From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Put activities in order - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Put activities in order

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- [Instructor] Performing work in the right order is crucial. Construction wouldn't go well if you tried to build a skyscrapers penthouse before the building's foundation. The sequence of activities helps predict when work will occur and how the schedule might change due to resource changes, work delays, scope changes, and so on. The sequence isn't just about which activity comes first, activities can affect each other in several ways. These relationships are called links or dependencies. You can create and view links in a network diagram or Gantt chart. In a network diagram, each activity appears in a box with the activity name and other activity information. Arrows drawn between boxes, represent links between activities. A Gantt chart lists activities on the left. On the right is a timescale. Bars in the timescale show when activities are scheduled. Arrows between the bars, show the activity dependencies. The first step in identifying the dependency is to figure out which activity is the trigger. The linked activities are called predecessors and successors. The predecessor triggers the successor. Let's take a look at how this works in a Gantt chart. In the sample project, the template can't be built without knowing the topics in the outline. So the create outline activity triggers the build template activity. In other words, the predecessor is create outline and the successor is build template. The second step is to determine whether the start or finish date of the predecessor is the trigger. That identifies the first half of the dependency type. In our example, the outline has to be complete, so the dependency type begins with finish. The final step is to determine whether the first activity triggers the start or finish of the second one. That's the second half of the dependency type. When the outline is done, building the template can start. So the dependency type is finished to start. Dependency types identify how dates depend on each other. The finish to start dependency means the finished date of the first activity controls the start date of the second one. Most dependencies are finished to start. In this example, the first several activities are linked with finished to start dependencies. In a finish to finish dependency, the finish date of one activity triggers the finish date of the other. For example, reviewing the manuscript can't finish until the activity right, Chapters 9 through 12 is complete. Start to start means that the start of one activity triggers the start of the other. We'll talk about this type of dependency in another movie. The last type of link, start to finish, doesn't come up very often. The start of one activity determines when another activity finishes. For example, in a retail store, one person's shift can't finish until the next person's shift starts, otherwise the cash register would be left unattended. When project activities are linked to one another, the schedule starts to take shape.

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