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Microsoft Office Project 2003
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003
Microsoft Project 2000 and 2002 |
After you establish the objectives of your project, you define the actual product or service that meets those objectives. This product or service is called a deliverable (deliverable: A tangible and measurable result, outcome, or item that must be produced to complete a project or part of a project. Typically, the project team and project stakeholders agree on project deliverables before the project begins.). Where appropriate, you can record information about the deliverables in your project.
Tip This article is part of a series of articles that describe a broad set of project management activities. We call these activities "goals" because they are organized around the project management life cycle: Build a plan, track and manage a project, and close a project. The project life cycle is outlined in The Project Map, where you can find a link to an article about each project management goal. Most of the articles include links to supporting information or procedures that you perform in Project or Project Server. These "goal" articles were designed to help you not only use Project but also better understand project management.
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See all goals on the Project Map
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 Define the deliverables A deliverable is tangible as well as verifiable. To be verifiable, the deliverable must meet predetermined standards for its completion, such as design specifications for a product (like a new car) or a checklist of steps that is completed as part of a service (like maintenance of factory machinery).
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Deliverables have stakeholders There are two kinds of stakeholders: (stakeholders: Individuals and organizations that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be affected by the project.) those who receive the finished product or service, such as a company's customers (external), and stakeholders such as team members who depend on the deliverable to do their own work (internal).
Deliverables have standards for completion Grade (grade: A rank or category assigned to a material resource that denotes functional use but not level of quality. A low-grade resource is not necessarily a low-quality resource.) and quality (quality: The degree of excellence, or the desired standards, in a product, process, or project.) are two standards that stakeholders must agree on to complete a deliverable that will meet its objectives. For example, the agreed-upon grade for a new car might be an inexpensive commuter model as opposed to a luxury sedan. Quality is the degree of defect and workmanship within the agreed-upon grade. For example, the grade of a luxury sedan and a commuter car may be different, but the same high standards may be set for the quality of both vehicles.
Organize your project tasks around the deliverables A project can have one or many deliverables. You can organize your project's tasks (task: An activity that has a beginning and an end. Project plans are made up of tasks.) around the deliverables in several ways:
- Assign each deliverable to a separate phase (phase: A group of related tasks that completes a major step in a project.) of the project, and use a milestone (milestone: A reference point marking a major event in a project and used to monitor the project's progress. Any task with zero duration is automatically displayed as a milestone; you can also mark any other task of any duration as a milestone.) that represents the completion of both the deliverable and the phase simultaneously. For example, a project to construct a building can have one phase with a deliverable of "finish the exterior of the building," and the deliverable for a later phase may be "complete the landscaping."
- Group similar deliverables or deliverables with the same stakeholders in a phase. This method allows you to schedule a team to work on a project until the deliverable is handed off. Then the team can move on to other projects. For example, all routine maintenance tasks can be organized in one phase of the project, corresponding to the dates when they need to be performed. The maintenance engineers can be assigned to multiple projects containing the different maintenance jobs they are assigned to.
- Group deliverables that are worked on during the same time period in phases spanning that time period. This is useful for projects where trade-offs can be made in the scope (scope: The combination of all project goals and tasks, and the work required to accomplish them.) and quality of the deliverable to meet a fixed finish date (finish date: The date that a task is scheduled to be completed. This date is based on the task's start date, duration, calendars, predecessor dates, task dependencies, and constraints.). For example, if conversion of a factory production line must be completed by the date that the first product is delivered to suppliers, there may be phases for each month leading up to the finish date containing the tasks that must be started or completed during that month. So that slipped (slippage: The amount of time that a task has been delayed from its original baseline plan. The slippage is the difference between the scheduled start or finish date for a task and the baseline start or finish date.) tasks don't affect the overall progress of the project, tasks that are not finished by the end of the phase are often completed separately after the team has moved on to the next phase.
 Add supporting information about a task When you want to keep supporting documentation about tasks in your project, you can use any or all of the following methods.
Click all of the following that apply:
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