How to View Old, Current, and Future Tasks

[sarah]

Hello group,

This is a tough one: I'm very new to Project 2002 and have been tasked by
management use Project to track Tasks issued in our office. Our supervisor
needs to be able to view tasks in three phases and somehow have them linked,
old, current, and future tasks. I really don't see any way of doing this (I
tried playing with the different views) I'm about to give on Project but
thought I'd ask the experts if there is a logical way of doing this or if
Project is the wrong tool for the job. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[JulieS]

Hi Sarah,
Assuming you are tracking your tasks you could use three of the existing
filters in Project to view your task list:
Completed tasks - to show all tasks that have been finished.
In progess tasks - to show all tasks currently being worked on
Unstarted tasks - to show all future tasks that have not been worked on.

I am not sure that I understand what you (or your Management) means by
"somehow have them linked" - your task list should be linked logically to
begin with. It is tracking that will help with "old", "current", and
"future" tasks.

If you haven't already, you may wish to consider taking a two-day project
course if possible. MS Project is a complex tool and I think you will find
the course money and time well spent.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Amplifying a bit on Julie's posting, links are not temporal. That is, the
links are not created by a time sequence such as "past" "current" and
"future." Links are driven by the process logic itself - we have to erect
the walls before we put on the roof not because that's when our resources
are available or of some economic reason, we have to do the walls first
because the law of gravity doesn't allow us to build the roof in mid-air and
then tuck the walls in under it <grin>. The process logic determines the
links and then those links in their turn drive the time sequencing. Links
cause sequences, but not the other way around.

 

[saray]

Thanks very much Steve an Julie, this helps out tremendously.

 

[JulieS]

Hi Sarah,
Glad we could help. You may also like to take a look at Mike Glen's series
of articles on MS Project at:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc

Let us know if you have further questions.

Julie