Task Insertions, Amendments and Other Features in Microsoft Project (Lesson 2)

In our previous lesson, we went through a step by step tutorial on how to get started on a project using Microsoft Project. In this lesson we will learn more about tasks. On completion of thus tutorial, you will be able to:

• Insert new tasks in an existing project, and assess their impact on overall schedules
• Make changes to tasks
• Understand and define milestones in Microsoft Project
• Group tasks in some logical fashion
• Add notes to tasks to provide additional information about specific tasks

Thus, with this tutorial, you will have covered all aspects with respect to definition of tasks as the building entities in project management.

Note: Also be sure to check out the other Microsoft Project tutorials available at Bright Hub.

Let's get back to where we left our first sample project in the last lesson. We had saved our project as concert 1.mpp with the tasks as 

shown in the diagram here. (Note: Please click on any diagram in this article to view a larger picture.)

We would now like to carry out the following enhancements to this project to make this appear more realistic, assuming that there are other staff members available to carry out certain activities, and the Project Manager handles only certain key activities.

1) After asking your assistant to call the auditoriums to check on availabilities and other details, let us say, you would like your assistant to prepare a shortlist based on some criteria you have specified. You will then like to look at this shortlist and take up negotiations with specific auditoriums.

2) Before the task "Book advertisement slots..", we want to insert a task for getting rates from media agencies; and we also want to add a task for final confirmation of matter to the media, to take care of any last minute changes in the matter.

3) Make changes in the task dependencies based on points 1 and 2. In particular, since we are adding a task for final confirmation of matter to the media, you will realize that the task " Book advertisement slots.." need not depend on the auditorium confirmation, but can be taken up parallel to the tasks related to auditoriums. This only needs to follow "Get advertisement rates", and "Finalize Artiste and performance date."

4) Finally, we want to group the tasks functionally under three heads "Operations", "Sales & Marketing", and "Admin". And we will also add milestones for each of these functions.

Here are the steps for carrying out the above enhancements:

1) Load Microsoft Project application and Open the file you had saved as Concert 1 from the right folder (File->Open).

2) Position the mouse pointer on the task "Negotiate with auditorium" and click to highlight this task.

3) To insert a new task above this task, click on "Insert" in the Top menu bar and choose "New Task" (alternatively, you can also press "Insert" key).

4) For the new task, enter task name as "Shortlist auditoriums" and enter duration as 1 day.

5) Similarly enter two more tasks as follows:

• Before "Book advertisement.." add a task "Get rates from media agencies" with a duration of 5 days.
• After "Book advertisement..." add a task "Confirm Final matter to media" with a duration of 1 day. (Hint, for inserting a task after "Book advertisement..", remember to click on the next task i.e., "Print tickets" and then click on Insert->New Task.)
  

You must have noticed that the tasks "Shortlist auditoriums" and "Get rates from media agencies" have their dependencies automatically inserted by the software. This happens by default when you insert a task between two tasks that sequentially followed one another prior to the insertion of the new task. However, for the task "Confirm Final matter to media", the software has no clear clue on where it should be placed, and hence, as we had mentioned in the previous lesson, this task is assumed to start on the Project start date without any predecessor or successor dependencies. We will see how to modify these task dependencies in a while.

Read on to the next page to find out more about working with tasks in Microsoft Project.