Linking Project tasks Create lag time and lead time Life can be complicated. What if your plan needs to include complex task relationships? In Project, you can build in a delay between the finish of one task and the start of another. Or you can make one task overlap with another.

Linking Project tasks Create lag time and lead time The picture illustrates each approach. For delay, use lag time. This accounts for something that must happen between two tasks, such as waiting for a shipment of supplies to arrive. For overlap, use lead time. If a task can start a week before the previous one is finished, a lead time of seven days gets that second ball rolling.

Linking Project tasks Lag time Lag time is a delay between dependent tasks. For example, suppose you plan to start editing a manual three days after writing starts. For the Edit Manual task, youd enter 3 in the Lag field on the Predecessors tab in the Task Information dialog box, and then click OK.

Linking Project tasks Lag time Lag time is a delay between dependent tasks. You can also enter lag time directly in the Predecessors column of the successor task in the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view. If Write Manual is Task 1 and Edit Manual is Task 2, in the Predecessors column of Task 2, you could type 1SS3.

Linking Project tasks Lead time Lead time is overlap between dependent tasks. For example, if the Prepare Binders task can start two days before its predecessor task Print Manual is finished, you can create a lead time of two days, and work on the tasks will overlap, proceeding at the same time.

Linking Project tasks Lead time Lead time is overlap between dependent tasks. Lead time is entered as a negative value in the Lag field on the Predecessors tab in the Task Information dialog box. For this example, youd double-click Prepare Binders to open the dialog box, select the Predecessors tab, then type -2 in the Lag field. Finally, youd click OK.