Once you’ve decided which resources to include in your project, you need to add them to your project plan. Using Microsoft Project, you have two methods for adding resources. If you have fewer than 10 or so resources, you can add them one at a time as you assign resources to tasks. If your project includes more than 10 resources, you’re better off creating a resource list before you assign resources to tasks. Adding all resources to your project plan at once by creating a resource list takes less time than adding one resource at a time as you assign resources to tasks.
A resource list includes:
Some tasks might require more than one resource. For example, five painters might be needed to paint the walls of a museum gallery. Most likely, they will either work on the same task or on closely related tasks. There’s no point in assigning each painter one at a time and tracking his or her work separately. To make it easy to assign and track the work of those resources who work together on the same kinds of tasks, you can create sets of resources, each set with its own name.
Grouping resources makes reporting easier in some cases. For example, if you enter cost information into your plan, you can pull together reports on the costs or schedules for each resource set.