The demo opens with a title card displaying the text Estimate task duration.

Because I'm in charge of the project schedule, I need to know if any of the tasks we've planned could make us miss some of our milestones.

The image changes to a Gantt chart for a project management plan in Microsoft Office Project. The Control quality cell is selected. The pointer right-clicks the cell, and a drop-down menu appears. The pointer moves down the menu and clicks Task Information. The Task Information dialog box opens. The pointer clicks the drop-down arrow in the Task type box, selects Fixed Work, and then clicks OK. The image changes back to the Gantt chart in Project.

I need everyone involved in implementing the plan to participate in preparing it, so I ask the project leads to report their time estimates up front. There are a lot of factors that go into these estimates, and I don't want to guess.

The image changes to a Microsoft Office Word 2003 document, showing a table for a Work Breakdown Structure worksheet. The image changes to a close-up of the table, showing several columns, including the Description, Customer, and Asset Type columns.

I use the Work Breakdown Structure and the information we created during the scope definition phase to estimate the time each task will take.

The image changes back to the Gantt chart in Project. The pointer right-clicks the Review progress cell, and a drop-down menu appears. The pointer moves down the menu and clicks Task Information. The Task Information dialog box opens. The pointer clicks in the Duration box, selects the value in the box, and overwrites the value by entering .5d. The pointer selects the Estimated check box and clicks OK. The image changes to the Gantt chart in Project, showing the Duration cell updated with the value 0.5 days.

When I have the information I need, I just plug it in to my project schedule. I know I'll want to revisit my estimates and realign my schedule once the project gets going. At this point, though, I've got a pretty clear plan for making the project a success.

The image of the Gantt chart disappears. The text Microsoft Office appears with the Microsoft Office logo, and under them the URL http://www.office.microsoft.com appears.