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Project Scheduling, Sequencing Activities
Involves evaluating the…
Project Scheduling
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Controlling Schedule
Goals of schedule control
- Know the status of the schedule
- Influence the factors that cause schedule changes
Main inputs to schedule control
- Project management plan
- Project documents
- Work performance data
- Organizational process assets
Defining the Schedule
- Uses results of the other time management processes to determine the start and end of the project
- Important tools and techniques:
-Gantt charts
-Critical path analysis
-Critical chain scheduling
-PERT analysis
Gantt Charts
Provide a standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar form.
Use symbols:
Black diamond: Milestones
Thick black bars: Summary tasks
Light gray horizontal bars: Duration of tasks
Arrows: Dependencies between tasks
Milestones - emphasise important events or accomplishments on projects
SMART criteria for milestones -
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Assignable
R: Realistic
T: Time-framed
Critical Path Method
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Critical path: Series of activities that determine the earliest time by which the project can be completed
The longest path through the network diagram and has the least amount of stack or float; amount of time an activity may be delayed without delaying a succeeding activity or the project finish date
Calculating the critical path:
- Develop a good network diagram and add the duration estimates for all activities on each path through the network diagram
- Longest path is the critical path
- If one or more of the activities on the critical path takes longer than planned, the whole project schedule will slip unless the project manager takes corrective action
- Does not include all critical activities
- There can be more than one critical path if the lengths of two or more paths are the same
- Project manager should closely monitor performance of activities on the critical path to avoid late project completion
- Critical path can change as the project progresses
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Critical Chain Scheduling
- Creates a project schedule with buffers to safeguard the project completion date
- Uses the Theory of Constraints (TOC): Eliyahu M. Goldratt's management philosophy; minimises multitasking when a resource works on many tasks at once.
- Additional concepts
- Buffer: additional time to complete a task
- Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will
- Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the time allowed
- Project buffer: additional time added before the project’s due date
- Feeding buffers: additional time added before tasks on the critical path
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The WBS Dictionary
- a document that describes detailed information about each WBS item
- Format can vary based on project needs
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Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
- Network analysis is used to predict project duration when individual activity duration estimates are unknown.
- Optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic predictions of activity periods are used.
- The total project time estimate takes into consideration the risk or uncertainty in the individual activity estimates by applying the PERT weighted average.
Planning Schedule ManagementElements of a schedule management plan:
- Project schedule model development
- Scheduling methodology
- Level of accuracy and units of measure
- Control thresholds
- Rules of performance measurement
- Reporting formats
- Process descriptions
Defining Activities
- Involves identifying the specific actions that will produce the project deliverables in enough detail to determine resource and schedule estimates
- A milestone is a significant event that normally has no duration
Sequencing Activities
- Involves evaluating the reasons foe dependencies and the different types of dependencies
- Network diagrams are the preferred technique for showing activity sequencing
- Arrow diagramming method (ADM)
- Precedence diagramming method (PDM)
- Types of dependencies or relationship between activities
-Finish-to-start
-Start-to-finish
-Finish-to-finish
-Start-to-finish
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