Advice for the Project Management Professional (PMP)

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the View menu. Figure A-39 shows the resulting view for the Project Tracking Database
project using time.mpp. You can also assign a per-use cost to a resource that represents
materials or supplies and use it as a base for calculating the total materials or supplies
cost of a task. See Project 2007 Help for details on this feature.
FIGURE A-39 Cost Table View
Entering Human Resource Costs
Human resources represent a major part of the costs on many projects. By defining and then
assigning human resources and their related costs to tasks in Project 2007, you can calculate
human resource costs, track how people are used, identify potential resource shortages
that could force you to miss deadlines, and identify underutilized resources. It is often
possible to shorten a project’s schedule by reassigning underutilized resources. This section
focuses on entering human resource costs and assigning resources to tasks. The following
section describes other features of Project 2007 related to human resource
management.
Several methods are available for entering resource information in Project 2007. One
of the easiest is to enter basic resource information in the Resource Sheet. Access the
Resource Sheet from the View Bar, or by selecting Resource Sheet from the View menu. The
Resource Sheet allows you to enter the resource name, initials, resource group, maximum
units, standard rate, overtime rate, cost/use, accrual method, base calendar, and code.
Entering data into the Resource Sheet is similar to entering data into an Excel spreadsheet,
and you can easily sort items by selecting Sort from the Project menu. In addition,
you can use the Filter list on the Formatting toolbar to filter resources. Once you have
established resources in the Resource Sheet, you can assign those resources to tasks in the
Entry table with the list arrow that appears when you click a cell in the Resource Names
column. The Resource Names column is the last column of the Entry table. You can also use
other methods for assigning resources, as described below.
Next, you will use the Project 2007 file time.mpp, which you saved in the preceding section,
to assign resources to tasks. (If you did not save your file, download it from the companion
Web site or from the author’s Web site.) Assume that there are four people
working on the Project Tracking database project, and that the only costs for this project
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Guide to Using Microsoft Project 2007