Developing Projects

Note: To apply top-down estimations to a project, you must have the "Add/Edit Activities Except Relationships" privilege, which is set in the Security Profiles dialog box.

Adding Activity Steps

Activity steps

Activity steps provide a way to break activities down into smaller units and track the completion of those units. For example, the activity Prepare for System Integration and Testing might contain the following steps:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

You can add as many steps to an activity as you need: some activities will require more steps to complete than others and some activities might require no additional steps at all. If progress occurs on the step, enter a percent complete in the Step % Complete column, or mark the Completed checkbox to indicate the step is 100% complete.

You can assign additional information to steps, such as cost, start and finish dates, and text. Define user-defined fields for activity steps in the User Defined Fields dialog box (choose Enterprise, User Defined Fields), then add fields as columns in the Steps tab of Activity Details.

You can also create activity step templates (using P6 when P6 Professional is connected to a P6 EPPM database) that capture a group of steps common to multiple activities, then assign the step group to activities.

Weighted steps

Weighted steps enable you to track the progress of an activity based on the number of steps completed. When you mark the Activity Percent Complete Based on Activity Steps checkbox in the Calculations tab in the Projects window, and choose Physical as the activity's percent complete type in the General tab in the Activities window, activity percent complete is updated based on the weight you assign to each activity step.

For example, in the activity Prepare for System Integration and Testing mentioned above, the steps are assigned weights of 3.0, 2.0, and 1.0 respectively. When you mark the Completed checkbox or enter 100% in the Step % Complete column for the step Establish Test Cases and Test Procedures, the activity’s physical percent complete is updated to 50 percent (because the total weight for the steps in this activity is 6.0 and the weight for this step is 3.0; therefore, half the work on this activity, according to the weight of the steps, has been completed).

Add steps to activities

For unique, activity-specific steps, you can add steps to activities as described below.

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P6 Professional User Guide

When connected to a P6 EPPM database: For general, repeatable groups of steps, you can assign templates (including steps, weights, and descriptions) created using P6 to activities.

When connected to a P6 Professional database: For general, repeatable groups of steps, you can convert existing steps to a template, create activity step templates, and assign templates.

1)Choose Project, Activities.

2)Select the activity to which you want to add a step.

3)Display Activity Details, then click the Steps tab.

To display the Steps tab, click the Layout Options bar and choose Bottom Layout Options. In the Available Tabs section, select Steps, click , then click OK.

4)Click Add.

5)Type the name of the new step.

6)Click Modify to type a description of the step in an HTML editor.

In the editor, you can format text, insert pictures and tables, copy and paste information from other document files (while retaining formatting), and add hyperlinks.

7)Position the step within the listed steps for the activity.

To move the step to an earlier stage of the activity, click . To move the step to a later stage of the activity, click .

Tip

Use activity step user-defined fields (Enterprise, User Defined Fields) to enter start and finish dates, cost, or text you would like to display for the step. To add step UDF columns to the Steps tab, right-click in the step area and choose Customize Steps Columns.

Update activity steps

The Physical percent complete for the activity calculates each time you mark or clear a Completed checkbox, edit the Step % Complete, change the weight of a step, or add or remove steps from the activity. To calculate the percent complete, select Physical as the percent complete type.

Mark the Completed checkbox beside the steps you want to update. Or

Display the Step % Complete column, and enter a percent complete value for the steps you want to update.

Note

When the Step % Complete is set to 100%, the checkbox is marked as Completed. If you mark the Completed checkbox, the Step % Complete becomes 100%.

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