Deltek Open Plan Help

Using the Help Search
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Setting Up Project Hierarchies

To define a hierarchy of project information, Open Plan enables you to designate any activity as a “parent” of lower-level “child” activities.

Children of a parent activity can, in turn, have child activities of their own. Thus, there are no limits on the number of hierarchical levels you can define in a project. Nor is there a requirement that a single top-level activity exist for each project.

When defining hierarchies of project information, Open Plan enables you to set up internal subprojects, which represent child activities belonging to the same project as the parent. Users can also set up external subprojects, which represent activities belonging to a different project. However, both internal and external subprojects function in the same way, and the same master project can contain both types of subprojects.

Periods in the activity ID indicate the hierarchical relationships between activities. For example, the subproject SUB1 might have child activities named SUB1.01, SUB1.02, and so on. Children of SUB1.01 might be named SUB1.01.01, SUB1.01.02, and so on. Depending on the context, you may have to identify an activity by using its complete ID, or you may need to enter only the local portion of the code.

Activities that you designate as subprojects are identical to standard activities with the following exceptions:

  • The duration of a subproject is dependent on its child activities. You cannot enter a duration for an activity that has been converted to a subproject.
  • Resource requirements assigned to the subproject level do not result in delaying the subproject during resource scheduling.
  • After you have designated an activity as a subproject, you cannot change the activity type unless you remove all the child activities belonging to that subproject.
  • When you copy a subproject, you copy all child activities belonging to that subproject as well.
  • When you delete a subproject, you delete all child activities belonging to that subproject as well.

Like standard activities, you can assign target start and finish dates to subproject activities. It is also possible to define relationships between subprojects or between a subproject and an activity within another subproject.

The assignment of target dates and relationships to subprojects can have important implications when time-analyzing a network.

Attention: For more information, see "Time Analysis Calculations" in the Deltek Open Plan Developer’s Guide.

To learn about internal and external subprojects, see Characteristics of Internal Subproject Activities and Characteristics of External Subproject Activities.