How to Decompose a Project into Tasks

Successful planning and management of projects can be reached through creating decompositions of tasks and sub-tasks. Every project can be presented as a series of interrelated tasks which are subordinated to and aligned with project goals and objectives. Decomposition of projects into smaller activities or tasks lets simplify planning through assessing work effort and displaying project outcomes in a tree-like structure.

Decomposing a project into tasks is a process that begins once the project is approved for planning and further development. This process aims to create a hierarchical view of project work that includes simple operations, tasks and sub-tasks. The process takes the following steps:

• Identify a project to be decomposed into smaller activities
• Define goals and objectives of this project
• Outline major or strategic tasks that achieve project goals and objectives at high level
• Assess these tasks for complexity and figure out if there is a need to use sub-projects instead
• Organize major tasks in logical sequence
• Set priorities between the tasks
• Link goals of major tasks with each other
• Identify resources required to perform major tasks
• Break every task into smaller activities or sub-tasks
• Allocate necessary resources to sub-tasks
• Organize sub-tasks into logical milestones for monitoring completion status
• Develop a task flowchart that shows all levels of project breakdown.

CentriQS Task Decomposition Solution CentriQS lets users decompose large tasks into smaller sub-tasks for creating work breakdown structures. Task decomposition in CentriQS is a very simple process. Users can either add tasks as subtasks to the parent task or simply "drag'n'drop" them into parent task. When task becomes parent for other tasks its state and duration chages automatically depending on its subtasks.