Having viewed the resources concerning MS Project and project planning, this is an exercise to help get you familiar with the basics of using MS Project.

Part of the assignment report when you are creating your Project Initiation Document (PID) is that it should contain a work breakdown structure (WBS) and a ‘project schedule' using a Gantt chart.

This exercise will give you experience of inputting a WBS into MS Project and to create a simple Gantt chart.

The tasks will require that you do the following:

1. Create a new blank project in MS Project.

2. Create a correctly ordered WBS and input this into the task pane within MS Project. To limit the time this will take, please copy and paste the list of tasks on page 2 of this document and insert them into MS Project.

3. Add accurate durations (in days) for each activity. Please just use your best estimate.

4. Link and indent activities based on their relationships to each other.

5. Add milestones for each phase of the project.

6. Create yourself as a resource and attach yourself to any work that you will do within the project.

7. Change the schedule if required so that you are not working weekends. By default MS Project does this automatically but you may be required to change this if you are using non-standard settings in your copy of MS Project.

8. Set as a baseline to schedule against.

Note: Refer to the WBS diagram supplied in page 3.

There are a variety of ways to perform these tasks in MS Project depending on user preference. Please use the walk through guide (MS Project Activity Companion found in Moodle), which will guide you step by step for how to complete this exercise. Please try using this before watching the solution video.