Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

The Missing Credits

About the Author

Bonnie Biafore has always been a zealous organizer of everything from software demos to gourmet meals, with the occasional vacation trip to test the waters of spontaneity. As an engineer, she’s fascinated by how things work and how to make things work better. Ironically, fate, not planning, turned these obsessions into a career as a project manager. When Bonnie realized she was managing projects, her penchant for planning and follow-through kicked in and she earned a Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute.

When she isn’t managing projects for clients, Bonnie writes about and teaches project management, personal finance and investing, and technology. She has a knack for mincing these dry subjects into easy-to-understand morsels and then spices them to perfection with her warped sense of humor.

Bonnie is also the author of Successful Project Management, which won an International Award of Merit from the Society of Technical Communication, QuickBooks 2013: The Missing Manual (now Intuit’s Official Guide to QuickBooks), and several other award-winning books. She has recorded several courses on project management, Microsoft Project, and QuickBooks for Lynda.com. In addition, she writes and presents frequently for the Microsoft Project Users Group.

When unshackled from her computer, she hikes in the mountains with her dogs, cycles, cooks gourmet food, and mostly tries not to act her age. She has also published her first novel, Fresh Squeezed, featuring hit men, stupid criminals, and much political incorrectness. You can learn more at her website, www.bonniebiafore.com, or email her at [e-mail].

About the Creative Team

Dawn Mann (editor) is associate editor for the Missing Manual series. When not reading about Microsoft Project, she beads, plays soccer, and causes trouble. Email: [e-mail].

Melanie Yarbrough (production editor) lives and works in Cambridge, MA. When she’s not ushering books through production, she bakes, writes, and sews whatever she can think up.

Sean Earp (technical reviewer), CISSP, MCITP, is Program Manager at a large software company in Redmond, WA, specializing in Project, Project Server, and SharePoint technologies. Trained in the school of hard knocks, Sean has experienced nearly every project-management pitfall outlined in this book. When not in front of his computer, Sean likes spending time with his wife and three wonderful kids, being a Cub Scout leader, and training for a marathon.

Michael Wharton (technical reviewer), MVP, MBA, PMP, MCT, MCITP, MCTS, MCSD, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCC 2012, has been a Project/SharePoint Consultant since 2003. He has implemented project server in over twenty-five PMO organizations, trained hundreds of project managers, migrated many organizations from project server 2003 and has passed over 40 Microsoft certification exams. He is active in the local PMI chapter, MPUG community, MS Project Forums, PASS and many local technical user groups. Michael lives in North Carolina and is happily married to his wife Gwen and loves spending time with his family when not working on project. Michael’s field notes can be found in his blog at http://MyProjectExpert.com, and you can reach him at [e-mail].

Julie Van Keuren (proofreader) quit her newspaper job in 2006 to move to Montana and live the freelancing dream. She and her husband, M.H. (who is living the novel-writing dream), have two sons, Dexter and Michael. Email: [e-mail].

Acknowledgments

No O’Reilly book that I author can go to print without me acknowledging the awesome team at O’Reilly. Dawn Mann is editor extraordinaire. She can spot potential points of confusion in my writing from a mile away and usually comes up with a wonderfully clear alternative. If she’s stumped, she asks for clarification in a way that even a diva (oh, I so hope I haven’t become one) wouldn’t mind. She stays on top of details, so they’re taken care of before anyone even thinks to ask. She has earned my gratitude for keeping me company via email as we both worked weekend after weekend to complete this book. My thanks go to Melanie Yarbrough and the rest of the O’Reilly folks for shepherding my book through the publication process. I am grateful for the eagle eye of Julie Van Keuren, the proofreader, for wrangling punctuation, capitalization, and ungainly sentences into submission.

The technical reviewers Sean Earp and Michael Wharton caught my mistakes and shared their knowledge of the finer points of project management, Microsoft Project, and SharePoint. I was fortunate to have them as guinea pigs for the many sections that I ripped apart and put back together. Fortunately, my rewrites successfully passed their gimlet-eyed scrutiny.

I also want to thank a few old friends and several new ones in the project-management community. Teresa Stover is a wonderful writer, a good friend, and a trusted colleague who is always willing to pitch in to dissect gnarly Project features despite her deadlines. Ellen Lehnert is a fabulous trainer and another one of my go-to people for Project questions. I’ve also had the great fortune to befriend and, in some cases, collaborate with other incredible Project educators: Sam Huffman, Larry Christofaro, John Riopel, Eric Uyttewaal, and Eric Verzuh.

I am fortunate to have more good friends than my prickly personality deserves. Special thanks go to all of them—who leave me alone when I’m under deadlines, go out with me when I need a break, and still speak to me after another trying winter of work. A shout-out to everyone in Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Mystery Writers of America for letting me be part of the tribe.

Finally, I thank my agent, Neil Salkind, for his hard work, support, and friendship over the past (is it really?) 13 years. He recently retired, and I’d like to think I helped him realize that dream. Neil, you haven’t heard the last from me!

—Bonnie Biafore