Suppose you want to manage a relatively small project, but you have no access to project management software of any kind. Could you use a spreadsheet program or a database program instead? How?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

This task has considerable room for creativity. Using spreadsheet cells as a grid, and using the built-in drawing tools to add arrows, you could produce figures similar to Figure 3-10, 3-12, 3-13, 3-14, and so on. Once you had arranged the logic properly, you could make your calculations manually, or perhaps devise a formula that would take the content of a Start cell, add the Duration cell, and display the results in the Finish cell. For multiple tasks, you might use a logical function that examines multiple predecessor tasks and uses the proper value.
Using a database, you could create a table that contained all of the tasks, with fields for Task ID, Start, Duration, and Finish. You also could include fields for predecessor tasks, similar to the table shown in Figure 3-18. To get the task list into logical order, you might be able to use a query that sorts the tasks in ascending order on the predecessor task field. The real challenge would be to produce a graphical representation of the results.