Project Planning & Scheduling PDF

# Week 6 → CH 6-7 Created: October 6, 2024 9:49 AM ## Learning Outcomes Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to: - Develop project schedule - Identify a project’s critical path and explain why it must be controlled and managed. - Describe the concept of precedence diagrammin...

# Week 6 → CH 6-7 Created: October 6, 2024 9:49 AM ## Learning Outcomes Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to: - Develop project schedule - Identify a project’s critical path and explain why it must be controlled and managed. - Describe the concept of precedence diagramming and identify finish-to-start, start-to- start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-finish activity relationships. - Develop a project network diagram using a technique called activity on the node (AON). - Describe the concept of critical chain project management (CCPM). - Explain the various types of costs that make up the project’s budget. --- ## **Project Planning: The Schedule and Budget** - Together with the WBS introduced in the previous chapter, the base line project plan can be developed in order to provide the project’s schedule and budget. - “project cost management” is introduced to provide the fundamentals for developing the project budget. --- ## **The Project Planning Framework** - It is a guide for developing and assessing the project plan - It outlines the steps and processes to develop a detailed project plan that supports the project’s MOV - The framework starts with developing the MOV. - Next, the scope is defined to support the MOV. - Once the project’s scope is defined and validated to support the MOV, the project work is subdivided logically into phases and sub-phases to reduce risk and complexity. - Each phase of the project should focus on providing at least one deliverable from the project’s total scope requirements so that the project team can concentrate on each piece of the project while keeping an eye on the whole picture. - Phases are largely determined by the project methodology and the approach chosen for carrying out the systems development life cycle (SDLC). Once the project is divided in to phases, activities, or tasks, define the actions needed to complete each deliverable. - Tasks require resources, and there is a cost associated with using a resource. Resources on a project may include such things as technology, facilities (e.g., meeting rooms), and people. Once the tasks and their sequence are identified, including the resources required, estimated time to complete, and any indirect costs and reserves, it is a relatively straightforward step to determine the project’s schedule and budget. All of this information can be entered into a project management software package that can determine the start and end dates for the project, as well as the final cost. --- ## **Developing a Project Schedule** - The project manager uses the schedule to help plan, execute and control project tasks and to track and monitor the progress of the project. The project schedule defines a work to be done within a specifies deadlines for corresponded tasks and deliverables as per WBS estimates. The project depends on how these acitvities are sequenced. As such it depicts: 1. Time (duration) estimates for all project tasks 2. Start and finish dates for the tasks 3. Names of staff resources assigned to complete the tasks 4. Sequence of tasks 5. A major component of a project schedule is a work breakdown structure (WBS). The project schedule is constructed to reflect the work breakdown structure --- ## **Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)** - PERT is a project management technique that determines the project finish date by estimating best (shortest), worst (longest) and most likely duration times for activities on the critical path. - PERT tool, the activities’ duration is not the most likely estimate, but a weighted average of estimates including the most likely and an optimistic and pessimistic estimate as well --- ## Critical Path - Critical Path (CP) is a project modeling technique - a sequence of stages where you figure out what the least amount of time is necessary to complete a task with the least amount of slack. It is the longest amount of time it will take to complete project tasks - Having all this data collected, we can now calculate the longest tasks path that take to reach the end of the project, as well as the earliest and latest that each task can start and finish without impacting the project schedule. - As such, we can determine what tasks are critical and which can float (can be delayed without negatively impacting the project duration). ## Techniques for Project Managers to manage a Critical Path: **Crashing** a project’s schedule is the process of adding additional resources to some activity on the critical path (or diverting resources from some activity with some slack) in order to shorten the project. **Fast tracking** on the other hand is involved in finding activities that were originally planned to be sequential and making them in parallel Another important definitions would be a predecessor, successor, and parallel activities: **Predecessor** activities are those activities that must be completed before another activity can be started - ie. a computer’s operating system must be installed before loading an application package. **Successor** activities are activities that must follow a particular activity in some type of sequence. For example, a program must be tested and then documented after it is compiled. **A parallel activity** is an activity or task that can be worked on at the same time as another activity. Parallel activities may be thought of as an opportunity to shorten the project schedule since separate tasks can be done at the same time instead of sequentially. They also can be a trade-off since doing more than one thing at the same time can have a critical impact on project resources. **Slack**, which is sometimes called float, is the amount of time an activity can be delayed, that is, take longer than expected, before it delays the project **Lead** is the amount of time by which the start or finish of two or more activities may overlap each other. If it took three times as long to install a window in a house as to paint it, then allowing sufficient lead time for the installer to put in two thirds of the windows before the painter started painting them would allow them to finish about the same time. ie. Begin installing the operating systems when half of the PCs are set up. **Lag** (or negative lead) is the time delay between the start or finish of one activity and the start or finish of another. If a house being renovated required fumigation before remodeling and the fumigated house needed to be aired out for two days before it was safe to be worked in, then a two-day lag time (or negative lead) must be built into the schedule. ie. Once the walls have been painted, wait one day before laying the carpet so that the walls have had a chance to dry. --- ## **Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM)** The Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is derived from a management methodology called the Theory of Constraints (TOC)in 1997. People often inflate or add cushioning to their time estimates in order to give themselves a form of “safety” to compensate for uncertainty. People may build safety into each task for three basic reasons: First, you may inflate an estimate if your work is also dependent upon the work of someone else. For example, you may add a cushion to your time estimates if you believe there’s a good chance your work will be delayed if the person you are depending upon will not finish their task or work on time. Second, you may increase an estimate of an activity because of pessimism arising from a previous experience where things did not go as planned. Third, the project sponsor or customer may not be happy with a proposed schedule and therefore decides to cut the schedule globally by say 20 percent. If you know this is going to happen, you may inflate your estimates by 25 percent just to guard against the cut. Projects are late because: **Student’s Syndrome** or procrastinating until the last minute before starting to work on a task regardless of how much time is available. If things don’t go exactly as planned, the task or assignment ends up being late. **Parkinson’s Law** in essence, this law states that “work expands to fill the time available.” People will rarely report finishing something early because there is little incentive to do so or because they may fear that management will cut their estimates next time. **Multitasking** of resources or “**resource contention**” - a third reason why added safety does not ensure that projects are completed on time has to do with the multitasking of resources. Goldratt calls this “resource contention” whereby a project team member often is assigned to more than one project. In addition, this person may be required to attend meetings, training, or find him or herself pulled off one project task to work on another. As a result, this person can become a “constraint” to the project because they are no longer able to devote their time and energy to tasks on the critical path. Subsequently, the task takes longer and so does the project. --- In short, the critical chain is different from the critical path in that it also takes into account resource contention. Let’s review how its should work (CCPM assumptions): 1. Begins by asking each person or team working on a task to provide an estimate that would have a 50% chance of being completed as planned (About half of the project tasks will be completed on time, about half won’t..) 2. Instead of adding safety to each task, put that safety in the form of buffers where it is needed most. Buffer types: - Feeding buffers – to reduce the likelihood of bottlenecks by ensuring that critical tasks will start on time when a task acts as a feeder to another task on the critical path. - Resource buffer – to reduce resource contention. - End of Project buffers - are equal to one-half of the time saved from putting safety into each task 3. Instead of penalties for being late, bonuses or other incentives for completing tasks early may be needed. --- ## Developing a Project Budget The project’s budget can be determined based upon the activities and time estimates from the WBS as well as the cost of the resources assigned to the WBS tasks. Here is how it works: Step 1: define what resources will be needed to perform the work. Step 2: determine the quantity of resources that are needed. Step 3: Define the cost of using each resource Step 4: Calculate the cost of the task or activity Step 5: Ensure that the resources are leveled, that is, not over allocated. An example of over allocation is assigning a project team member to two tasks scheduled at the same time. The project manager must be aware of the other costs as per listing below: - Direct Cost - the direct cost of labor or other resources - Indirect Cost - the cost for covering such things as rent, utilities, insurance, etc - Sunk Costs - costs incurred prior to the project, such as a project that has been restarted after a failed attempt. - Learning Curve - often have to “Build one and throw it away” to understand a problem or a new technology. - Prorated Costs - the idea that there is a cost associated with using a resource. - Reserves - contingency funds to be used at the discretion of the project manager PERT is a project management technique that determines the project finish date by estimating best (shortest), worst (longest) and most likely duration times for activities on the critical path. the PERT tool, the activities’ duration is not the most likely estimate, but a weighted average of estimates including the most likely and an optimistic and pessimistic estimate as well. --- ## Critical Path Critical Path (CP) is a project modeling technique - a sequence of stages where you figure out what the least amount of time is necessary to complete a task with the least amount of slack. Therefore, the critical path is really the longest length of time it will take to complete the project tasks. Having all this data collected, we can now calculate the longest tasks path that take to reach the end of the project, as well as the earliest and latest that each task can start and finish without impacting the project schedule. As such, we can determine what tasks are critical and which can float (can be delayed without negatively impacting the project duration). The Techniques for Project Managers to manage Critical Path **Crashing** **Fast tracking** Another important definitions would be a predecessor, successor, and parallel activities: **Predecessor** **Successor** **A parallel activity** **Slack** **Lead** **Lag**