MS Project 2010: Advanced Task management

Linking Tasks Automatically, Entering Lag times, Changing Task Relationships and other advanced task related topics. Video from Project Management Fundamentals, a new type of textbook designed to be: granular, easy to use with a "flipped" classroom approach, and designed for electronic distribution on iPads, kindle readers, and PCs/Mac. Find out more http://pmf.education/

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Closed Caption:

welcome to this short video on advanced
task management i have a new project
here and i already have set my new task
to be auto scheduled let's enter a few
tasks ask a ask be task see task the and
task e let's make each of these take
four days of time what we're going to do
now is we're going to link these tasks
together and let me show you a couple
shortcuts for linking tasks if you're
just setting up simple finish to start
relationships we can actually select a
range of tasks we want two links that
say 1 through 5 if we're going to link
them sequentially we can once we have
them selected go under task and we can
click on this link button and that's
going to just link the task together for
us it's a quick and easy way that we can
link past together in this case
sequentially from the top of the list to
the bottom of the list going to undo
that because there's sometimes in which
we may want to not go sequentially but
we do have quite a number of finish to
start linkages that we want to do i'm
going to hold down now the control key
and i'm going to select row 3 i'm going
to go Row 1 Row 504 and then row to know
if i click link you'll see that it's
going to link these tasks in the order
in which I had selected them while
holding down the control key also
whether we've linked them automatically
like this or whether we've linked them
by Pettitte putting in predecessor
information into the individual tasks we
can unlink them in Mass using that
unlink button
now you can see here that i already have
some tasks that are off of my calendar
screen here and i can certainly hold
down the shift key and the maze little
scroll wheel to zoom in or zoom out
there is another way that you can do
that you can also do a ctrl G and
allowed you to simply go to a particular
task ID so if i want to go to the part
of the Gantt chart that shows me task
see i can simply select three and it
will scroll me down to where I can see
task three
that's kind of a useful shortcut
especially get into very large projects
let's look at this duration aspect of
our tasks here we have by default days
as the period of time that we measure we
can also do this in ours so 2h will give
us hours we can do it in weeks to w will
give us weeks we can also do it in
months
oops I'm sorry one mo n will give us a
month 1 men will give us minutes okay I
can't imagine a task for actually want
to schedule in minutes but apparently
it's possible
let's go back to set these all 24 days
4d and we'll see here that when we're
this task a which starts on friday it's
going to end the next wednesday because
we have four working days so this
doesn't just include calendar days we
have a calendar the standard calendar
that says we don't work on saturday and
sunday but we can also do is we can
override that so we can say for elapsed
days or three days and then we will
ignore those non-working times on the
calendar so you can also do that you can
say we want 4e weeks and so this
particular task has be now
I go down a little bit it will take four
weeks and it will span the Working Time
will span over those saturdays and
sundays now let's go back once again use
a couple of these skills we just learned
first of all let's go to four days again
for our various tasks make sure they're
all four days and then we're going to
unlink them in mass and then we're going
to go ahead and link them just from task
8th route ascii I just held the shift
key select all those and link them
together
I seem to be out of range of my and
charts i'm going to do ctrl G and go to
task number one in order to be able to
see the beginning of my project here now
we can also have these relationships for
example if you notice your test b is
related to a task a by this finish to
start relationship which is sun shown
here in the predecessor tab but let's
say that task a was putting on the paint
on our walls and then we need to come in
and we need to actually put down the
carpet or put in the furniture but we
need some period of time to elapse
between when we paint and when we
actually start moving stuff in in order
for the paint to dry
let's say that the paint needs to drive
for two days for it to be properly dry
notice of what that does to our calendar
we now have this ending on the end of
the day thursday but our next task is
not going to start once again to the
beginning of tuesday morning
now that's all well and good but we
noted that the paint drying it's not an
activity that just happens to happen
during workdays that could also happen
over the weekend so we could certainly
change our relationship here and say
that that is going to be 2e days elapsed
days and notice how that changes our
calendar yes we end on a thursday we
have two days friday and saturday of
course this next task task be the actual
work can't start on Sunday morning so it
starts on Monday morning
that's a better way to enter that type
of lag now let's look at another one of
these tasks here and enter another type
of lag let's say that task see we find
could actually start three days after
task B starts so what we can do here as
we look at the relationship on past see
and we're going to change that to start
to start relationship with the lag of
three days that's what that looks like
there's now a relationship from the
start at asked me to the start of tasks
see and we have a lag time of three days
built into this relationship
ok let's just start start to be a little
bit more clear and it certainly is
represented well in the Gantt chart
let's look at another example of how we
might use like that's once again a type
of relationship where we need something
to occur but we need to occur this case
during working time so let's say task
see is actually ordering some equipment
and pass d is actually doing something
with that equipment we may find that
well it really doesn't take four days to
order the equipment there's really just
one day of ordering but there's three
days of lag until we actually get it
takes three working days until UPS or
FedEx or whoever's delivering it
actually gets these parts to us so we
changed it to one day and we're going to
change
relationship between D and C so that
there is this built-in lag-time in this
case we're going to say three and we
will three days because UPS and FedEx
let's just say for the point of this
example are not going to be delivering
on saturday or sunday or not be movin
the package around so we need actual
three working days in here notice what
has changed and why this is a much more
realistic view of our project now if we
had four days of work actually assigned
to task see we're going to actually be
using resources are tying up our
allocating resources as during this
entire four days but instead we know
that our resources only need to be
allocated during that first day and the
subsequent days we really don't have any
resources devoted to this particular
task it's just that it's going to take a
little while before we can start the
next one now one of things that we can
do for a particular task as we can set a
deadline for it
so let's say that we want to set a
deadline for task see and this is not
necessarily a hard-and-fast date but we
want to just mark at the time in which
we expect that equipment to arrive in
our calendar so on
we're going to go over here to advance
and you can actually then set a deadline
so in this case i'm going to set a
deadline here of all this April fourth
and you'll see on the graph how this is
made a actual deadline indicator to in
indicate when we expect to receive this
particular project product so this may
trigger us to actually look and see
did we receive this by this picture date
and if not maybe we need to track it or
do something to figure out where that
shipment is so hopefully this video has
given you some good tools that you can
use for advanced task manager