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Define and schedule tasks in Microsoft Project
Summary
It's important to correctly define and schedule tasks when managing your projects. The work breakdown structure will help you organize and manage your project's tasks in Microsoft Project.
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When you use Microsoft Project, it’s important to correctly define your tasks
and their related information. If you define them badly, you’ll compromise
Project’s usefulness for the rest of your project. It won’t matter how well you
track actual work and progress. If you begin with a poorly structured plan,
you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.
Correctly defining and scheduling your project’s tasks will make your job much easier. You’ll make better use of your resources and give your project a much better chance of succeeding.
I’ll describe some best practices for breaking down your project’s work into groups of well-defined tasks for your resources. It won’t make you an expert overnight, but it will get you started down the right path.
The high concepts: The work breakdown structure
For those new to project management, the work breakdown structure (WBS) might seem to be merely an outline for a project. In fact, the summary task/task relationship in Project looks like an outline for a research paper. While it does end up as a familiar organizational method for grouping your tasks, it’s more than that.
As a management concept, WBS is one of the project manager’s primary tools for ensuring that the project plan contains all the tasks that need to be done and ONLY the tasks that need to be done. This is where the scope statement or statement of work becomes more than a document. The work breakdown structure is where the project manager converts the statement of work into groups of tasks.
There are lots of methods for creating the WBS for a project. I’ll cover the basics, just to give you a taste.
For my example, I’ll look at a software development project and use a method that I call “decomposition,” though some refer to it as “top-down.” It basically breaks down the project into groups, and then breaks those groups down into smaller units, and so on until you’ve reached a satisfactory level of detail for managing the plan.
Start off by thinking about how a software project might be broken down. Often the software development lifecycle can lend a hand in creating the first breakdown by phase. Figure A shows how this first level of breakdown might look in Project. WBS 0 represents the entire project, and WBS 1-5 represent the project’s five phases.
Now let’s look at how the Requirements and Design phases can be broken down further. Figure B shows how this might look.
Notice the WBS field for these new elements of my project breakdown. I’ve broken Requirements into three chunks and Design into four. At this point, and really at the end of each breakdown cycle, it’s important to ask this basic question: Can all the work that needs to be done within a WBS element fall into the groups or categories of its sub-elements? For instance, in the case of my example, I’d ask myself if all the work needed in the Design phase falls under the sub-elements of Functional Design, Wireframe Mockups, Technical Design, or Functional Prototyping.
Correctly defining and scheduling your project’s tasks will make your job much easier. You’ll make better use of your resources and give your project a much better chance of succeeding.
I’ll describe some best practices for breaking down your project’s work into groups of well-defined tasks for your resources. It won’t make you an expert overnight, but it will get you started down the right path.
The high concepts: The work breakdown structure
For those new to project management, the work breakdown structure (WBS) might seem to be merely an outline for a project. In fact, the summary task/task relationship in Project looks like an outline for a research paper. While it does end up as a familiar organizational method for grouping your tasks, it’s more than that.
As a management concept, WBS is one of the project manager’s primary tools for ensuring that the project plan contains all the tasks that need to be done and ONLY the tasks that need to be done. This is where the scope statement or statement of work becomes more than a document. The work breakdown structure is where the project manager converts the statement of work into groups of tasks.
There are lots of methods for creating the WBS for a project. I’ll cover the basics, just to give you a taste.
For my example, I’ll look at a software development project and use a method that I call “decomposition,” though some refer to it as “top-down.” It basically breaks down the project into groups, and then breaks those groups down into smaller units, and so on until you’ve reached a satisfactory level of detail for managing the plan.
Start off by thinking about how a software project might be broken down. Often the software development lifecycle can lend a hand in creating the first breakdown by phase. Figure A shows how this first level of breakdown might look in Project. WBS 0 represents the entire project, and WBS 1-5 represent the project’s five phases.
| Figure A |
 |
Now let’s look at how the Requirements and Design phases can be broken down further. Figure B shows how this might look.
| Figure B |
 |
Notice the WBS field for these new elements of my project breakdown. I’ve broken Requirements into three chunks and Design into four. At this point, and really at the end of each breakdown cycle, it’s important to ask this basic question: Can all the work that needs to be done within a WBS element fall into the groups or categories of its sub-elements? For instance, in the case of my example, I’d ask myself if all the work needed in the Design phase falls under the sub-elements of Functional Design, Wireframe Mockups, Technical Design, or Functional Prototyping.
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Thanks for giving me some basics in WBS. I have been assigned the task of creating one of these schedules in MSProject, and had now clue what I was doing there. The MSHelp guide was of no help to me.
Thanks again, at least I know where to start.