Microsoft Project For Dummies. Cynthia Snyder Dionisio

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      With the invention of computer outlining, the capability to focus on only certain portions of an outline comes into its own, because you can easily expand and collapse an outline to show or hide different levels of information — or entire sections of your outline. The black triangle symbol next to the Walls summary task in Figure 3-1 indicates that all subtasks below it are displayed. The clear triangle next to the Equipment summary task indicates that the subtasks aren’t displayed. Remember that all summary tasks are in bold in the project outline.

      This capability means that you can hide all but the upper level of tasks in a project to give your manager an overview of progress. Or you can collapse every phase of your project except the one in progress so that your team can focus on only those tasks in a status meeting. Or you can collapse most of your outline to make it easy to move to a late phase of a very large schedule.

If you want to hide all the summary tasks and just see the child tasks, you can go to the Format tab in the Gantt Chart Tools context tab group and uncheck the Summary Tasks box (see Figure 3-2). Another nifty feature in Project is the ability to choose which level of detail you want to see in your outline. To wrangle the tasks to the level you want them, it’s best to work with the View tab. In the View tab under the Data group, there is a drop-down option called Outline. Figure 3-3 shows you the commands you can use to control how your outline appears.

      You can use the Show Subtasks command and the Hide Subtasks command at any level of summary tasks. Just select the summary task you want — regardless of whether it’s at Level 1 or Level 5 — and click Show Subtasks to see everything underneath, or click Hide Subtasks to just see the summary task.

      When you want an overview of your project, it’s helpful to look at it from Level 1 or Level 2. You can see Desert Rose Security at Level 1 in Figure 3-2. Notice the duration for each of the summary level tasks. You can see how they nest within the Project Summary Task.

Figure 3-4 shows Perimeter and Equipment at Level 2. This level gives you a good overview of the work with a bit more detail than Level 1. Level 2 is the view I like to show management or other high-level stakeholders to give them an overall understanding of the project.

      © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

      FIGURE 3-3: Outline options.

      © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

      FIGURE 3-4: Level 2 outline.

To quickly reveal all subtasks in a project, click the Outline button and then click All Subtasks.

      

To show subtasks from the keyboard, you can press Alt+Shift+* (asterisk). To hide subtasks, you can press Alt+Shift+- (hyphen) or Alt+Shift+– (minus sign) if you’re using the numeric keypad.

Showing Up Again and Again: Recurring Tasks

      Some tasks occur repeatedly in projects. For example, attending a monthly project debriefing or generating a quarterly project report is considered a recurring task.

No one wants to create all the tasks for the monthly debriefing in a project that will take a year to complete. Instead, you can designate the recurrence, and Project automatically creates the 12 tasks for you.

      Here’s how to create a recurring task:

      1 Click the Task tab on the Ribbon, click the bottom part of the Task button (with the down arrow) in the Insert group, and then click Recurring Task.Figure 3-5 shows the Recurring Task Information dialog box that will insert a recurring task for a monthly meeting on the 10th of every month. The meeting is scheduled to occur every month from January through July.

      2 In the Task Name box, type a name for the task.

      3 In the Duration box, click the spinner arrows to set a duration, or type a duration, such as 1d for 1 day.Edit the abbreviation to specify a different time unit, if needed. You can read about the abbreviations that you can use for units of duration — such as h for hours — in Chapter 5.

      4 Select a recurrence pattern by selecting the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly radio button.The option you select provides different choices for the rest of the recurrence pattern.

      5 Depending on the selections offered to you, make choices for the rest of the pattern.For example, if you select the Weekly radio button, you must choose a Recur Every x Week(s) On setting and then choose a day such as Friday. Or, if you select Monthly, you must specify every two months, every three months, and so on. You also need to choose which day of the month the task is to recur.

      6 In the Range of Recurrence area, type a date in the Start box; then select and fill in either the End After or End By option.For example, you might start on January 1 and end after 12 occurrences to create a task that occurs every month for a year.

      7 Click the OK button to save the recurring task.

      If your settings cause a task to fall on a nonworking day (for example, if you choose to meet on the eighth day of every month and the eighth day is a Sunday in one of those months), a dialog box appears, asking you how to handle this situation. You can choose not to create the task, or you can let Project adjust the day to the next working day in that period.

      © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

      FIGURE 3-5: The Recurring Task Information dialog box.

To assign resources to a recurring task, you have to assign the resources to the individual recurrences, not to the “summary” recurring task. If you assign resources to the summary recurring task, Project doesn’t calculate the hours of work correctly. I talk about assigning resources to tasks in Chapter 9.

Setting Milestones

      Milestones are signposts that mark significant events. Examples of milestones are the approval of a prototype (although the deliberations to make that decision might have taken months), the completion of a key deliverable, or the start or end of a project phase.

      Some people include tasks such as Design Completed or Testing Completed at the end of each phase of their projects. They can then create timing relationships to the moment of completion — for example, allowing the production of a drug to proceed after the testing and approval is complete. Such milestones also alert you and your team members to a moment of progress in your project that can help keep the team motivated.

Project creates new tasks with an estimated duration of one day unless you enter a duration. To create СКАЧАТЬ