Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Making Sure Tasks Are Set Up Correctly

Project can’t read your mind. It can’t point out missing task dependencies or dependencies that depend on the wrong things. Similarly, Project adds the task constraints you tell it to add. The problem is, seemingly innocuous actions can produce constraints you never intended. So review tasks to make sure you have the dependencies and constraints you want—and only those.

What Project can do is make it easier to find task dependencies and constraint problems, as this section explains.

Reviewing Task Dependencies

Following the link lines in a Gantt Chart is like trying to untangle a plate of spaghetti. It’s hard to trace the lines to see if a task links to the right predecessors and successors, or if the dependencies you’ve set up are correct. After things get rolling, you might end up with a task-related problem—the assigned programmer is out of commission while she heals from a flambé cooking incident, say. In that case, you might want to see how that task affects the rest of the schedule. This section explains two ways to do that.

Highlighting Task Paths

A welcome new feature in Project 2013 is task path highlighting, which makes it easy to review both predecessors and successors to find problems with task dependencies. This section provides a rundown on how it works.

Task path highlighting can emphasize the predecessors and successors of the selected task. Although this feature is turned off initially, once you’ve built a schedule of linked tasks, ...