managing a big project in workfront without creating a big mess

[MennoLa]

dear all,

i'm managing 1 big project with several sup projects in workfront. i've created parent task for the subtasks and below the subtasks but every time all the lines are unfold. so this situation isn't give me a clear overview of the project i'm not always interested in all the details.

does somebody knows if you can stop the unfolding of the tasks? and i was thinking if this isn't possible to create several projects with one main project. is it possible to link "sub" projects to a task in the main project?

thanks ,

Menno

[RandyRoberts · Accepted solution]

When faced with a project that has multiple deliverables, we break that up into one project for each deliverable and put them all in a single program. We then make a main or master project that has at least one task or milestone for each of the deliverables. You can check each of those off as the separate deliverables projects are completed. Also, you can use cross project predecessors if you're comfortable doing that.

This gives you a separate but concurrent timeline for each deliverable making it easy to read as well as a main project that summarises all related deliverables for an easy to read overview.

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[MennoLa]

Hi Randy,

thanks for reaching out, and how are you tracking the progress in the main project by hand or linked the projects to each other?

[RandyRoberts]

Hi, Some of this depends on the type of project and how sophisticated a user the project owner is. Usually, a multi-deliverable project, for me at least, is an event-based project like a trade show. With event-based projects, the timing is critical so someone is always in there checking and updating manually anyway. 

Cross project predecessors won't mark deliverables tasks complete in your main project so you have to do that manually but you could for instance have a task for each deliverable in your main project (along with other tasks) that light up as "Can Start" when the last task on an external deliverable is done. This let's you know that the deliverable is done and you can manually mark it complete. If you have that (or those) task(s) in a milestone, you can use a milestone report on the main project to see exactly which deliverables are done or not and the percentage of completion.

There is a plethora of options and methods for multi-deliverable projects using this method of breaking up deliverables into separate projects. You can make it as manual or automated as you like and also as simple or complex as you like. You may end up using different methods for different types of projects or for different teams depending on their complexity comfort level. I've often used different methods for different agencies I've worked with, keeping all these variables in mind.