Five Compelling Reasons to Upgrade to 
Microsoft Office Project 2007:
Change Highlighting

by Sam Huffman, PMP MCITP

In my position as a trainer I am continually asked if there are any specific advantages to purchasing Microsoft Office Project 2007 or upgrading from a previous version. If your organization is looking into this software tool please read on. This article is for you.

Out of the many features that form a compelling argument to upgrade, there are 5 that I think are huge:

1. Multiple levels of undo;
2. Change highlighting;
3. Cost and Budget resources;
4. Project Task Drivers;
5. Visual Reports.

In the first article of this series I examined Multiple Undo and Redo. This second article in the series will focus on Change Highlighting. The two features are related and together will let you change and undo project variables until you are satisfied with your project plan.


Change Highlighting
Change Highlighting is not available in previous versions of MS Project. Like Multiple Undo and Redo, Change Highlighting may be all the reason you need to upgrade. If you make many changes to your project plans and struggle with identifying the impacts of those changes on your project, this feature is for you.

This simple but effective feature assists you in identify how changing data affects your other project variables. These include but are not limited to project duration as well as task start and finish. Resource data may change as well, though these will not be addressed in this article.

Change Highlighting is turned on by default when MS Project is installed. You can check this by looking at the View Menu. If Change Highlighting is on, your list of items should include “Hide Change Highlighting” as shown in Figure 1. If Change Highlighting is Off, the list will contain the option to “Show Change Highlighting” as shown in Figure 2.



Figure 1: Hide Change Highlighting

 

Figure 2: Show Change Highlighting 

Figure 3 shows project data before any changes are made. If a change is made to the duration of task 5, what will the effect of that change be on other tasks in the project? In previous versions you would have to painstakingly analyze the project in order to answer the question. In MS Project 2007, it’s a breeze.

 

Figure 3: Gantt Chart before changes

Changing the duration of task 5 to 10 days kicks off calculations and changes to other project data which then initiates the Change Highlighting. Figure 4 illustrates how the change to the duration has affected the finish date of task 5 as well as the start and finish dates of tasks 6 and 7. As you can see, Change Highlighting is a real time saver!

 

Figure 4: Gantt Chart with change and results identified

Change Highlighting exists only until the next change occurs. It will then highlight the effects of the new change. In Figure 5 the duration of task 6 was changed to 4 days, which triggered new task date calculations and initiated a new round of Change Highlighting.

 

Figure 5: Gantt Chart with 2nd change and results identified

Change Highlighting works well with Multiple Undo/redo in that you are usually able to return to your original project plan without saving the changes to the MS Project file. Figure 6 shows the list of possible actions in the Undo button’s drop down list. This allows the user to go back to the change point in their data entry sequence that gives them the best solution to task dates.

 

Figure 6: Multiple Undo makes it possible to return to a previous change point
Use the Change Highlighting feature as a tool for what-if analysis. It’s fast, very visible, and can easily be undone.

Next time I’ll examine Cost and Budget resources.