Key Terms in MS Project

Presenter: Samuel Wagema

Mob: 0772-663 310
Email: afric2040@gmail.com
Project Dependencies
Scenario:
Imagine Mugisha Ninsiima is building a house. She needs to put the
walls up before she can paint them. Painting the walls is dependent on
the walls being built.
In the same way, Projects, just like real life, don’t happen in a vacuum
and their own sets of dependencies and constraints irrespective of the
industry. Finding an isolated project activity or task is nearly impossible
as projects are inherently interconnected.
Many managers consider identifying and handling dependencies in
project management as one of the most important and consequential
tasks.
Dependencies
• Dependencies deal with managing and scheduling
project tasks while keeping their sequences and
requirements in mind.
• For instance: If task B requires the completion of task
A, then we’ll say that task B is dependent on task A.
• This may sound simple right now but in complex
projects with several interdependent tasks, things can
get messy.
Key terms terms related to the dependencies

1. Project constraints: are the restrictions or boundaries

within which the manager must stay while completing the
project. The three major constraints of any project are
2. Lead and Lag
• Lead: concept only applicable to ‘finish to start’ relationships. It
refers to the time by which the succeeding tasks get accelerated
with reference to the preceding tasks. NB: While the FS
relationship demands that the succeeding tasks can not start
before the end of preceding tasks, project managers apply lead
times to reduce the overall time of the project.
• Lag: It refers to the time delay between tasks when no
resources are in use. Lag time is sometimes necessary to
ensure the completion of the project.
Example: When Ninsiima paints a room, the extra time required to
let it dry before she starts hanging her pictures is the lag time.
Critical Path: The chain of continuous activities that lead to
the completion of a project.
• If any tasks in the critical path get delayed, the entire project
will be delayed by the same time unless another critical task is
completed ahead of time to make up for it.
Non-critical activities:
Tasks which are not dependent on the completion of any other
tasks. This means that you can do them before or after a
certain stage is completed.
Going back to the house build project, examples of non-critical
tasks include installing drainage, plumbing, and electrics.
Slack: is the amount of time a task can slip before it
bumps into another task. It can used as buffer time if
needed when your schedule is at risk of being delayed.
There are two types of slack:
1. Free slack: is the number of days/weeks that an
activity can have before it starts delaying the next
(successor) activity.
2.Total slack: is the number of days that activity can have
before it starts delaying the whole project.
Baseline:
• is a clearly defined starting point for your project plan.
• It is a fixed reference point to measure and compare
your project's progress against. This allows the M&E
officer to assess the performance of his/her project
over time.
• For example, let's say your project is on target to finish
in six weeks.