Breaking down a project into sub-tasks facilitates incremental or iterative delivery. This is particularly beneficial in agile project management methodologies, where delivering smaller increments of a project allows for continuous improvement and adaptation to changing requirements. Different tasks may require different skill sets or expertise, and breaking down the project allows for more targeted resource allocation based on the requirements of each sub-task. Sub-tasks help identify dependencies between different parts of the project. Understanding these dependencies is crucial for scheduling and ensuring that tasks are completed in the correct sequence to avoid bottlenecks or delays. By breaking a project into sub-tasks, you provide clarity on the specific steps that need to be taken. Team members can focus on completing one sub-task at a time, reducing the likelihood of feeling overwhelmed and improving overall productivity.

Creating and prioritizing different tasks related to a project has become easy in Odoo by using the ‘Project’ application.

Activating the creation of the Sub-tasks feature

There is a setting in the ‘Project’ module of the Odoo dashboard to be enabled to divide a project into smaller tasks.

Project application => Configuration menu => Settings => Tasks Management section => Sub-tasks => Save

To see how to use the feature, let’s establish a project and assign tasks and subtasks to it.

Go to the project configuration window and select the “New” button to begin a new project. You can start the Odoo 16 project creation process by choosing this option.

Creating a New Project

In the corresponding fields of the project creation window, you must enter the required project details. This gives details about the project, including its name, the names of the related tasks, customer information, categorization tags, the name of the firm, the project manager, the project start date, and the number of hours allotted for completion. You can add any further project comments or details using the Description tab.

The ‘Settings’ tab of the project configuration window contains additional customization options. Who can view the project and its tasks is determined by the Visibility setting. Certain categories, like all invited users, invited portal users and invited internal users, can have their visibility restricted. This allows you to manage who may see and access the project and its associated tasks. By choosing the appropriate visibility option, you can ensure that project information is accessible to the intended audience while maintaining confidentiality and privacy as needed.

To add Subtasks to a particular project, the user can activate the Sub-Task feature from the Project’s settings tab, as illustrated above. After entering all the details, ensure to save the created project.

Creating and Assigning Sub-Tasks

Returning to the project module, let’s examine the project from the Kanban perspective to add sub-tasks, as displayed below.

On selecting the ‘Tasks’ option in the Kanban view of the created project, we can go to the ‘Tasks’ page where we can add various stages of the project by clicking ‘+’ along the ‘+ Stage’ option at the top and add sub-tasks by clicking on the ‘New’ button.

We can enter the Task title and Assignees here. To give more details, click on the ‘Edit’ option.

Add the task’s relevant details, including the customer, sales order item, and due date. The sales order item is automatically assigned after the customer has been chosen. You can include a description of your assignment in the Description box. You may see more tabs, such as sub-tasks, depending on your preferences. The ‘Timesheets’ tab allows you to enter the recorded amount of time spent on the task. You can alter the hours worked by each employee in the queue and add the given task’s hours as well as the workers assigned to it. You can verify the number of hours completed and the number of hours left on the task after entering the details.

Once these parameters have been input, click the Start button at the top to begin the task. You have the option to pause and terminate the task when it is completed. You can enter the duration of your task and a description when you press the stop button. It will be added to the timesheet and displayed in the total number of hours left when you save it.

From the ‘Sub-tasks’ tab of the task, as indicated below, you can use subtasks to arrange your actions systematically. A pop-up box that allows the user to create a new subtask from the ‘New’ button or select an existing task, if any, appears when we select the ‘Add a Line’ option from the Sub-tasks tab, as shown below.

The user can create a new subtask by selecting the New button and entering details such as the subtask title, project, assignees, customer, sales order item, deadline, and tags. Additionally, the user can add a description, timesheet, and subtasks. As seen below, the user can also examine the Parent task smart button.

The Start button located at the top of the Sub Task window allows the user to initiate the Sub Task. You have the option to pause and terminate the task when it is completed. You can enter the duration of your task and a description when you press the stop button. It will be added to the timesheet and displayed in the total number of hours left when you save it and after the subtask is finished, can mark it as done. We also have the option to create another set of sub-tasks for the subtask created by going to the ‘Sub-tasks’ tab.

Since there is just one subtask added for the project, let’s return to the main task and examine the Subtask smart button with count one there. If we look at the main task’s timesheet, we can also see that the time spent on the subtask will be included above.

The other details such as the Hours spent on sub-tasks, total hours taken for completing the sub-task, and the remaining hours are computed and displayed in the ‘Timesheets’ tab of the Sub-task.

This is how we can add and manage different sets of tasks related to a project, thus simplifying project management operations with Infintor Solutions using Odoo 16.