Subtitles of the Movie

As we get into the task of linking tasks I want to quickly show you something. When you create a summary task as I've done with pre-production, notice that I have a little minus and plus button that I can use to expand these summary tasks and the subtasks of that summary task. So if you are a project manager who's mostly concerned with the big picture or maybe you're handing this off to an executive to look at you may want to hide some of these subtasks that are involved in pre-production. The executive may just want to know how long it's going to take for pre-productions; it's going to take ten days, they don't care what steps are involved or they may already be familiar with those steps. But if you need to manage those things then of course you can expand it like this. Now one of the things you can do to manage your individual tasks is that of course you can link tasks. Because a lot of times tasks will be connected to one another in such a way that one task can't start until the other one finishes. In fact that is the default task relationship that's used by project and that's called a finished to start relationship. There are other kinds of relationships that you can create as you link tasks, but again that's going to be the default and it's probably in the real world going to be the one that is most used. Give you an example of this. Let's say we have to write the script before we hire the key principles, let's just say this is going to three days, an incredibly fast screenwriter here. So there's the task here, I've just altered the duration. Now we're not going to hire the keys until that task is done, we need to create a relationship between these two tasks so that this one finishes, they aren't going to start at the same time, this one is going to start when this one finishes. So what I can do here is I can select both of those tasks just like that and then I can go up to the edit menu and I can link the tasks, so this little chain here also is in the standard menu or standard toolbar I should say and there's this little button here, link task. And so there the relationship has been created. So hiring keys is not going to start until after the script is done. Can we do this for multiple instances of the tasks at one time, so we can we link tasks three, four and five, all at one time using that link button? Well absolutely we can and so now you've created tasks that start subsequent to one another just like this, write script, then we'll hire the keys, then we'll hold auditions, then we'll scout locations and that of course will change, notice the summary task that's been defined above as I mentioned in the previous module, we don't define the duration of the summary task. It is defined by the number of subtasks that are underneath, now other types of relationships that we can define once again include start to start relationships, finish to start relationships or start to finish which is a very unusual type of relationship that would be created between tasks. And the way that you would access that task information is you would open up the task information dialog box. So you can go to the project menu here and click on task information, that brings this up here, you can also just right click and bring up the task information dialog box, same difference here. So what you're dealing with here, as I mentioned we'd see lots of way to open this up, go to the predecessors tab of the task information dialogue box. So what we've got here selected is we've got the task develop budget and the predecessors are as such, so task names, we can choose from a drop down box, we can click on the ID and just enter it in. So if we know that the task that is going to be the predecessor for this is hold auditions or write the script or hire the keys, let's choose that one. So we can develop the budget at the time we hire the keys, because once we know what directors are attached and stars are attached we can start to put some numbers to the budget. So let's say that this is going to be a different type of task relationship and I'll show you what this is. We'll choose hire keys as the predecessor, now I can tab over, I can just click, again the default finish to start but now let's choose this. Let's choose finish to finish and then click on ok. Once again it doesn't matter whether I create the relationships between the subtasks and other top little task, it doesn't really matter where or which tasks those relationships are defined, if their subtasks, if their top level tasks, again it doesn't matter. So what we define here, once again is this finish to finish relationship between task three and six, so when we're done hiring the keys we will also be done developing our budget. So let's say this is going to take three days as we change the duration. Notice that this can now begin as we're finalizing the script, we know what kind of movie it is, we're hiring the keys, we know whose going to be attached and then by the time we know exactly who said yes we know how much generally things are going to cost. So that's one example of a finish to finish relationship. Another very common example of finish to finish would like when your cooking, probably aren't going to use project to cook your dinner tonight but you prepare your side dishes so that their done at the same time your main dish is prepared or finished cooking, so everything is done at the same time so that all the food is hot as you serve it. Now can you modify these relationships later on, can you change your mind? Well of course you can, once again you just access the task information dialog box as we see here and we can change either the predecessors, we can add additional predecessors, one task could be dependent on several other tasks being completed of course. But we can also change the type, so start to start, maybe the hiring of the keys and the developing of the budget start at exactly the same time. Well now the relationship has been defined as you can see here. Now finally can you change your mind? What if I define a relationship between two tasks but then later on down in the project planning phase I decide that you know there doesn't need to be a relationship necessarily defined for those after all. Well once again open up the task information dialog box and another way you can do that is just to double click on the task itself. So give it a double click here, delete, so put the insertion point in ID, delete the task relationships here that are defined, click on OK and now you have no relationship defined between this and the other one. Actually what you've done is you've just deleted the predecessors for that particular task. So as we wrap things up here, we've created some finish to start relationships which again is going to be the default. We've defined other types of relationships by the way the start to finish relationship, the one I mentioned is not going to be used that often, it would be used in a case where something becomes available and that availability defines when the other one ends, maybe have just a planning phase and it's going to end when the work actually starts. That's the only time you'd use maybe a start to finish relationship, but again to define a hard relationship between two tasks like that once again it's going to be rare. One more thing by the way, that's worth pointing out, is what if I insert a task in a series of linked tasks like this. So I decide that you know between the time we hire keys and hold auditions something else needs to happen. Well what if I hit the insert key to add a new task, notice that relationship is still kept intact and let's say that the task is I've got to meet with distributors, so that task is going to be one day. Now all I did was just quickly insert a task here and notice that it also has a finish to start relationship defined. If I access it's properties here or the task information, notice that the predecessors tab is populated with the proceeding tasks, hire keys. Again keep that in mind as your defining your relationships, that if you have a series like this and you insert a task into a series it also will take the same relationship that the other ones do.