The principles of Schedules, Work Based Structures, Resources, Effort, Duration… I understand.

But Microsoft Project… Baffles me every time. It seems to work against my logic. I’m stuck with it at work because I’m on Windows, the ‘real’ project managers in our team have fancy Macbooks with OmniPlan, which I can only imagine is more intuitive. I had given up on using it for anything other than a very bloated hierarchical list editor. Gantt charts, levelling, resource allocation, estimates and due dates were all not working the way I wanted. Until I read this in a series of articles at Tech Republic on MS Project:

Duration = Work/assignment Units

And the penny dropped. A lot of the behaviour of MS Project makes sense when you understand that the above formula remains true and unalterable.
The program still annoys me in the way it tries to think for me and automates some of its calculations while you are entering info. (hint: Enter your tasks and durations first, then do your resource allocation) And I am not about to call myself a Project Manager. But I am one step closer to understanding this tool and actually getting a few things done with it instead of spending the day cursing.