Task management falls into two parts: ad-hoc delegation of tasks, which we already addressed back in Chapter 06, and specification of task dependency and scheduling.

Task dependencies are formally covered by procedural workflow, in that any dependency can be represented by an appropriate arrangement of sequences and parallels. Unfortunately, sequences and parallels, like well-structured code, don't always present all the logic behind their structure. Sometimes it's more natural to represent task dependencies with explicit specifications that the wall frames have to be done before the roof is started, even when the walls and roof are best thought of as independent subprocesses. So the wftk allows you to do that, and will print you a report that can be used to draw a PERT or GANTT chart.

Scheduling is the other aspect of task management with some support from the wftk. Resources and users can have calendars, and the PERT/GANTT charts of a set of processes can be used to determine a schedule for all the tasks defined. The schedule can then be modified by hand. This is pretty far off on the wftk timeline, so it's vague. You know what to do if you want more detail.

Here is an index to the information in this chapter:

(unresolved tag 09-index)