Task Flow Network and Critical Path
After entering our Golf tournament tasks into Microsoft Project 2000, you can easily see tasks and their deadlines. This is because the Gantt chart has a horizontal axis that is linear time. In MS Project, each golf tournament task that we entered is given its own horizontal band where the calendar duration of the task is identified and easily read. Tasks are generally listed from top to bottom in the time order they will occur. Tasks are often grouped into categories and each top-level category task can be treated as a summary task whose duration spans all tasks within that category. An example of this is our top-level category task "Tournament Day Events".
In this category, we have the task breakdowns of all the responsibilities we must take care of on the day of our golf tournament. By looking at the duration for this "Tournament Day Events" summary task, you can see that the duration is .88 days. This is a good sanity check because if the duration were calculated to be 1.5 days, it would tell us that we need a day and a half to get all the tasks done on the day of the tournament. This would require creativity or the performance of some tasks in parallel in order to accomplish all of the event tasks that day. Another possible option would be to begin the set-up on the night before the tournament.
