How Does Each Task Depend on Other Tasks?
Most likely, the people who work on your project would revolt if you
asked them to do all the tasks at the same time. More importantly, some
work simply has to be completed before other work can start. Trying to
mix a drink before the ice is frozen is a messy and diluted affair. In
Project, a relationship between two tasks is known as a task dependency or task link. Defining the dependencies between tasks helps you determine which tasks start when, as well as when the project might finish.
Creating task dependencies
To link the tasks in the graduation party example, do the following:
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Select the tasks related to making the pizzas (from “Buy the food” to “Assemble pizzas”).
You can select tasks in any number of ways. You can drag your mouse
over the ID cells in several rows to select the tasks. To select
individual tasks, Ctrl-click each individual task’s ID cell. To select
adjacent tasks, click the first task, and then Shift-click the last
task.
Project highlights the selected tasks. -
To create links between the selected tasks, choose Task→Schedule→Link Tasks, which looks like links of chain (shown in Figure 7).
The tasks automatically cascade with Finish-to-Start dependencies
so one occurs after the other. If you want to remove the dependencies,
simply click Unlink Tasks, which looks like a broken link.
Note
When you link the tasks, you might notice that the summary task has
two bars. If a summary task is manually scheduled, Project keeps track
of the duration you specify for the summary task, as well as the
duration of all the subtasks . That way, you can see whether your estimate for the summary task duration is long enough for all the subtasks.
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Repeat steps 1 and 2 to link the tasks for preparing the drinks.
The two workflows for food and drinks can occur at the same time, so
in the next step, you’ll show that you’ve reached the food and drinks
milestone when the pizzas and the bar are assembled. -
Click “Assemble pizzas,” Ctrl-click the “Food and drinks ready” milestone, and then choose Task→Schedule→Link Tasks.
A task link appears between the two task bars in the Gantt Chart timescale. -
To link the last drink task to
the milestone, click “Assemble bar,” Ctrl-click “Food and drinks
ready,” and then choose Task→Schedule→Link Tasks once more.
Tasks 5 and 9 are the last steps for assembling the food and drinks,
respectively, so linking these two tasks to the milestone moves the
milestone to occur after both tasks are complete.
Note
Relationships between tasks come in several flavors, with
the most common being Finish to Start, as illustrated in the previous
steps.
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