Project 2010 Bible

Chapter 6. Understanding the Basics of Views

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Describing a view

• Examining indicators

• Admiring the views

A project is like a small business: Different people attend to various aspects of the work. The Accounting department thinks mainly of the costs of doing business. The plant supervisor focuses on deadlines and having enough machinery to get the job done. Your Human Resources department thinks of people — their salaries, hours, benefits, and so on.

As the owner of your project, you're likely to wear all these hats (and more) during the project. Changing views in Project is the practical way of changing hats. You switch to another view to see and work with your project from a different perspective. Each view helps you to focus on a different aspect of your project.

Views in Project enable you to enter, organize, and examine information in various ways. Project provides a variety of views, and this chapter provides you with a basic understanding of the default views. The next chapter covers techniques you can use to customize views and make them work for you.

What Is a View?

A view is a way to examine and update your project. Different views enable you to focus on different aspects of the project. Project uses three types of views and typically uses them in combination, as follows:

• Chart or graph views: These views present information by using pictures. You've already seen the Gantt Chart view, which is a chart view.

• Sheet views: These views present information in rows and columns, ...