I would like to share the method I am using to manage projects and tasks related.

When I began to wonder how I could manage projects with RTM I really thought RTM was not powerful enough to fullfill my needs, but on other hand I did'nt want to use a new tool to manage related tasks.

The first thing I needed was to group tasks, that is quite easy with a tag for every project. And in order to make more clear than that tag is a project I decide to start all tags about projects with "p_". All tasks included in the project must have that project tag.

I also create a tag called "project" to group all my projects ( I note here that I only do this for current doing projects which need to be split up into simple tasks), a list can be used also, but I prefer to use list to group different areas of my life.

So, with tags I could easily group tasks and relate tasks with projects, but how I could note when a task depend on another to be done? At first sight I didn't see any solution, but then I realized a quite simple way to do that... just use the fact that RTM put tasks with same priority and same due date in alphabetical order.
So, for my projects I could start a task with A, and another task wich can not be done without completing it start it with B.


I explain the concept in an example.
Imagine I have a project called "Buy a car"
I can split it up into several tasks.
"Visit different car dealers to get information"
"Compare all the information"
"Negotiate with car dealers to get a good price"
"Go to best car dealer to buy the car"

Into my RTM I would write 5 tasks

Buy a car #project #p_buycar
A - Visit different car dealres to get information #p_buycar
B - Compare all information #p_buycar
C - Negotiate with car dealers to get a good price #p_buycar
D - Go to best car dealer to buy the car #p_buycar

This way I can get my tasks perfectly organized just searching for tag p_buycar, and I can see at a glance dependecies between them

If a complex project could be split up into different threads of task, I would create subprojects to manage them ( and use a similar technique).
A subproject has a tag for it starting with "sp_"

Example:
In the previous example I decide to create a new subproject, called "Contract car insurance", and I called the other subproject "Buy car"

Buy a car and drive it #project #p_buycar
Buy car #p_buycar #sp_buycar
A - Visit different car dealres to get information #p_buycar #sp_buycar
B - Compare all information #p_buycar #sp_buycar
C - Negotiate with car dealers to get a good price #p_buycar #sp_buycar
D - Go to best car dealer to buy the car #p_buycar #sp_buycar
Contract car insurance #p_buycar #sp_insurance
A -

And that is a quite good way to manage complex projects with RTM.