Pass Your Microsoft MCP 74-343 Exam Easy!

Microsoft 74-343 (Managing Projects with Microsoft Project 2013) exam dumps vce, practice test questions, study guide & video training course to study and pass quickly and easily. Microsoft 74-343 Managing Projects with Microsoft Project 2013 exam dumps & practice test questions and answers. You need avanset vce exam simulator in order to study the Microsoft MCP 74-343 certification exam dumps & Microsoft MCP 74-343 practice test questions in vce format.

Initiating and Planning a Project for the 74-343 Exam

The Microsoft Specialist 74-343 Exam, Managing Projects with Microsoft Project 2013, was designed to validate the skills of professionals who use the Microsoft Project desktop client to manage the entire project lifecycle. Passing this exam demonstrated a candidate's proficiency in creating, maintaining, and analyzing project plans. It signified that the certified individual had a deep, practical understanding of how to translate project management principles into a well-structured schedule using the powerful features of the Project 2013 application, from initial setup to final reporting.

The 74-343 Exam was aimed at project managers, project coordinators, team leads, and any professional responsible for creating and tracking project schedules. The exam content was structured around the core phases of project management: initiating a project, creating a task-based schedule, managing resources and assignments, tracking and analyzing project progress, and communicating project information. A successful candidate needed to be an expert in the hands-on application of the software, as the exam was heavily based on performance-based, in-application scenarios.

This five-part series will serve as a comprehensive guide to mastering the skills and knowledge required to pass the 74-343 Exam. In this first part, we will focus on the critical initial phases of a project. We will explore how to create a new project file, set up project calendars, build a Work Breakdown Structure with tasks and milestones, and define the logical dependencies between those tasks. A solid foundation in these planning activities is the essential first step toward success in the 74-343 Exam.

Creating and Initializing a New Project

The very first step in managing any project in Microsoft Project is to create the project file. The 74-343 Exam required a thorough understanding of the different ways to initialize a project. You could start with a blank project, which provides a clean slate for you to build your plan from scratch. Alternatively, you could create a new project based on a template. Project 2013 came with several built-in templates for common project types, and organizations could also create their own custom templates to ensure consistency across projects.

You could also create a new project from an existing one, which is useful if your new project is very similar to a previous one. Additionally, Project 2013 offered integration with SharePoint, allowing you to create a project plan based on an existing SharePoint task list. The 74-343 Exam would expect you to be familiar with all these starting points.

Once the file is created, one of the most critical initial steps is to set the project's scheduling mode and start date. You can set the project to be scheduled from a specific start date (the most common method) or from a specific finish date. You would also enter key project information, or metadata, such as the project title, subject, and manager, in the Project Information dialog box. This initial setup establishes the foundational parameters for the entire schedule.

Defining the Project Calendar

A fundamental concept tested in the 74-343 Exam is the management of working and nonworking time through calendars. The project calendar defines the default working days and hours for the entire project. For example, it might specify a standard Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM work schedule. This calendar is the basis upon which all task scheduling is calculated. If a task has a duration of one day, Project will schedule it to take eight hours of working time.

Project 2013 uses a hierarchy of calendars. In addition to the main project calendar, you can also create and assign specific calendars to individual resources. For example, a part-time resource might have a calendar that shows them working only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. You can also assign a specific calendar to a task if that task can only be performed during certain hours.

As an administrator, you are responsible for creating and modifying these calendars. This is done in the "Change Working Time" dialog. Here, you can define the standard work week, and more importantly, you can mark specific days as exceptions, such as public holidays or company-wide nonworking days. Properly setting up the project calendar is a critical first step to ensure that your schedule is realistic and accurate, a key skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Creating and Structuring the Task List

The heart of any project plan is the list of tasks that need to be completed. The 74-343 Exam placed a strong emphasis on your ability to create a well-structured task list that represents the project's Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team. In Microsoft Project, this is created by entering tasks and then using indentation to create summary tasks and subtasks.

A summary task does not have its own duration or work; instead, its values are rolled up, or summarized, from the subtasks beneath it. This allows you to see the total duration and cost for major phases of the project at a glance. A key skill for the 74-343 Exam is the ability to efficiently create this hierarchy using the indent and outdent commands.

In addition to standard tasks, you must also know how to create milestones. A milestone is a significant event in the project, such as "Project Kick-off" or "Phase 1 Complete." In Project, a milestone is simply a task with a duration of zero days. It is represented on the Gantt chart as a diamond symbol, providing a clear visual marker for important checkpoints in the schedule.

Estimating Task Durations and Work

Once you have the list of tasks, you need to estimate how long they will take. The 74-343 Exam requires a clear understanding of the relationship between a task's duration, the work required, and the resources assigned. Duration is the total span of working time from the start to the finish of a task (e.g., 5 days). Work is the total amount of effort, or person-hours, required to complete the task (e.g., 40 hours). Units represent the percentage of a resource's time that is dedicated to the task (e.g., 100% for a full-time resource).

These three elements are linked by the scheduling formula: Duration = Work / Units. Understanding this formula is critical. The behavior of this formula is controlled by the "task type." There are three task types: Fixed Units, Fixed Work, and Fixed Duration. For a Fixed Units task, if you change the duration, the work will change, and vice-versa. For a Fixed Work task, if you add more resources (increase the units), the duration will decrease.

The 74-343 Exam would often present you with scenarios that required you to choose the correct task type to achieve a specific scheduling outcome. You also needed to understand the concept of "effort-driven" scheduling. For an effort-driven task, the total work remains constant, so as you add more resources, the duration of the task will automatically decrease.

Linking Tasks and Defining Dependencies

Individual tasks in a project are rarely independent; they usually have logical relationships with each other. The 74-343 Exam required you to be an expert in defining these task dependencies, or links. A dependency creates a relationship that controls the start or finish of one task relative to another. The most common type of dependency is "Finish-to-Start" (FS). This means that the second task cannot start until the first task has finished. This is the default link type in Microsoft Project.

There are three other link types you must know for the 74-343 Exam. A "Start-to-Start" (SS) link means the second task cannot start until the first task has started. A "Finish-to-Finish" (FF) link means the second task cannot finish until the first task has finished. The least common type is "Start-to-Finish" (SF), which means the second task cannot finish until the first task has started.

You can also fine-tune these dependencies by adding "lead time" or "lag time." Lag time is a delay that adds waiting time after the completion of the predecessor task (e.g., waiting for paint to dry). Lead time is an overlap that allows the successor task to start before the predecessor has finished. The ability to create these different link types and to apply lead and lag time is essential for creating a realistic and dynamic project schedule.

Using the Timeline View for Reporting

While the Gantt chart is the primary view for building a detailed project plan, it can often be too complex for high-level reporting to stakeholders and executives. The 74-343 Exam covered the use of the Timeline view as a tool for creating simple, high-level summaries. The Timeline view is a special pane that appears at the top of the main project window. It provides a clean, graphical representation of the project's key phases and milestones.

You can add any task, summary task, or milestone from your main project plan to the Timeline view. This allows you to build a curated, summary-level view of the schedule that is easy to understand and present. You can customize the appearance of the timeline by changing the colors of the bars, formatting the text, and even displaying the tasks as callouts above or below the main timeline bar.

The Timeline view is a powerful communication tool. Once you have created it, you can easily copy and paste it into an email, a PowerPoint presentation, or a Word document to provide a quick and professional-looking project status summary. The ability to use this feature to create and share high-level project summaries was a key reporting skill tested on the 74-343 Exam.

Creating and Defining the Resource Pool

Once the task-based schedule is built, the next major step in project planning is to define the resources that will perform the work. The 74-343 Exam placed a strong emphasis on your ability to create and manage the project's resource pool. Resources in Microsoft Project are managed in the Resource Sheet view. There are three main types of resources, and you must know the difference between them.

"Work resources" are the people and equipment that perform the tasks. These are the most common type of resource. For each work resource, you can define their name, their maximum availability (Max. Units), and their cost rates, including a standard rate and an overtime rate. "Material resources" are the consumable supplies used by the project, such as concrete or cables. For material resources, you define a cost per unit (e.g., per ton or per box).

"Cost resources" are used to apply a fixed cost to a task that is not associated with a specific person or material. This is useful for things like travel expenses or training fees. The ability to correctly create these different resource types and to enter their details, such as their availability and cost information in the Resource Sheet, is a fundamental skill for the 74-343 Exam. This resource pool is the basis for all assignment and cost calculations.

Assigning Resources to Project Tasks

After the resource pool is created, you must assign the resources to the specific tasks they will be working on. The 74-343 Exam required proficiency in the various methods for making these assignments. One of the most common methods is to use the "Assign Resources" dialog box. This dialog allows you to select one or more tasks and then assign resources to them from a list of all the resources in your project. You can also specify the assignment units for each resource on the task.

Another powerful method is to use a combination view, such as the Task Entry view. This view shows the Gantt chart in the top pane and a detailed form for the selected task in the bottom pane. This form has a dedicated area for assigning resources and specifying their work hours. This is useful for making detailed assignments on a task-by-task basis.

You can also add the "Resource Names" column directly to the Gantt chart view and make assignments by selecting from a drop-down list. For each assignment, Project will calculate the cost based on the amount of work and the resource's cost rate. The ability to efficiently and accurately assign resources to tasks is a critical step in building a realistic project plan and a core competency for the 74-343 Exam.

Identifying Resource Overallocations

A common problem that arises after you have assigned resources to tasks is resource overallocation. The 74-343 Exam dedicated a significant portion of its content to this topic. A resource is overallocated when they have been assigned to more work than they can complete within their normal working capacity. For example, if you have a full-time resource who is assigned to two different eight-hour tasks on the same day, they are overallocated because they have been assigned 16 hours of work in an eight-hour day.

Microsoft Project automatically detects these overallocations and highlights the affected resources, typically by displaying them in red in the Resource Sheet view. There are also several dedicated views for identifying and analyzing overallocations. The Resource Graph view displays a bar chart showing a resource's allocation over time. If the bar for any time period goes above the 100% allocation line, the resource is overallocated.

Another useful view is the Resource Usage view. This view shows a timesheet-style grid with each resource and all their assigned tasks, with the work hours distributed over a timeline. Any time period where a resource's total assigned work exceeds their capacity is highlighted in red. The ability to use these views to identify which resources are overallocated and on which specific tasks is the first and most critical step in resolving the problem. This skill was a major focus of the 74-343 Exam.

Resolving Overallocations Manually

Once you have identified a resource overallocation, you need to resolve it. The 74-343 Exam covered both manual and automatic methods for doing this. Manual resolution gives you the most control over the schedule. There are several manual techniques you can use. The simplest is to replace the overallocated resource on one of the conflicting tasks with another available resource who has the same skills.

Another option is to adjust the assignments. You could reduce the assignment units for the resource on one of the tasks, effectively having them work on it part-time, which would extend the task's duration. Alternatively, if the task is not on the critical path, you could manually delay the start of one of the conflicting tasks by adding a delay to the assignment or by changing its link dependency. This would push the task out to a time when the resource is available.

For tasks that can be interrupted, you can manually split the task. This allows you to pause the task while the resource works on something else, and then resume the task later. The 74-343 Exam would often present you with an overallocation scenario and ask you to choose the most appropriate manual resolution technique based on the constraints of the project.

Automatic Resource Leveling

In addition to manual methods, Microsoft Project provides a powerful feature for automatically resolving resource overallocations called resource leveling. The 74-343 Exam required a deep understanding of how this feature works. Resource leveling automatically delays or splits tasks to ensure that no resource is working beyond their capacity. It is a powerful tool, but it must be used with care as it can have a significant impact on your project's finish date.

When you run the resource leveler, it analyzes all the overallocations in your project. To resolve them, it will typically delay the start of a task until the assigned resource has enough free time to work on it. The leveler makes its decisions based on the task's priority and dependencies. By default, it will only delay tasks that have slack, or float, so that it does not affect the project's critical path and finish date.

You can configure the leveling options to give you more control. For example, you can allow the leveler to split tasks or to level only within the available slack. You can also set the leveling order and clear the leveling before running it again. The ability to configure and run the resource leveler, and to understand the impact it will have on your schedule, was a key advanced skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Using the Team Planner View

Project 2013 introduced a new view called the Team Planner, which provided a highly visual and interactive way to manage resource assignments and resolve overallocations. The 74-343 Exam covered the use of this powerful view. The Team Planner displays each resource in its own row, with all of their assigned tasks shown as bars on a timeline. This makes it very easy to see who is working on what and when.

Any task that is part of an overallocation is highlighted with a red bracket, and any unassigned tasks are shown at the bottom of the view. The real power of the Team Planner is its drag-and-drop interface. To resolve an overallocation, you can simply click on one of the conflicting tasks and drag it to a later time on that resource's schedule. Or, you can drag the task to a different resource's row to reassign it.

This interactive approach makes the process of resolving overallocations much more intuitive than working with numbers in a table. It allows you to see the immediate impact of your changes on the resource's workload and the project schedule. The ability to use the Team Planner view to efficiently manage assignments and resolve conflicts was a key hands-on skill for the 74-343 Exam.

The Importance of Setting a Baseline

After you have finalized your initial project plan, but before any actual work begins, it is absolutely essential to save a baseline. This was one of the most critical concepts for the 74-343 Exam. A baseline is a snapshot of your entire project plan at a specific point in time. It saves the key values for every task, resource, and assignment, including their planned start dates, finish dates, work, duration, and cost. This baseline then becomes the benchmark against which you will measure your project's performance.

Without a baseline, you have no way of knowing if your project is on track. You can see your current schedule, but you have nothing to compare it to. The baseline provides the original plan, allowing you to see how your actual progress compares to what you had initially intended. The 74-343 Exam would heavily emphasize the importance of setting the baseline before you start tracking any actual work.

The process of setting the baseline is simple: you use the "Set Baseline" dialog box. Microsoft Project allows you to save up to 11 different baselines for a single project. This is useful if your project undergoes a major, approved change in scope, as you can save a new baseline to reflect the new plan while still retaining the original one for historical comparison. The ability to save and manage baselines is a non-negotiable skill.

Methods for Updating Project Progress

Once the project work has started, you need to regularly update the project plan with the actual progress. The 74-343 Exam covered the different methods for tracking this progress in Microsoft Project. The method you choose depends on the level of detail and accuracy your project requires. The methods range from very simple, high-level updates to very detailed, timesheet-level tracking.

The simplest method is to just update the percentage of the task that is complete. A more detailed method is to track the actual duration of the task and the remaining duration. The most detailed and accurate method is to track the actual work (the number of hours) that resources have spent on each task and the remaining work that is still to be done.

Microsoft Project provides several tools and views to facilitate this process. You can enter progress directly in the columns of the Gantt chart, use the "Update Tasks" dialog box, or use the timesheet-like grid in the Task Usage view. The 74-343 Exam would expect you to be familiar with these different methods and to be able to choose the appropriate one for a given project scenario.

Tracking Progress as Scheduled

For projects that do not require detailed tracking, or for updating tasks that are progressing exactly as planned, Microsoft Project provides a very quick and easy update method. The 74-343 Exam required you to know how to use the "Mark on Track" feature. This feature is part of the "Update Project" dialog box.

When you use "Mark on Track," you are essentially telling Project that a task or a set of tasks has been completed exactly according to the schedule up to a specific status date. Project will look at the planned progress for the selected tasks as of the status date and will automatically fill in the actual start date and calculate the percentage complete based on the original plan.

This is a very fast way to update a large number of tasks that are not experiencing any delays or issues. It is a high-level approach that does not involve tracking detailed work hours, but it is very efficient for keeping the overall project status up to date. The ability to use this feature to quickly update tasks that are on schedule was a key operational skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Updating Tasks with Percent Complete

A very common and straightforward method for tracking progress is by entering the percentage of a task that is complete. The 74-343 Exam would test your understanding of this method. You can enter a value from 0 to 100 in the % Complete column for any task. As you update this value, Microsoft Project will automatically draw a progress bar on the Gantt chart for that task, providing a clear visual indicator of its status.

When you enter a percentage complete, Project will automatically calculate the actual duration and remaining duration of the task based on its original planned duration. For example, if a 10-day task is marked as 50% complete, Project will calculate that it has an actual duration of 5 days and a remaining duration of 5 days.

While this method is simple and intuitive, it can sometimes be misleading. A task that is 90% complete might still have 90% of the difficult work remaining. It does not provide a very accurate picture of the actual effort that has been expended. However, for many projects, this level of tracking is sufficient, and the 74-343 Exam required you to be proficient in using it.

Tracking Actual Work and Remaining Work

For the highest level of accuracy and control, the best practice is to track the actual work performed by resources. The 74-343 Exam covered this detailed tracking method thoroughly. This approach involves collecting timesheet data from your team members, showing how many hours they have actually worked on each of their assigned tasks over a specific period. You would then enter this "Actual Work" into the project plan.

This is typically done using the Task Usage view or the Resource Usage view. These views provide a timesheet-like grid where you can enter the actual hours worked on each assignment for each day or week. As you enter the actual work, Microsoft Project will use this information, along with the original work estimate, to automatically recalculate the remaining work and the task's percentage complete.

This method provides a much more accurate picture of the project's status than just using percent complete, as it is based on the actual effort expended. It allows you to see if a task is taking more or less effort than originally planned, which has a direct impact on the project's cost and schedule. The ability to update the plan with actual work values was a key advanced skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Using the Tracking Gantt and Variance Analysis

Once you have set a baseline and started entering actual progress, you can begin to analyze your project's performance. The 74-343 Exam required you to be an expert in using the tools for variance analysis. The primary view for this is the Tracking Gantt view. This view is similar to the standard Gantt chart, but it displays the baseline bars (typically in grey) directly underneath the current schedule bars (typically in blue and red).

This visual comparison makes it immediately obvious where your project is deviating from the original plan. If a current task bar is longer than its baseline bar or is starting later, you know that the task is delayed. The Tracking Gantt provides an intuitive, graphical way to see your project's schedule variance at a glance.

For a more detailed, numerical analysis, you can apply the "Variance" table to any task view. This table displays columns that show the difference between the baseline and current values for key fields like Start, Finish, and Work. For example, the "Finish Variance" column will show you exactly how many days a task is finishing ahead of or behind its baseline finish date. The ability to use these tools to identify and quantify variances was a critical analysis skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Rescheduling Uncompleted Project Work

As you track progress, you will often find that some tasks were not started or completed on schedule. This can leave you with a project plan where some tasks are shown as starting or finishing in the past, which is not realistic. The 74-343 Exam covered the tools for handling this situation. The primary tool for this is the "Reschedule Uncompleted Work" feature, which is part of the "Update Project" dialog box.

This feature will find any uncompleted tasks or portions of tasks that are scheduled to have occurred before a specified status date and will move them to start on or after that status date. This is an essential step for keeping your project plan clean and ensuring that your forward-looking schedule is realistic. It effectively pushes all the delayed work into the future.

It is important to understand the impact that this will have on your project's overall finish date. If a task on the critical path is delayed and rescheduled, it will push out the entire project's finish date. The ability to use this feature to clean up the schedule and then analyze its impact on the project's timeline was a key operational skill tested by the 74-343 Exam.

Using and Customizing Views and Tables

Microsoft Project provides a rich set of views and tables to help you analyze your project data from different perspectives. The 74-343 Exam required you to be proficient in using and switching between these different presentations of your data. The most common view is the Gantt Chart, which provides a timeline-based view of your tasks. The Network Diagram view shows tasks as nodes in a flowchart, which is excellent for visualizing complex task dependencies. The Task Usage view provides a timesheet-style grid showing work distribution over time.

Each view can be combined with different tables. A table simply changes the columns that are displayed in the sheet portion of the view. For example, the default "Entry" table shows basic task information. The "Cost" table shows cost-related fields like Fixed Cost, Total Cost, and Baseline Cost. The "Variance" table, as discussed in the previous part, shows the difference between your planned and actual schedule and costs.

The ability to switch between these views and tables is essential for a complete analysis. For example, to analyze resource costs, you might switch to the Resource Sheet view and apply the Cost table. The 74-343 Exam would expect you to know which view and table combination is most appropriate for analyzing a specific aspect of your project.

Filtering, Grouping, and Highlighting Project Data

In a large project plan with hundreds or thousands of tasks, it can be difficult to find the specific information you are looking for. The 74-343 Exam tested your ability to use the tools for organizing and analyzing this data. "Filtering" allows you to temporarily hide the tasks that you are not interested in, showing only the ones that meet a specific criteria. Project 2013 came with many built-in filters, such as filters to show only critical tasks, milestones, or tasks that are behind schedule. You could also create your own custom filters.

"Grouping" allows you to reorganize and summarize your task list based on the values in a specific field. For example, you could group your entire task list by the resource who is assigned to each task. This would give you a clear view of the workload for each team member. You could apply multi-level groups to further refine your analysis.

"Highlighting" is similar to filtering, but instead of hiding the tasks that do not match your criteria, it simply applies a colored highlight to the ones that do. This is useful for drawing attention to specific tasks, such as all the tasks assigned to a particular resource, while still seeing them in the context of the overall project plan. Mastering these data analysis tools was a key skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Creating Custom Fields, Formulas, and Indicators

While Microsoft Project has a vast number of built-in fields, you will often need to track information that is specific to your organization or project. The 74-343 Exam required you to know how to create custom fields to store this information. You can create custom fields of various types, such as Text, Number, Date, or Flag.

The real power of custom fields comes from their ability to hold formulas. You can create a formula for a custom field that performs a calculation based on the values in other project fields. For example, you could create a custom number field with a formula that calculates a risk score for each task based on its cost and duration. This allows you to extend the data model of Project to meet your specific business needs.

To make the output of these custom fields more visually intuitive, you can use "graphical indicators." You can configure a custom field to display a specific icon, such as a red, yellow, or green traffic light, based on its value. For example, your risk score field could be configured to show a green circle for low-risk tasks and a red diamond for high-risk tasks. The ability to create these custom fields with formulas and graphical indicators was an advanced customization skill tested on the 74-343 Exam.

Creating and Customizing Project Reports

Project 2013 introduced a completely redesigned and much more powerful reporting engine, and a deep understanding of this feature was a major objective of the 74-343 Exam. The new reporting feature provided a set of pre-built, dashboard-style reports that were highly graphical and easy to read. These included reports like the "Burndown" report for agile projects, the "Cost Overview" report, and the "Project Overview" report, which provided a high-level summary of the project's status.

While the built-in reports were very useful, the real power was in the ability to create your own custom reports from scratch. When you create a new report, you are given a blank canvas. You can then add various elements to this canvas, including charts, tables, and text boxes. You can create pie charts, bar charts, and other visuals to represent your project data in a compelling way.

For each chart or table you add to a report, you can select exactly which fields you want to display, how you want to sort and filter the data, and how you want to format the output. The ability to design and build a custom report from the ground up to meet the specific needs of your stakeholders was a key communication and analysis skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Formatting and Sharing Project Reports

Once you have created a custom report, the 74-343 Exam expected you to know how to format it for a professional appearance and how to share it with others. The reporting engine provided a rich set of formatting options. You could change the colors, fonts, and styles of your charts and tables to match your company's branding. You could add pictures, shapes, and text boxes to provide context and explanations for the data being presented.

The design tools were very similar to those found in other Microsoft Office applications like PowerPoint and Excel, making them familiar to most users. The goal was to create a report that was not just informative, but also visually appealing and easy to understand for a non-technical audience.

After you had finalized the design of your report, you needed to be able to share it. You could print the report directly from Project. You could also easily copy the entire report and paste it into another application, like an email or a Word document. For more formal sharing, you could export the report to various formats, such as a PDF file. The ability to manage the entire lifecycle of a report, from creation to distribution, was a key competency for the 74-343 Exam.

Understanding Earned Value Analysis (EVA)

For projects that required a more rigorous and quantitative measure of performance, the 74-343 Exam covered the concepts of Earned Value Analysis (EVA). EVA is an industry-standard methodology for measuring project performance that integrates the measures of scope, cost, and schedule. Microsoft Project has built-in support for calculating and displaying the key EVA metrics.

The three fundamental metrics you needed to understand were the Planned Value (PV), the Earned Value (EV), and the Actual Cost (AC). The Planned Value (also known as BCWS) is the budgeted cost of the work that was scheduled to be completed as of a specific date. The Actual Cost (ACWP) is the actual amount of money that has been spent to complete the work as of that date. The Earned Value (BCWP) is the budgeted cost of the work that has actually been completed.

From these three core values, you can calculate the key performance indicators: the Cost Variance (CV = EV - AC) and the Schedule Variance (SV = EV - PV). A negative variance indicates that the project is over budget or behind schedule. While the 74-343 Exam did not require you to be a deep expert in EVA, it did expect you to be able to define these key terms and interpret the basic variance calculations.

Creating Visual Reports with Excel and Visio

In addition to the built-in reporting engine, Project 2013 also offered a feature called Visual Reports. The 74-343 Exam required you to be familiar with this feature. Visual Reports allows you to export your project data to Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Visio to create dynamic, interactive reports and diagrams. This was particularly useful for performing more advanced data analysis than what was possible in the standard reports.

When you create a Visual Report for Excel, Project exports the project's time-phased data into a cube format and automatically creates a PivotTable and a PivotChart in Excel. This allows you to slice and dice your project data in any way you want, creating highly customized and interactive charts and tables. This was the recommended way to perform detailed trend analysis on your project's cost and work data.

Similarly, you could export data to Visio to create pivot diagrams. This was useful for creating visual representations of your resource or task data. While you were not expected to be an Excel or Visio expert for the 74-343 Exam, you needed to know what the Visual Reports feature was, the applications it integrated with, and the types of advanced, interactive reports it could produce.

Customizing the Microsoft Project Environment

To improve efficiency and tailor the software to your personal workflow, Microsoft Project 2013 offered several customization options. The 74-343 Exam would expect you to be familiar with these capabilities. The primary interface element that could be customized was the Ribbon. You could create your own custom tabs on the Ribbon and add any of Project's built-in commands to them. This allowed you to group the commands that you use most frequently into a single, convenient location.

Another key customization area was the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). The QAT is the small toolbar that appears at the very top of the Project window. By default, it contains a few common commands like Save and Undo. You could add any command to the QAT, providing one-click access to your favorite features without having to navigate through the Ribbon tabs.

These customizations allow you to create a more personalized and productive user experience. The 74-343 Exam would test your ability to perform these basic customizations, demonstrating that you could adapt the tool to your specific project management style and needs.

Sharing Custom Elements with the Organizer

As you customize your project environment by creating custom views, tables, filters, and reports, you will often want to reuse these elements in other projects or share them with other project managers. The 74-343 Exam covered the use of the Organizer as the tool for managing and sharing these custom elements. The Organizer provides a simple, two-paned interface for copying elements between different project files.

On one side of the Organizer, you would typically have your current project file, and on the other side, you would have the "Global.mpt" file. The Global.mpt is a special template file that stores all the default settings and custom elements that are available to all new projects you create on your computer. By copying a custom view from your current project into the Global.mpt, you make that view available for use in any other project.

The Organizer is the central hub for managing the reusability of your customizations. You can use it to copy custom calendars, fields, groups, and almost any other custom element. The ability to use the Organizer to standardize your project management environment by sharing a common set of custom tools was a key administrative skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Managing Programs with Multiple Projects

In many organizations, projects are part of larger programs. The 74-343 Exam required you to know how to manage a collection of related projects in Microsoft Project. The primary mechanism for this is to use a "master project." A master project is a special project file that does not contain any tasks of its own. Instead, it contains links to other, individual project files, which are referred to as "subprojects."

When you insert a subproject into a master project, you get a consolidated view of all the tasks from all the linked projects. This allows a program manager to see the entire schedule for the program in a single Gantt chart. They can analyze the overall critical path, which may span across multiple subprojects, and see the interdependencies between the different projects.

The master project provides a read-only or read-write link to the subprojects, allowing for both centralized reporting and, if needed, centralized control. The ability to create a master project and insert subprojects to get a program-level view of schedule and resources was an important skill for managing more complex project environments, and a key topic for the 74-343 Exam.

Sharing Resources Across Multiple Projects

Just as you can link project schedules, you can also share resources across multiple projects. The 74-343 Exam covered the concept of a shared resource pool. A shared resource pool is a central project file that contains only a list of resources; it has no tasks. Individual project files, known as "sharer files," can then be linked to this central resource pool.

When a project is linked to the resource pool, it uses the resources from that central file instead of its own local resources. This has several major benefits. It ensures that the information for each resource, such as their cost rates and calendar, is consistent across all projects. Most importantly, it allows you to see a resource's total workload across all the projects they are assigned to.

This is critical for identifying resource overallocations at a program level. A resource might look fine in two individual projects, but when their total workload from both projects is combined, they might be severely overallocated. The shared resource pool makes these cross-project conflicts visible. The ability to create and use a shared resource pool was a key advanced resource management skill for the 74-343 Exam.

Integrating Project with SharePoint

The 74-343 Exam touched on the collaborative features offered through integration with Microsoft SharePoint. Project 2013 allowed you to synchronize your project plan with a SharePoint task list. When you synchronized a project, a new task list would be created on a SharePoint site, and all the tasks from your project plan would be populated into that list.

This provided a simple, web-based way for team members to view and update their assigned tasks without needing to have Microsoft Project installed on their computers. A team member could go to the SharePoint site, see a list of their tasks, and mark them as complete. The next time the project manager opened the project file and synchronized it with SharePoint, these updates would be automatically pulled back into the project plan.

While this feature did not provide the full functionality of a dedicated enterprise project management server, it offered a lightweight and accessible way to improve team collaboration and communication. A conceptual understanding of this synchronization capability and its benefits for team engagement was an important aspect of the 74-343 Exam.

Comprehensive Review of 74-343 Exam Objectives

As you complete your studies, a final, comprehensive review of the official 74-343 Exam objectives is crucial. The exam was structured into five main domains. First, review "Initialize a Project," ensuring you are confident in creating a project file and setting up the project calendar. Second, go over "Create a Task-Based Schedule." This is a massive domain; you must be an expert in creating a WBS, defining durations and dependencies, and understanding the core scheduling concepts.

Third, review "Manage Resources and Assignments." Be prepared for deep questions on creating resources, making assignments, and, most importantly, identifying and resolving resource overallocations using both manual and automatic leveling techniques. Fourth, revisit "Track and Analyze a Project." You must know how to set a baseline, enter actual progress, and use the Tracking Gantt and variance tables to analyze performance.

Finally, review "Communicate Project Information." This covers your ability to use the built-in reports, create custom reports, and share project data with stakeholders. A systematic final pass through these five domains, ensuring you have the hands-on skills for each objective, will leave you fully prepared for the 74-343 Exam.

Navigating the Exam Format and Question Types

The 74-343 Exam was not a standard multiple-choice test. It was a performance-based exam that presented you with a series of tasks to perform within a simulated Microsoft Project 2013 environment. You would be given a project scenario and then asked to complete a specific task, such as creating a new calendar, leveling an overallocated resource, or creating a custom report.

This format meant that rote memorization was not enough; you had to have genuine, hands-on experience with the software. You needed to know exactly which buttons to click, which dialog boxes to open, and which settings to change to accomplish the given task. The best way to prepare for this format is through extensive practice. Use a copy of Project 2013 and work through as many different scenarios as you can.

Read each task instruction very carefully. The exam was designed to be precise. If it asked you to create a specific type of report with a specific name, you had to follow those instructions exactly. There was typically no partial credit. A calm, methodical approach, where you read each instruction, perform the required steps, and then double-check your work, was the key to success.

Final Tips

In the final days before your 74-343 Exam, the best use of your time is to practice. Get into the software and work through the common tasks associated with each of the five exam domains. Create a project from scratch, build a schedule, assign and level resources, track progress, and build a custom report. This muscle memory will be invaluable during the performance-based exam.

On the day of the exam, make sure you are well-rested and have had a good meal. Arrive at the testing center with time to spare to avoid any unnecessary anxiety. Once the exam starts, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the simulated environment. Read each task carefully before you start clicking. Do not rush. The exam was designed to give you enough time to complete all the tasks if you know the material.

If you get stuck on a particular task, do not panic. Mark it for review and move on to the next one. You can come back to it later. Sometimes, working on a different task can jog your memory. Trust in your preparation. Passing the 74-343 Exam was a significant accomplishment that provided a clear, verifiable credential of your expertise in managing projects with one of the most widely used project management tools in the world.

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