.com that can be reached via the application. There are templates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and even Microsoft Project. Great! But, have you ever taken a look at what is there? Me neither, so let’s take a look together.

— Supplements —

Erik here, I took a close look at all the comments and decided to upload the 5 templates I discussed in this article to the Project Corner OneDrive. There seems to be an issue with the office.com templates where some people are unable to access them. I also found out that people were searching for MS Project Budget templates, so I created a post about this.

Please feel free to download any of the files that are on The Project Corner OneDrive. Hope you enjoy the rest of the post.

—end of supplements—

Continue reading The Office templates within Microsoft Project

The 80-20 for Microsoft Project

During the two weeks I was taking care of little Wendy I also started reading The Four Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss. And apart from being an excellent guide to rapid fat-loss and perfecting sleep, there is one real interesting concept that got stuck in my mind: The Pareto or 80-20 principle. Tim is a great source for finding the 20% that produces 80% of the desired results. Now, let’s find out that 20% for Microsoft Project use!

Continue reading The 80-20 for Microsoft Project

Building a view in Microsoft Project, the correct way

As a consultant I travel between lots of companies that use Microsoft Project. Most of the time they use the product as a standalone scheduling tool when I first visit them. The common case is that they have taught themselves how to use the product and most of the time things go relatively smoothly.

This is not the case with views. Views in Microsoft Project are almost always created poorly. This post will be about creating views and about maintaining them properly. Continue reading Building a view in Microsoft Project, the correct way