Through the series of Articles; so far, we have created:
- A draft Project “Space Debris Robo” was created in “Microsoft Project 2013 – Create Project – Set Project Information” and set the initial Project information.
- To proceed with the Project planning, we must set the Project Options and we did this through “Microsoft Project 2013 – Create Project – Set Project Options” article.
In this article, we start adding the Tasks to our Project “Space Debris Robo”.
What Tasks do we need to add.? We will add high-level tasks; actually these are not tasks, but these are Process Groups; what we discussed in the Article “Project Management : Process Groups“. Actual Tasks and more detailed information we add to our Project as we go.
Step 1. Open our “Space Debris Robo” Project.
Step 2. Add the Tasks under “Task Name“; one task per one line. We can add the task, by just entering the task name under the “Task Name” field OR by pressing the TASK tab in ribbon control-> then clicking on Task from Insert group.
Lets’ add the below Tasks. These are the process groups discussed in our previous article.
Initiating
Planning
Executing
Monitoring and Controlling
Closing
After you add these Tasks, it looks like below in Microsoft Project 2013.
Step 3. Observe that, when you are adding the Tasks; the tasks are Auto Scheduled. And Start & Finish dates are automatically set (we can change them later as we go). And Duration shows in the day(s). Defaults are showing because we already set the Project details in our previous Articles. So, all new Tasks use the same details that we set.
Also notice that Gantt Chart has drawn with task details and also it shows the relation between the tasks. As we do not have any relationship set between the tasks, you do not see any representation of it in the Gantt Chart.
We can add sub-tasks under tasks and these can be automatically aligned with the tasks. We will discuss these more incoming Articles.
Step 4. Now we link these tasks. This is an important step in Project planning. As we don’t have many details now; based on the details we have in “Project Management : Process Groups“, the process groups (the tasks we added) are not sequential; but for the time being, assume these are sequential.
Assume, one Task will start after the completion of another Task.
- Initiating is the key process group to initiate the Project.
- Assume, Planning will start once the project initiation is done.
- Once planning is done; Executing will start.
- Almost from the beginning; Monitoring and Controlling do exist until Project Closure.
- Closing will start once Executing is done.
Based on these assumptions; we modify our tasks to link them to show the dependencies between the tasks. We talk more about this in our next article.
Step 4.1. To link the tasks, we must add the predecessor task number independent task’s Predecessors field. For example, Planning is depending on Initiating to be completed (as per the above assumption). So, we use Initiating task number in Planning’s Predecessors field.
Based on the above details, add the dependencies between the tasks.
Step 5. After adding the dependencies, observe that; the Task start and finish dates are Automatically Adjusted; as the Tasks are Auto Scheduled. Now we adjust the Start dates of the Tasks; based on the high-level information we have from “Microsoft Project 2013 – Create Project – Set Project Information“; the Project will start from October 2018 and will continue until the end of 2020. Based on this information, we adjust the dates; of the Tasks.
- The project duration is 564 days (excluding holidays and weekends). We will split these days for the added tasks.
- Lets’ share this duration as 5% to Initiating, 20% to Planning, 30% to Executing, 40% to Monitoring and Controlling, and 5% to Closing.
- So based on this, we adjust the days: 28 days for Initiating, 113 days for Planning, 169 days for Executing, 226 days for Monitoring and Controlling, and 28 days for Closing.
- Start adding the days in the Duration field for each Task and after the details, the Project looks like below.
Step 6. Observe that, Tasks dates are automatically adjusted. And Timeline is also updated with Start and Finish dates.
Have you observed the Finish date? It is January 15, 2020. But our Project has to complete by end of 2020; that means, in December 2020. Why it is showing the finish date in January 2020? We have added days to each Task. But we haven’t excluded the holidays & weekends. This can be done by assigning & updating Calendars. We will discuss this in the next Articles.
Now we set the Tasks with Duration, Start & Finish dates. Also, we set the Dependencies. Lets’ continue our discussion in the next Article.
<< Marco