Meanings of the Four Types of Task Relationships in Microsoft Project

Once you have completed entering the task relationships as mentioned, your project should appear as shown in

the image below.

Now let us understand what these relationships mean. To begin
with, we need to understand that all relationships are defined between a successor task and a set of (one or
more) predecessor tasks in Microsoft Project. Thus, in each of the above case, the task you first chose is the
successor and the tasks you entered in the rows in the Dialog window are the predecessor tasks for any given
relationship. To view the relationships you have defined, you can check on the arrows appearing on the Gantt
chart. Another way to see the relationships is to increase the width of the Task pane by moving the Divider line
(between the Task pane and the Gantt chart pane) to the right, until the Predecessor column becomes visible in
the Task pane. You will see the relationships with the two-letter codes as shown in the image here.

You can notice that the default task relationship type (FS - Finish-to-Start) is not
indicated with code by Microsoft Project.
Essentially the relationships have the following implications:
o
o
o
o

Finish-to-Start: The successor task cannot start until the predecessor task has finished
Start-to-Start: The successor task cannot start until the predecessor task has started
Finish-to-Finish: The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task has finished
Start-to-Finish: The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task has started
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Real World Examples

As you must have noticed, the most common task relationship type is the Finish-to-Start type, which also
happens to be the default type in Microsoft Project.
All the task relationships we had used in the Concert Project were Examples of Finish-to-Start relationships
Among the other task relationship types, two are used occasionally to indicate scheduling conditions which are
very relevant.
Start-to-Finish Examples:
Implementation of a new procedure and training for the employees on the new procedure are two tasks which
can be related with a Start-to-Finish type. Although the new procedure may be ready for implementation after it
has been designed, the procedure cannot be started until the employee training is completed.
Similarly, you can finish scheduling production crews only when you start receiving materials.
Start-to-Start Examples:
This relationship is used whenever we can see the possibility of overlap between tasks, though they appear to be
sequential.

Thus, proof-reading for a book can be started as soon as the first few pages have been written, and we need not
wait for the composition of the entire volume to be completed.
Coding for an application can be started as soon as the initial designs for some components are ready (as
practiced in Agile methodology), instead of waiting for the entire design to be completed (as practiced in Waterfall
methodology).
Finish-to-Finish is a very rarely used relationship. One complicated example can be the relationship between
watering a garden and fertilizing the plants in the garden. As you can see, the plants have to be watered before
fertilizing can start. However, the plants must be wet as long as the fertilizing process is going on. Hence we can
impose a Finish-to-Finish relationship between the two tasks "Fertilize the Garden" and "Water the plants in the
garden."
Another example is the relationship between the tasks "Add wiring" and "Inspect electrical". Here "Inspect
electrical" cannot finish until "Add wiring" finishes. Thus, here again there is a Finish-to-Finish relationship
between the two tasks. Thus, this kind of relationship, though rare, does exist between two tasks which are
related to each other in such a way that one task cannot finish until the other task finishes.