Breaking Up Your Work in Microsoft Project - Building a WBS in Microsoft Project (Page 3 of 4 ) Your WBS may not have started out in Project. A WBS might be scribbled on a whiteboard, scrawled on sticky notes pasted to flip charts, or just rattling around noisily in your head. Regardless of where your ideas are, you can make short work of getting them into Project. Once you get familiar with the techniques for outlining tasks described on the next few pages, you’ll develop a rhythm to your data entry. If you already have an outline, you can quickly type it into Project from the top down (see the box on page 77). Or if work packages are bubbling up in your brain, you can enter them without worrying about the order of the tasks or the overall structure. You can rearrange and add summary tasks and work packages later. Creating a WBS in Project from the Top Down One of the more efficient data entry methods is to start at the top of a WBS and complete each level of tasks before dropping to the next level. Because Project creates a new task at the same outline level as the previous task, this approach keeps indenting and outdenting to a minimum. For maximum efficiency, when you flesh out a lowest-level summary task, insert as many rows as there are work packages for that summary task, and then type the names of the work packages in the Task Name cells. The following steps show you exactly how to work your way down a WBS one level at a time: Choose File -> New to create a new blank project file.
The Gantt Chart view appears with the Entry table on the left and the Gantt Chart timescale on the right. If the Gantt Chart view doesn’t appear, choose View -> Gantt Chart or, in the View bar, click Gantt Chart.
If the WBS column doesn’t appear in the Entry table, right-click the Task Name heading and, from the shortcut menu, choose Insert Column.
The Column Definition dialog box appears. In the “Field name” drop-down list, choose WBS, as shown in Figure 4-2, and then click OK. The new column appears to the left of the Task Name column.  Figure 4-2. In the Column Definition dialog box, in addition to choosing the field to display, you can label the column with a different name, align the text in the column, and specify the column width.
Note: Project keeps track of WBS numbers for tasks whether the WBS column is visible or not. The WBS code format that comes out of the box is a number at each level, with levels separated by periods. If your organization has a custom WBS format, you can set up your own WBS code (page 79).
In the Entry table, click the first Task Name cell, and then type the name for the first top-level summary task.
Press Enter to save this task, and then move down to the Task Name cell in the next row, as illustrated in Figure4-3. By the way, you don’t have to create a top-level task for the overall project. Project has a project summary task, which sits in an exalted position of Row 0 and rolls up the values for all the other tasks in the schedule. If you want to see the Project Summary task, though, you have to tell Project to display it. Choose Tools -> Options. In the Options dialog box, select the View tab, and then turn on the “Show project summary task” checkbox.  Figure 4-3. Project creates the next task at the same level in the WBS outline as the previous task, so you’re ready to enter the next top-level task. As you’ll see shortly, this behavior makes it easy to add several tasks at the same level, no matter which level of the WBS you’re creating.
Figure 4-3:
Repeat Step 3 for each top-level task in the WBS.
Creating the tasks at the top-level is as easy as it gets. You type a task name, press Enter, and repeat until all your top-level tasks are there. Now you’re ready to add tasks at the next level of the WBS.
Building a WBS in Microsoft Project
To add subtasks to a summary task, click the Task Name cell immediately below the summary task you’re fleshing out, and then press Insert as many times as there are subtasks, as demonstrated in Figure4-4.
This step is the secret to speedy outlining because it works in the same way at every level of the WBS: second-level, third-level, or lowest-level summary task. When you insert rows for the lowest-level summary task, insert as many rows as there are work packages for that summary task. Then you can type away and fill them all in quickly.  Figure 4-4. You can insert blank task rows by clicking anywhere in the row below the summary task and pressing Insert. But if you click the Task Name cell, when you press Insert the blank task’s Task Name cell becomes the active cell— ready for you to type the name of the first subtask.
With the blinking insertion point in the blank Task Name cell beckoning you, type the name of the subtask, and then press Enter to create the task.
Pressing Enter moves the active cell to the next Task Name cell. However, the first subtask isn’t at the right level—it’s still at the same level as the summary task.
To indent the task, press the up arrow key, and then press Alt+Shift+right arrow. Or, on the Formatting toolbar, click Indent (the green arrow pointing to the right).
Project indents the subtask and indicates its subordinate position in two ways: with the WBS number and the outline box—both shown in Figure4-5 . Press the down arrow key to move to the next Task Name cell, type the name, and then press Enter.
Because the first subtask is at the correct level, the remaining subtasks come to life at the right level for their summary task.
Repeat steps 5 through 8 for every summary task in the WBS, ultimately filling in each level of the WBS.
Your initial draft of the WBS is complete.
Figure 4-5. The WBS code for the subtask includes an additional level of numbers. If the summary task WBS number is 2.4, its first subtask has the number 2.4.1. Summary task names are preceded by an outline box—a square with a minus sign inside that indicates that the summary task is expanded. If you click the box, the summary task collapses and hides its subtasks, and the outline box changes to a square with a + sign.
POWER USERS' CLINIC Displaying a WBS in a Hierarchy
The outline in Project shows the levels of the WBS hierarchy, but you might prefer to view the WBS as a hierarchy similar to an organization chart (see Figure 4-6), for example, when you’re presenting the WBS to audiences unfamiliar with Project. In Microsoft Project 2003, the Visio WBS Chart Wizard transformed a task list in Project into a tree diagram in Visio, but that tool has gone the way of the dodo bird in Project 2007. A visual report (page 410) is the Project 2007 solution for turning a task list into a tree, but the process and result aren't nearly as satisfying as the Visio WBS Chart Wizard. Project 2007 doesn’t include a built-in visual report for displaying a WBS. But you can navigate to www.missing-manuals.com/cds and download a visual report template for a WBS. When you work with visual reports, you can specify which folders to search for customized templates, as described on page 421. Project then displays the templates in that folder in the visual report list. This template uses only the task name, WBS, Work, and Duration fields and sets up a tree structure. However, you must expand each summary task individually by right-clicking the task, and then, from the shortcut menu, choosing Tasks. (See page 411 to learn how to generate a visual report from a template.)
Next: Creating and Modifying a WBS on the Fly >>
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More By O'Reilly Media |  This article is excerpted from chapter four of the book Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual, written by Bonnie Biafore (O'Reilly, 2007; ISBN: 0596528361). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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