A properly defined task is one that has a clear beginning and end, so that the project manager can easily determine when the task is complete.

Keep the following in mind when you make tasks:

• For practical purposes, tasks should be at least one day long. In long-term projects, tasks are likely to have longer durations. In short-term projects, they tend to have shorter durations.
• Generally, it's a good idea to enter tasks in the order in which you expect work to begin on them. However, some projects may require that you group similar tasks together or group tasks by the type of resource that will work on them. If your organization traditionally views work in certain categories, you can group the work in these categories. Note that if you group tasks, you won't be able to outline them later, because grouping tasks constitutes another type of outlining.
• The structure of your task list determines the level of detail for your project plan. If you list only the phases of the project and each phase covers a large time period, your plan will be a high-level view of the project. If you list even the smallest pieces of work, your plan will be an extremely detailed one. Most of the time, you'll want to strike a balance between these two extremes.

  One way to help you decide the level of detail for your task list is to consider how closely you want to track your project:

  • If you list every piece of work that must be done, however minor, you'll need to track each of these tasks and enter progress on them, probably at least once each day. Then you'll know when even the smallest work item is a little late.
  • If you list and track only the phases of your project, you won't need to update the project very often. Then you won't know when work is running late until the phase is over.
• Consider how critical the project is, how often you can feasibly get and enter task updates, and what level of task that you need to track to keep a project from derailing.