Displaying WBS of another task in task name

[Michael]

Hi,

I am facing a peculiar problem. I have two phases in my
project plan. First is a set of artifacts that i need to
prepare for the project (part of pre project planning).
The second is the actual project execution.

For example, for project initiation, i need to prepare a
presentation. The project initiation task is in phase 2
and the presentation preparation is in phase 1. I want to
show the WBS of the phase 2 task in the name of the phase
1 task. For example: phase 1 task should be displayed as
Ref: 1.2.1.2 Prepare Initiation Presentation
Where the 1.2.1.2 is WBS of the Project Initiation
activity.
This is akin to bookmark / reference funtionality of Word.

Do we have similar functionality in MS Project.

Michael

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

I know this doesn't answer your question directly but perhaps a shift in
thinking about the project structure would render the problem moot. The
classic definition of a project's phases includes Initiation, Planning,
Execution, Control, and Closeout (though I personally tend to think of
Execution and Control to be two interwoven and interacting process streams
within the same phase of the project). Thus Project Initiation is not a
single activity, although crossing a go/no-go decision point would certainly
be shown in the plan as a single milestone task, but initiation itself is a
broad phase, represented by a summary task with potentially many additional
subtasks underneath it. I would say your presentation and the other
"aritfacts" are *components* of the Project Initiation phase as a whole, not
something that comes before it. Thus phase 1 in toto would be Project
Initiation. Early in the phase you're preparing the business case,
feasibility studies, early schedule and budget estimates, supporting
documents, etc. At the end of initiation there would be a milestone marking
the decision to proceed and you'd continue on to the Planning Phase where
you prepare the detailed project plan, including the schedule and working
budget and define the other management and controlling processes that will
be used in carrying out the project. When the plan and all its components
and supporting documentation is completed, you pass another milestone
marking the transition from project planning into the project execution
phase.

 

[michaeldsilva]

No this does not solve my problem. It would help to view
my issue from a technical angle and not a project
management angle. I have been in the later for more than a
decade and surely not need any basic lecturing on it.

Michael

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

A note of explanation on what you call a "lecture." Whatever the question
may be that someone posts, it is very likely that there are a number of
people reading the newsgroup who have the same or similar questions but for
some reason or the other have not posed them. You might be expert on formal
project management principles but many people visiting here are not and when
replying to a post I try to answer for the benefit of the entire community,
not just the one person who posted the question. If that gets a bit
"lecturish" mea culpa. In that case the discussion is not necessarily
directed specifically at you but rather to the other people reading both
your problem and our discussion of it. Also, a number of the issues brought
up, while the poster may think they have a MS Project technical question,
are in fact issues regarding PM principles and are not really technical
issues with the software (one of the most frequent examples of that is some
of the questions regarding MSP's behavior when assigning and editing
resources boil down to a basic confusion between duration and work and are
not software issues at all)..

That being said, I know of no way to automatically pick up the WBS number of
a task and insert it into the name of another task. Indeed, how would the
software know WHICH task is the target of the one whose name you wish the
WBS code inserted into? In your example of "Prepare Presentation" in Phase
1 having its target of "Deliver Presentation" in phase 2, what would tell
Project that those two tasks are related in some way so that it would know
to insert the "Deliver" code into the task name of "Prepare" or otherwise
associate it with "Prepare" even if one can come up with a way to
concatenate the strings?

One simple work-around if you like is insert one of the user-definable text
fields as a column next to the task name and label the column "Downline
Target" or some such and manually input the WBS code of the target task.
Unfortunately, there is no way to automatically have that field update if
you later restructure your plan causing the WBS of the target to change so
you would have to manually edit it when if the plan changes.

Another option might be to use a vacant text field to record the UniqueID of
the target task - UniqueIDs don't change when you rearrange the plan - and
then write a VB routine that would step through the project as needed, look
up the current WBS code associated with the task whose UniqueID is listed in
the "Target" field and concatenate the code into the task name for those
tasks where the target code exists or drop it into a vacant text field
associated with the source task so that the WBS codes of the targets can be
updated on demand if the project gets rearranged. However I do wonder if
developing such a routine wouldn't likely be more time-consuming than it
would be worth.

Hope this helps

 

[JulieS]

Hi Michael,
As Steve mentions in his post, I don't believe you can
modify the task name field. However, you may be able to
get what I think you are looking for by working with one
of the user definable Text fields (Text1-Text30) and
concatonating the [Name] and the [WBS Successor] field
plus any other text (for example: "Ref") that you need.
You could also create a custom WBS code mask to lend
additional details to the WBS field and the custom WBS
mask will be used in the concatonated field.
Hope this is helpful.
Julie