Microsoft® Office Project 2007 Inside Out

Using Microsoft Project—An Overview

Microsoft Project is a specialized database that stores and presents thousands of pieces of data related to your project. Examples of such data include tasks, durations, links, resource names, calendars, assignments, costs, deadlines, and milestones.

These pieces of information interrelate and affect each other in a multitude of ways. Underlying this project database is the scheduling engine, which crunches the raw project data you enter and presents the calculated results to you (see Figure 1-1). Examples of such calculated results include the start and finish dates of a task, the resource availability, the finish date of the entire project, and the total cost for a resource or for the project.

Figure 1-1. Use ...