What is the main purpose of the project schedule?
To provide a detailed plan for how and when the project will deliver the results defined in the project scope.
Communicating and managing
Role of the PM in Schedule Management
- Work with the project/business teams to develop time table for realization of project benefits
- Effectively schedule, allocate, use, and replace resources to achieve goals
- Schedule activities so that resources are available, activities are completed and objectives reached
What is the schedule baseline, and how is it developed?
It is the formally accepted schedule that is created when the schedule developed at the beginning of the project.
Steps:
- Choose a scheduling method
- Entering Project info into a schedule tool to create a schedule model
Why is it important to keep the project schedule flexible?
- Adjust for knowledge gained
- Increase your understanding of risks
- Add value to activities
What are the 6 project schedule processes?
Planning Process Group: - Develop Schedule - Plan Schedule Mgmt - Define Activities Process - Estimate Activity Durations - Sequence Activities Monitoring and Controlling: - Control Schedule
What are some consideration to tailor Project Schedule Management?
- Life cycle approach
• What is the most appropriate life cycle approach that provides an appropriately detailed schedule - Resource availability
• What are the factors influencing durations
• Such as the correlation between available resources and their productivity - Project dimensions
• How will the presence of complexity, technological uncertainty, product novelty, pace, or progress tracking impact the desired level of control? - Technology support
• Is tech used to develop, record, transmit, receive, and store project schedule models information?
• Is it readily accessible?
What is the define activities process?
The process of identifying and documenting the specific actions to be performed to produce the project deliverables
What is a project schedule composed of?
- Scheduling method • EX: Critical path, agile - Project specific data • EX: activities, planned dates, durations, resources, dependencies, constraints - A schedule model
What is the schedule management Plan?
- Component of the PM Plan
- Establishes the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule
- May be informal or formal, highly detailed or broadly framed, based on the needs of the project.
Who should be included in a project schedule development meeting?
Project manager Project Sponsor Selected Project Team Members Selected Stakeholders Anyone with responsibilities for schedule planning or execution
What is progressive elaboration?
An iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a PM Plan as greater amounts of information and more accurate estimates become available.
What is rolling wave planning?
Iterative planning technique in which the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while work further in the future is planned at a higher level.
It is a form of progressive elaboration applicable to work packages, planning packages, and release planning when using an agile or waterfall approach
What does define activities process do regarding work packages?
Reduces work packages into specific activities
What is decomposition?
in relation to schedule mgmt
A technique used for dividing the project scope and deliverables into smaller, more manageable parts
Defines the final outputs as activities rather than deliverables, as done in the WBS process
What are the 4 types of logical relationships in PDM?
- Finish-to-Start (FS)
Successor activity cannot start until a predecessor is finished - Finish-to-Finish (FF)
A successor activity cannot finish until a predecessor has finished - think about starting to write a document, it isn’t complete until you edit it. - Start-to-Start (SS)
A successor activity cannot start until a predecessor activity has started - Start-to-finish (SF)
Successor activity cannot finish until a predecessor activity has started
What is the precedence diagramming method? (PDM)
- A technique used for constructing a schedule model in which activities are represented by nodes and are graphically linked by one or more logical relationships to show the sequence in which the activities are to be performed.
- Activities can be either a:
• Predecessor - comes before another activity
• Successor - comes after another activity
What is Dependency Determination and integration?
Allow you to sequence your activities according to how they are dependent on each other. There are 4 Dependencies
What are the 4 types of dependencies?
- Mandatory: Legally or contractually required in the work
AKA Hard Logic/Hard Dependencies
Not a constraint - Discretionary: based on best practices within a particular area where a specific sequence is desired, even though there may be other acceptable sequences
- External: involve relationship between project activities and non-project activities
- Internal: Involve a precedence relationship between project activities and are generally inside the project team’s control
What process turns into the schedule baseline going forward?
Sequence Activities
What do schedule network diagrams do?
Diagrams that identify and document relationships among project activities. They show you the logical sequence of project work.
What is the most commonly used precedence relationship when using PDM?
Finish to Start = FS
Start to Finish is rarely used (SF)
What are leads and lags?
Refinements applied during network analysis to develop a viable schedule by adjusting the start time of the successor activities.
Leads: used to advance a successor activity with respect to the predecessor activity
- Represented as a negative value
Lags: used where processes require a set period of time to elapse between the predecessors and successors without work or resource impact
- Represented as a positive value
What are the 4 factors to consider when estimating activity durations?
- Law of diminishing returns
- Number of resources
- Advances in technology
- Motivation of staff
• Procrastination (student syndrome)
• Parkinson’s Law
What may determine the duration of an activity?
- The number of resources and the skillset of those resources
