Genuine MS Project 2013 Professional (For Windows 7 or later edition)
If your company has a project that needs to be completed, you are going to want to make sure that every aspect of it is organized so that it goes efficiently and according to budget. It goes without saying that making sure that you have enough employees, equipment, and everything you need to complete the project is critical to the success of you and your business. It is a lot to manage and a lot to do. Even for someone with the best project management skills, it can be overwhelming.
Decades ago, perhaps everything would be done on paper. You'd have numerous graphs, pages of notes, and copies would be made for everyone who had just the slightest part in the project. Nowadays, however, project management software can make managing and completing a project easier than ever before. Tracking the progress of a project is as easy as signing into the program. In fact, a good software program like MS Project 2013 can allocate resources, assign tasks, track budgets, and be your right hand as you manage the project from beginning to end.
That said, there are dozens of project management programs on the market today. Choosing the right one can be confusing because you want the best one for your company and your projects. Microsoft Project 2013 is just one of those programs. While you may choose it because it is a familiar name, you should also choose it because it offers the insight and features that are common to all Microsoft products and will offer the aspects you need to complete any project within your company.
Microsoft Project 2013 is a project management software program created for businesses and freelance professionals to help better manage individual projects that occur within companies. Although no project management software should be used to replace project management techniques or adequate training of management and staff, MS Project 2013 can and will improve the efficiency, organization, and sometimes even the speed of which a project is completed.
Understanding Projects
Before you can begin to understand project management – or maybe even put this software to work for you – it is important that you comprehend the nature of projects, as well as what is or is not a project. By definition, a project is a temporary endeavor that is completed to create a unique product or service. You will use MS Project 2013 to organize and manage any products that you or your company create.
Each project that you undertake will be made up of certain components. This holds true in MS Project 2013. The first component your project will have is tasks. Tasks are things that have to be accomplished in order for the project to be complete. Think of it as your to-do list that will get you from point A to point B. Your tasks can be as detailed (or not) as you want them to be. A task can be simply researching competition or it can be a phase of your project that contains a summary task as well as subtasks. For example, if you are creating a new software program for your company, your task might be to research similar software. Subtasks might be researching businesses that have similar software, analyzing their sales, and then looking at their pricing models.
In Project 2013, tasks are organized into phases, or stages. In the Gantt chart view of Project 2013, you will be able to see your tasks, as well as an outline of the time it will take to complete those. Since timing is always going to be important to your project, MS Project 2013 allows you to set up and view the timing relationships upon tasks. You can also set dependencies. A dependency will show that one task (task A, for example) must be completed before Task C can begin.
Defining Project Management
Simply put, project management is defined as the process of managing all the elements of a project to complete it. This includes supplies, labor, financials, etc. It is a fact that project management is becoming increasingly important within companies in order for them to operate successfully and efficiently. The skills that managers and employers are given during training to manage the day-to-day operations of a company are different than the ones they'll need to manage individual projects.
Successfully managing a project requires discipline. It requires that time, scope, and cost are managed in a way that bring about the completion of specific goals or a project itself. This requires planning and organization. Microsoft Project 2013 can help project managers and their staff organize their projects and meet their goals by acting as a virtual assistant that can produce information, charts, and reports to help the project smoothly advance through to completion.
There are three things that must be managed during a project. This will help you better understand what MS Project offers you and help you put the aspects of this software to work for you once we've learned how to use it.
