I hate Microsoft Project.

I mean, as a tool it’s OK, but it’s idiosyncratic and time-consuming to use; and even copying/pasting information is not as straightforward as it should be. Besides which, far too many people confuse a Gantt Chart with a project plan… and I blame Microsoft Project for that…

When I was at Fujitsu, I avoided having Project on my PC. If I didn’t have a license, I couldn’t edit plans… I could only view them. Unfortunately I can’t get away with that any more and, tonight, I lost most of the evening to some edits that went wrong with tasks getting split across days (I think I changed the working hours to reflect the hours we really work… but that messed something else up).

Anyway, I digress. Something I did find this evening was a really useful article describing how to change the working days for a Microsoft Project calendar. Using this I could not only add bank holidays that were missing in the standard calendar, but add the days that I’m not available to work on the project – for example because of annual leave, or other client commitments – so that the plan couldn’t allocate tasks to me on days I’m not booked to that customer.  You can also edit dates that people are available to work on a project directly (I don’t like referring to people as “resources”) but that doesn’t take into account odd days here and there of non-available time.

Next time though, I’ll leave editing the plan to the Engagement Managers…