Working with Hierarchical Projects

Many planners prefer to break large projects into one or more subprojects, which can serve as high-level summaries for lower-level activities.

Open Plan enables you to designate any activity as a subproject, to which you can assign "child" activities. Any child of a subproject can, in turn, represent another subproject.

The multi-project capabilities of Open Plan enable planners to create hierarchies of project information. With project hierarchies, you can break large projects down into multiple subprojects, which can serve as high-level cost and schedule summarizations for lower-level detail. Organizations can also use these features to roll up smaller projects into a single master project to perform scheduling and resource planning functions at a more comprehensive level.

To perform multi-project processing, you can create an activity that represents an entire project. The project that is represented by the activity is called an external subproject. Any activity within the external subproject can, in turn, represent still another external subproject.

Note: A hierarchical project that contains external subprojects is called a master project.

When you save a master project, Open Plan also saves results back to all open external subprojects.

If you save a master project with a new name:

• Open Plan converts all open external subprojects to expanded internal subprojects and saves them as part of the master project. External subprojects that are not open remain as external subprojects in the new project.
• Open Plan preserves references to unopened external subprojects and maintains the interproject relationships.

Related Topics

• Setting Up Project Hierarchies
• Saving a Master Project with a New Name
• Using Auxiliary Files with External Subprojects
• Adding and Removing Auxiliary Files from a Master Project
• Interproject Relationships
• Characteristics of Internal Subproject Activities
• Characteristics of External Subproject Activities
• Working with External Subprojects
• Subprojects in Network Views
• Subprojects in Spreadsheet Views
• Using Ancillary Files with External Subprojects
• Saving a Master Project with a New Name

Related Procedures

• Display Child Activities in a Network
• Display Multiple Levels in a Network View
• Create Child Activities in a Spreadsheet
• Use External Subprojects
• Create Interproject Relationships in a Network