Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Putting Tasks in the Right Order

Albert Einstein said, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” The people who work on your project can’t do everything at once, so you have to obey the rules of time and put tasks into a sequence. In Project, a relationship between two tasks is known as a task dependency or a task link. Defining the dependencies between tasks helps you determine which tasks start when, as well as when the project might finish.

To link the tasks for your cycling team, do the following:

1. Select the tasks related to signing up the team (“Research entry requirements” through “Team signup complete”).

   You can select tasks in any number of ways. You can drag your mouse over the several rows to select the tasks. (You can drag over any cells in the rows.) To select individual tasks, Ctrl-click anywhere in each individual task’s row. To select adjacent tasks, click the first task, and then Shift-click the last task.

   No matter which method you use, Project highlights the selected tasks.

2. To create links between the selected tasks, in the Task tab’s Schedule section, click the Link Tasks icon, which looks like links of chain (shown in Figure 4-6).

   The tasks automatically cascade with Finish-to-Start dependencies (How Tasks Affect One Another) so one occurs after the other. If you want to remove the dependencies, simply click Unlink Tasks, which looks like a broken link.

3. Select all the subtasks under the “Raise money” summary task, and link them as explained ...