Microsoft Project - The Basics - What Information Required

What data do you need to provide? 

In the project life cycle, Microsoft Project provides you with an instrument that will allow you to set up the plan and then to track the progress made to monitor how far you are with it.
To set up a plan the information that you need to provide is:

• Start/End Date of Project

• Calendars

• Summary tasks

• Tasks

• Milestones

• Durations

• Links / Predecessors

• Resources

• Costs

• Constraints / Deadlines

This should allow you to set up the project plan as required.
Once the project has started, you need to provide the information to monitor the progress made at any point in time.  How detailed the information is depends on the information that you need to extract from the plan.

Do you need to just specify when tasks have started and finished, or do you need to specify how much time each person has spent on each task.  (There are other options in between these two extremes.)

The project completion should not be the end of the process.  By using Microsoft Project, you will have a lot of data that can be analysed.  By studying how the actual project went, in comparison to the planned project, future project plans can be improved.