Advice for the Project Management Professional (PMP)

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Appendix A
PROJECT COMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT
Project 2007 can help you generate, collect, disseminate, store, and report project
information. There are many different tables, views, reports, and formatting features to aid
in project communications, as you have seen in the previous sections. This section highlights
some common reports and views. It also describes how to use templates and insert
hyperlinks from Project 2007 into other project documents, and how to use Project 2007
in a workgroup setting.
Common Reports and Views
To use Project 2007 to enhance project communications, it is important to know when to
use the many different ways to collect, view, and display project information. Table A-5
provides a brief summary of Project 2007 features and their functions, which will help you
understand when to use which feature. Examples of most of these features are provided as
figures in this appendix.
You can see from Table A-5 that many different reports are available in Project 2007.
The overview reports provide summary information that top management might want to
see, such as a project summary or a report of milestone tasks. Current activities reports help
project managers stay abreast of and control project activities. The reports of unstarted
tasks and slipping tasks alert project managers to problem areas. Cost reports provide information
related to the cash flow for the project, budget information, overbudget items, and
earned value management.
Assignment reports help the entire project team by providing different views of who
is doing what on a project. You can see who is overallocated by running the Overallocated
Resources report or by viewing the two workload reports. You can also create custom
reports based on any project information you have entered into Project 2007.
TABLE A-5 Functions of Project 2007 Features
Feature Function
Gantt Chart view, Entry table Enter basic task information
Network Diagram view View task dependencies and critical path graphically
Schedule table View schedule information in a tabular form
Cost table Enter fixed costs or view cost information
Resource Sheet view Enter resource information
Resource Information and Gantt
Chart split view
Assign resources to tasks
Set Baseline Save project baseline plan
Tracking toolbar Enter actual information
Earned Value table View earned value information
Resource Graph View resource allocation
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