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FIGURE 2.3 Task and project costs

      As you enter actual progress on tasks, Project updates the costs so you can see actual costs so far and projected costs through to the end of the project. If the project is veering beyond the original project budget, you can adjust the plan to bring the project back under budget.

      You'll learn about setting up costs in Lesson 6, “Set Up Resources,” in the section titled “Enter Resource Costs.”

      Balance Resources

      Project helps you keep a close eye on how your resources are used over the span of the project. After you assign resources to tasks, you can see when specific resources are overloaded or underused. You can then adjust the project plan to change resource assignments, adjust the schedule, or change the project scope to even out resource usage.

When you're first planning the project, seeing this overall resource picture can help you develop the resource plan, including the types of team members needed, how many team members with specific skills should be recruited, when they're needed, and who might have ramp-up and ramp-down periods. Your plan might also include equipment and materials needed to carry out tasks.

      When the project is under way, being able to see and adjust your resource needs and allocations over time can help you use your resources—and therefore your budget—most effectively, avoiding downtime at one extreme and burnout at the other.

      You'll start learning about resource planning and optimizing in Lesson 7, “Assign Resources to Tasks.”

      Communicate Progress

From sharing expectations with team members to updating status with stakeholders, clear and steady communication is essential to successful project management. You can use the built-in Project views, reports, and dashboards as is, or customize them as needed to share the most relevant information with your different audiences. For example, see the built-in Project Overview dashboard in Figure 2.4.