Your schedule model is a collection of all of the tasks, milestones, and links that you have defined.
**Best Practices:
- All projects should have a Project Start milestone at the beginning of the project that everything flows out of, and a Project Complete milestone at the end that everything flows into.
- Every task and milestone has at least one predecessor and one successor with the exceptions of the Project Start milestone for the project which will have no predecessors, and the Project Complete milestone for the project which will have no successors.
- The other possible exception to this is if you have external links representing the receipt or delivery of something outside of the project. There may not be a specific predecessor in your schedule. A link should be created from the Project Start milestone to this milestone
- There should be no hanging starts or hanging ends.
Below is a recommended general structure for your project schedule. It includes:
- A Project Start milestone at the beginning of the project.
- A Project Complete milestone, and a Target Complete milestone at the end of the project (we will talk more about that in the next lesson).
- Summary tasks representing deliverables.
- Detailed tasks to create each deliverable.
- A milestone at the end of each major summary group – each deliverable.
When tasks and milestones are linked, they create paths through the project. Any sequence from the project’s start to its finish is called a path.
The length of a project’s path is the sum of the durations, links, lags and any date constraints found on that path.
The longest path(s) drive the project completion. The tasks on these paths that need to be watched closely as they are the ones most likely to cause us to miss our project due date.