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Transcript

Tasks are the backbone of a project, the work items that must be done to complete the project. Understanding how tasks can be structured in your project, and ensuring the list is accurate is one of the first steps in project planning and management. Start on the Tasks section of your project by selecting Tasks from the left panel menu. Note, before you start working with tasks, make sure they’re sorted in numerical order. Click the Task Number column header to re-sort, if needed. Now take a look at how the tasks are organized in this example. Let’s start with tasks 1, 2, and 3. Each of these tasks represents a piece of work that needs to be done. Now look at tasks 4 through 7. These are structured a bit differently. Task 4 is physically aligned with tasks 1 through 3 on the screen, but tasks 5, 6, and 7 are indented. This is what Workfront calls a parent-child task relationship. You’ll often hear this referred to as tasks and subtasks. When this structure is used, the parent tasks are organizers grouping the project in phases or stages, or sometimes representing project milestones. Generally, parent tasks don’t represent work and aren’t assigned to anyone. The child tasks, or subtasks, are the ones that have work attached to them that must be completed. These are the tasks you will assign to members of your project team. Note, Workfront supports up to seven levels of parent-child tasks. In this example, 4 is the parent task. 5, 6, and 7 are the child tasks. Once the work for those three tasks is complete, the parent task, 4, will automatically be marked complete by Workfront. You can change the position of a task using the indent button. Move a task in a level with each click of indent, or move it back a level with the out dent button. These two options, which are also available in right-click, let you build a parent-child task structure. As you plan and manage your project, you’ll see the parent tasks calculate certain information, like duration, planned hours, due dates, etc., based on its child tasks. As you’re planning your project, you tend to mentally divide the work into stages, phases, or groups. This is when the parent-child structure can be used. But not every project needs this structure. All tasks could be at the same level, like tasks 1 through 3, and each represent work to do. How the task list is structured depends on the needs of the project.