Ian’s Online Technical Notebook

First thing I did was downloaded the latest PRINCE2 2009 Process Model diagram which is available in PDF on the PRINCE2 website.

Next I loaded up Microsoft Project 2010 and entered the high level task I am going to use which in this case is the ‘Starting up a project’ stage.

Next I want to add a subtask which will be the start of my list of activities assigned to the ‘Starting up a project’ task.

To make this task a subtask of the line above click on the icon on the ribbon. I then added the other activities in the same way.

Now I have added my activities as subtasks I can now start to assign durations to them. These can obviously be changed but for now the typical rule is whatever you estimate then 100%.

You can see that it has underlined the Finish date of the task because I have subtasks that require more time. Some of the subtasks are done in a specific order so I am now going to add the number of the preceding task in the Predecessors cell which will move the tasks around on the Gantt chart.

I could also add resources and so on but I will leave it there for a simple introduction to adding tasks and subtasks to a project file in Project 2010. You will see that it has moved the entries around but the Finish date of the original task is still the same as before. You could enter in a new date or click on the task and click on the Auto Schedule button on the ribbon or use Ctrl + Shift + A on the keyboard. Now we can see that our project stage is due to end on 24/12/2009.

I hope that interests somebody. Entering new tasks and subtasks in Project 2010 seems a little more intuitive than with previous versions but only time will tell.