MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

COMP4543

Microsoft Project Lab 1

Creating a New Project Plan

Purpose
The purpose of this exercise is to learn how to create projects in MS Project. This will
concentrate on the Project Plan.

Method
For the purpose of creating a project plan, we will use as our project, the Systems Analysis
project that you did when you were taking that course. So all the activities and resources
identified in this exercise and subsequent exercises will be based on that.

1. Launch MS Project if necessary.

2. On the opening screen, double click on Blank Project. You will now see a blank
project plan in the Gantt Chart view.

3. The first thing you need to do is to set the time frame of the project. You may know
the starting date or the finishing date or both. For MS Project, you need to specify
only one of the starting date or the end date of the project. MS Project will
automatically calculate the other date based on the task duration. For greater
flexibility in planning, it is best to plan the project using the start date, even if you
know when the project is supposed to end.

4. The set the starting date, click on Project tab, then on Project Information in the
Project tool bar. The Project Information dialog box appears.

5. On the Start date box, type in 2/6/2023 then click “ok”. Alternatively, you can click
on the down arrow and choose February 6 from the mini-calendar.

6. Save the project as “SA Project – Lab 1” onto your H: drive (or somewhere else you
can access later).
 MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
COMP4543

7. Most organizations have a regular set of working hours. For example, Mondays to
Fridays, from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm with a 1 hour lunch break. In addition, the
organization and the individuals may have exceptions to this, such as public holidays.
Thus, when planning a project, it is necessary to define the standard working and
non-working hours.

8. To set the standard working and non-working hours, on the Project tool bar, click on
Change Working Time. The Change Working Time dialog box appears. Note that
this calendar already shows the standard working time. You will notice that the
weekends on the mini calendar are grayed out. This is how non-working times are
presented.

9. To enter other non-working times, you need to enter these on the Exceptions table
at the bottom of the dialog box. On the first line, enter Family Day under the Name
column. Under the Start Date column, enter 2/20/2023 or use the drop-down
calendar. The end date is entered automatically. You have the option of accepting
this or changing it. When done, click on “ok”. Notice that on the mini-calendar, this
day is grayed out showing that it is a non-working day.

10. Add other holidays (in 2023) as follows:

Good Friday – April 7
Victoria Day – May 22
Canada Day (observed) – July 3
Civic Holiday – August 7

See how these dates show up on the mini calendar.

11. Save the project and close it. You will use this again for the next lab.

12. Turn in your MS project file in D2L