1. Title of presentation goes here Name of presenter Location/date © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Organizing Tasks Using Outlining and Work Breakdown Structures Presented by: Kevin Kelley, Director of Project Management, Rapp Collins Worldwide Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter - Tuesday, July 11, 2006 © 2005 MPA. All rights reserved.

2. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Organizing Your Project After you’ve defined all of your project activities (tasks) and entered them into Microsoft Project, you may want to organize these activities into “phases” or groups of closely related activities that will be completed and/or managed together. You can create phases in your project schedule by using the Formatting toolbar and indenting or outdenting tasks to create summary tasks and subtasks. When a summary task (Phase) is created, it will “roll-up” the specific information from the subtasks below it. You can create up to nine (9) summary levels within a project.

3. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Using Summary Tasks & Subtasks To make a task a subtask, click on the “indent” arrow on the Formatting toolbar. The task will now be indented under the task above it which has now become a summary task. Looking at your gantt chart, you’ll see that a bold, black bar is now spanning the timeline for the total duration of the individual subtasks under the summary task. To create a subtask of a subtask, simply indent a task a second time. The original subtask is now also a summary task. To remove a subtask, click on the “outdent” arrow. Use the “+” and “-” signs next to a summary tasks to show (+) or hide (-), the subtasks below it.

4. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Gantt Chart View with Summary Tasks and Subtasks

5. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Tips for Using Summary Tasks and Subtasks You cannot delete a summary task without deleting the subtasks below it. If you need to remove a summary task, outdent its subtasks first and then delete the task row of the summary task. Use the “Show” drop-down button from the Formatting toolbar to show tasks at a specified outline level. This is very beneficial for summarizing and simplifying a project schedule for Senior Managers or those who don’t need to see all of the details. To create a summary task for the entire project, click Tools, Options. On the View tab, under Outline Options, click on the “Show project summary task” flag. This will create a new top line summary task based upon your project’s filename. To show outline numbers, click on the “Show outline number” flag on the Tools, Options, View tab or select Insert, Column and select “Outline Number” in the Field Name box.

6. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Gantt Chart Views Showing Outline Levels

7. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Gantt Chart Views Showing Outline Numbers

8. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Working with a Work Breakdown Structure For organizations that use a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Project can be customized to establish WBS codes that correspond to the hierarchy and structure in the WBS. WBS codes are derived from outline numbers by default, but the numbering can be changed to include ordered numbers, ordered uppercase and lowercase letters, and unordered characters. Click Project, WBS, Define Code to customize the WBS code structure. You can also choose to automatically generate WBS codes for new tasks when they are added to your project schedule. Select Insert, Column, WBS to add the WBS code column to the project view.

9. © 2006 MPA. All rights reserved. Gantt Chart Views Showing Customized WBS Codes