Hi,

Before planning, I will set up MS PROJECT 2010 for my Project.

First I will open a brand-new Project.

After that I will put some Basic information about my Project here:

and then:

Now I will put some additional information for my Project here:

As you can see I choose to Schedule from: Project Start Date. Why? Well, because If I choose Schedule from: Project Finish Date, all of my task will be scheduled with Start As Late AS Possible constraint, and I don’t want that. And, John and Mary (my Sponsors) don’t have a specific date for their wedding.

Do you want an example of Project when you have to establish Schedule from: Project Finish Date? PREPARING THE OLIMPIC GAMES, or THE WORLD FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP! Why? Because when you have such kind of event, you and the rest of the world know EXACTLY when this event will start. So this Start date of the event is your Finish Date of the Project!

Now I will setup default working time. If you want a know about scheduling problems in MS PROJECT 2010, and how to manage working time and calendars without getting in trouble read my post: https://ntrajkovski.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/scheduling-problems-in-ms-project-2010-2/

In the File Tab click on the Options  button and you will get:

I decide that regular working time will be from 08:00 to 17:00 with 8 hours per day, and that means that I will have 1 hour for lunch break. My week will have 40 working hours, and my month will have 20 working days.

I decided that every new task created will be in Manually Scheduled mode (an that is a brand-new feature in MS PROJECT 2010, and when I add new task in Auto scheduled mode it will have default Start Date same as the Project Start Date (which is 01.08.2011). The another option is Current Date.

You will se in my future posts how this working time is in correlation with Project, Task and Resource Calendars.

Why did I decide to have every new task in Manually Scheduled mode? Because I have no idea about task duration (for now!), when will it start or finish, and I do not want default duration of 1 day (which is in Auto scheduled mode). And, finally I want to write in Duration, Start Date and End Date field whatever I want (for now!)

Now, I will set US dollar as currency. In the File Tab click on the Options button and you will get:

and I will get:

Before saving my Project I want to see Project Summary Task:

Finally, I will save my Project:

and then:

That’s all for initial set up!

Best Regards!