Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Documenting Task Details

Providing team members with clear guidance about the work they need to perform and the results you expect is important, but task names aren’t the place to get into detail. You need a place to store all the details that explain how to perform tasks completely and correctly. Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about keeping track of lots of loose documents: You can link external documents to tasks or add details to notes attached to tasks. This section describes both options.

Documenting Work Details in Word

Ideally, a work-package document describes the work to perform, how to know when it’s done, and how to tell whether it’s done right. A work package for creating an online-donation mechanism might include the steps for designing the online form, linking to the merchant account, and sending a confirmation. The document could specify the information the donor has to provide and the methods of payments to accept. The document could also describe the desired results, including the transactions processed and the notifications that are sent for both successful and rejected transactions.

After you create work-package documents that spell out the details of tasks (the box on Creating a Reusable Work Package describes one way to simplify this chore), you’re likely to refer to those documents as you work on your Project schedule. There’s no need to open them by hand or to try to remember where they are. Instead, you can insert a hyperlink from a task in the Project ...