A technique is provided for generating a hierarchy used in managing a development project by generating schedule data for a task and generating reference data for the task, wherein the reference data references tasks at other levels of a hierarchy that represents relationships among tasks for completing the project. Another technique is provided for managing a development project schedule by determining whether an update to schedule data associated with a particular task requires an update to other tasks hierarchically related to the particular task, by following references from the particular task to a parent task and from the parent task to its child tasks. Schedule data of the child tasks, for example, actual start and end dates, are compared to determine whether the parent schedule needs to be changed.