< Previous | Next >

Lesson 2: Defining project iterations and activities

In this lesson, you will define the project iterations, and add tasks and other elements to the iterations. The elements that you add will provide a breakdown of project activities, and also define the significant points that indicate progress in the iterations and the project.
This task is performed in the WBS Overview viewlet. Navigate to or add the WBS Overview viewlet to your view.

Show me

In Lesson 1, you created an empty project. Now, you will define specific activities that must be performed during the course of your project. A basic project activity is a task that has specific start and finish criteria, and dates or duration (For example, a test plan with a duration of two days). A milestone marks the end of a project phase or the achievement of a significant phase. An iteration is a time-boxed phase of the project to cover a set of development activities; each project has several iterations.

To create iterations, tasks, and milestones:

  1. Begin by adding a task to the project. On the WBS tree, right-click the "Develop Work Management module" project, and select Create New > Task.
  2. In the new task row, type the task as Create vision and scope document.
  3. Now we must add another task named Create test plan. Follow steps 1 and 2 to add this task to the project.
  4. After you have added the two tasks in the previous steps, add a milestone. On the WBS tree, right-click the project, and select Create New > Milestone.
  5. Name the milestone Preparation complete
  6. Next, add an iteration to the project. Right-click the project, and select Create New > Iteration. Name this iteration Iteration 1: Infrastructure and project creation framework
  7. Add tasks to the iteration. On the WBS tree, right-click the iteration, and select Create New > Task.
  8. Type the task name as Set up infrastructure.
  9. Add another task for the iteration, and name it Develop project creation framework.
  10. Add the final task for the iteration and name it Run unit tests.
  11. Add a milestone for the iteration, and name it Iteration 1 build delivered.
  12. Follow steps 6 to 11 to create another iteration and tasks for the iteration. Refer to the Table 1 table for a description of the elements. You should have a project structure as shown in the table.
    Table 1. Project activities
    Element type Name
    Task Create vision and scope document
    Task Create test plan
    Milestone Preparation complete
    Iteration Iteration 1: Infrastructure and project creation framework
    Task Set up infrastructure
    Task Develop project creation framework
    Task Run unit tests
    Milestone Iteration 1 build delivered
    Iteration Iteration 2: Project scheduling service
    Task Develop scheduling algorithm
    Task Implement scheduling algorithm
    Task Run unit tests for scheduling algorithm
    Task Integrate project creation and scheduling
    Task Run unit tests for integration
    Task System test for project creation and scheduling
    Milestone Final module build delivered
  13. Click Save.
Notice the start and end dates and duration for each of the elements that you added. The start and end dates correspond to the project start and end date, and the duration of each element is one day. In its current state, the project and all of its activities are set to complete in one day. That is because we have neither performed any scheduling for the project elements, nor have we created dependencies between the project activities that stagger tasks to take place one after the other in a defined order. We will tackle these issues in the next lessons.

Lesson checkpoint

In this lesson, you learned about the following concepts:
You learned the following:
  • The definition of iterations, tasks, and milestones
  • How to add tasks, summary tasks, and milestones to a project

Feedback