Stop Using Summary Tasks! Building Stable and Auditable Project Schedules in Microsoft Project
Stop Using Summary Tasks! Building Stable and Auditable Project Schedules in Microsoft Project
Discover why Microsoft Project's summary tasks—while seemingly convenient—can undermine your project schedule's integrity and violate industry best practices. Drawing from authoritative guidance including the GAO Schedule Assessment Guide, DCMA 14-Point Assessment, and NASA Procedural Requirements, this session reveals the hidden dangers of summary task dependencies, resource assignments, and nested hierarchies.
What You'll Learn
Key takeaways from this session
Establish task-level dependencies and constraints that support reliable critical path analysis
Identify the four critical risks introduced by summary tasks: data duplication, calculation instability, invalid resource assignments, and logic violations
Apply custom outline codes to create hierarchical project structures without nested summary tasks
Configure Microsoft Project views using Group By and Sort features to maintain visual organization while preserving flat task structures
Implement industry-standard scheduling practices aligned with GAO, DCMA, NASA, and PASEG guidance
Design resource assignment strategies that eliminate phantom work hours and maintain data integrity
Earn PDU Credits
PMI Professional Development Units
Total PDUs Available
For credential maintenance
PDU Breakdown
Ways of Working
Technical & process skills
Business Acumen
Strategic & organizational
Power Skills
Leadership & interpersonal
Watch the complete webinar to claim your PDU credits and maintain your PMI certification.
About the Presenter
Eric Christoph
Earlier in his career Eric served as Corporate EVM Subject Matter Expert for L-3 Communications. In that role he implemented multiple EIA-748 Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) and helped build baseline plans for over 100 projects and proposal efforts with a combined value over $400B. Eric also represented L-3 on the Board of the NDIA Integrated Program Management Division (IPMD) which oversees the EIA-748 standard. Over the last fifteen years Eric has contributed to several key guidance documents related to EVM including the PMI Practice Standard for EVM, MIL-STD-881, and GAO-16-89G. Today, Eric is a Senior Partner at Transformative Management Solutions where we help project teams and organizations implement EVM and Agile project control solutions using Microsoft Power Platform technologies.
