Open Workbench - an idiots guide

Just for Hayley (joke!)

Do stuff in this order:

1. enter the names of your resources (the people) and their initials in the bottom pane
2. right click each resource and Modify - type the persons job title in the Category box
3. I went with Developers, Project Manager, Tester, Client - you could have other project roles
4. enter the tasks in the centre pane. Try and get them in a logical order. You can add rows in by right clicking
5. add rows and enter phases - enter them like tasks and then right click and Modify and change the Type to Phase. This will give you a bracketed phase and let you break the project down into stages
6. sort the dates out - either drag the tasks along the Gannt chart or change the dates manually
7. sort the length of tasks out - either drag the bars on the Gannt chart or change the finish dates
8. now put in dependencies - I find it easier to drag them from the predecessor bar to the successor bar. Take care with dependencies - you want them to make sense. I would suggest that everything needs some kind of dependency as it will make you critical path analysis make more sense - but there may be jobs which can take place at the same time as each other
9. assign resources to tasks and give them time allocations in hours. Right click on each task and select Assignments and you can do this. Make sure the right people are in the right meetings - I would tend to have the Project manager meet the client for many of the meetings rather than have large meetings. Don't forget meetings with testers.

Tips:

Double click on the dates at the top of the Gannt chart and you can set the number of periods to display. You may need more than 26 periods if your project lasts more than 26 days. You can also change the scale from days to weeks which may well be a better way of displaying things if you have a project lasting more than 3 or 4 weeks

Double click on the Gannt chart itself and you can tick the holidays box to shade in weekends (yah!) and perhaps change the