How to better visualize activities in a project plan

What you’ll learn: How to better visualize activities in a project plan. 

What you need to get started: Merlin Project Express available on Setapp for Teams. The app provides a full-featured project management solution for businesses, helping small and large teams streamline their work. Describe tasks, attach notes, track costs and deadlines, Merlin Project Express has it all under control. 

Useful resource: Ready-to-use project plan template. 

A project plan is, essentially, a description of who should do what. When there’s a lot to be done, things get complicated. Merlin Project helps group activities, break down complex tasks, and hence make them more digestible and easier to track.

Project outline, explained

• Group: Every project in Merlin Project Express is a group that contains activities (view activities by clicking on the triangle). You can add more groups by indenting activities. 
• Child activity: Groups can be further indented into child activities. 
• Child group: When you add a child activity, a new child group is generated automatically (it appears above the activity). 
• Aunt: When you outdent an activity, you move it out of a group as well as its child groups. Outdented activities are called aunts. 

In the screenshot below, “Product Launch” is a group, “Research plan” and “Brainstorming questions” are child groups, and “User interview scheduling,” “Templates preparation,” and “User interview #1” are child activities. 

How to indent and outdent to group activities

To expand groups into child groups and activities, use indent/outdent controls in the top-left corner: 

• To indent an activity, select it and click the indent icon. 
• To outdent an activity, select it and click the outdent icon. 

Alternatively, select one or more activities and click on Structure > Indent/Outdent. Note that you can only outdent activities if they are already part of a group.