I'll restate Projects and Tasks, because I wasn't completely accurate in my previous statement:
Projects and Tasks
These are considered different animals. A "program" consists of many projects. A project consists of smaller projects or tasks. Tasks can also consist of other tasks. Resources consist of the lowest level of tasks, and materials, and may also consist of higher-level tasks (if not subdivided further by the WBS for a particular project).
There is some ambiguity depending on how one defines these terms --clients I have worked with have defined them differently and sometimes completely opposite of each other. For example, one client's "task" might be another's "process", or "procedure"; And one's "job" might be another's "project".
At some point soon, we should set some general definitions for dotProject so we can be clear on what we're talking about. The actual name shown in any displays and reports (I call them Titles) should be defined on a "package mounted" basis (to keep them consistent within a project system).
In the lowest WBS resolution, tasks are unit-based (as defined in the resource table). They generally do not have the granualarity of a project within the same project environment or else they would be projects in their own right, and consisting of more specific tasks.
Hopefully, I have the terms straight this time.
ps. Lewis refers the WBS more precisely as a "list of activities" ("Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control", 3rd Ed.c2001.) From a complete WBS, the PM continues by adding material resources and creating scheduling networks for estimating...
