Project Time Managment

By trading time, in the project management context, we mean either giving up time for something else, or giving up something else and getting more time in return

If you are short of time in your project, you may want to identify options to create more time, and you can start to identify options by considering:

• Scope– is there a way to reduce the scope of the project so as to create more time?

• Cost– is there a way to spend more money, that is to increase costs, in a way that creates more time?

• Quality– is there a way to reduce the quality of the work to create more time?

• Risk– what additional risks can be accepted by the project, or what existing risks can be accepted in greater degree, so as to buy time?

1. Activity definition (planning): the deliverables of the project are established at the lowest level and the activities required to achieve them re-defined

2. Activity sequencing (planning): the logical order for the activities to occur is determined and recorded

3. Activity resource estimating (planning): the resource requirements to fulfil the requirements of the activity sequencing process are estimated

4. Activity duration estimating (planning): the process by which the durations of the activities are estimated

5. Schedule development (planning): a frequentative process by which the activity schedule is developed

6. Schedule control (monitor & control): the process that the project manager employs to keep the project on schedule.

Activity definition is the dissection of the work breakdown structure from the project plan into parts whose duration can be meaningfully estimated

Inputs:

• The project scope statement

• The project management plan

• The work breakdown structure

• The work breakdown structure dictionary

• Organizational process assets

• Enterprise environmental factors

1. Processes and procedures for conducting project work, such as:

   • Initating and planning

     • Guidelines and criteria

     • Specific organizational standards

     • Templates

   • Executing, monitoring and controlling

     • Change control procedures

     • Financial control procedures

     • Issue and defect management procedures

     • Organizational communication requirements

     • Risk control procedures

     • …

   • Closing

     • Project closure guidelines or requirements

2. Corporate Knowledge Base

   • The organizational knowledge base for storing and retrieving information includes

• Decomposition (Planning technique that breaks he project scope and project deliverables into smaller components)

• Templates (means using the lists of activities of similar projects completed in the past)

• Rolling wave planning (method of planning immediate tasks in sufficient detail to enable work to proceed)

• Expert judgment (comes from an individual or group who have specialist knowledge of the situation in hand)

• Quantity estimate/Bill of Quantities (tool whose aim is that of quantifying every single activity in the respective Unit of Measurement (which should not be working time, if possible))

• The activity list (The activity list is a component of the project management plan and the schedule activities are part of the project schedule)

• The activity attributes (comprehending quantity estimates) (provide greater information about the activities in the activity list, including activity descriptions, quantity estimates or Bill of Quantities (i.e. the amount of work in UoM per each activity))

• The milestone list (list of the schedule milestones throughout the project)

• Requested changes (last output from this process)

The activity sequencing process determines and documents the logical relationship of the activities in the activity list

Inputs:

• The project scope statement

• The activity list

• The activity attributes

• The milestone list

• Approved change requests.

-> Except for the project scope statement, these inputs are created in the activity definition process, discussed above

1. Precedence table (Precedence Activity Network)

2. Build the network diagram (AoA or AoN)

3. Schedule network templates

4. Dependency determination

5. Applying leads (anticipation) and lags (delays)

The precedence table defines dependencies and precedence relationships between the activities that were defined during the “Activity definition process”.

Four types of dependency and precedence relationships:

• Finish to Start FS– this is where an activity may commerce only once the preceding activity has completed (e.g. the parquet can be laid after the floor has been completed)

• Start to Start SS– the commencement of the successor activity is dependent on the preceding activity also having commenced (e.g. laying and levelling the asphalt)

• Finish to Finish FF– an activity is able to finish only when the preceding activity has finished (the electrical testing of a plant cannot finish before the wiring is finished)

• Start to finish SF– this is where the successor activity can be completed only once the preceding activity has commenced (it exists more in theory than in practice).

Have look in presentation

Schedule network templates can be used to accelerate the creation of network diagrams for the project

Dependency determination looks at the dependencies to determine the schedule or aspects of the schedule

There are two types of dependencies:

1. Mandatory dependencies (often involve technological needs or strict resource limitation) and are also known as hard logic

2. Discretionary dependencies are determined by the project team and are likely to be based on historical information or best practice

-> Dependencies might also be External

This technique is applied by the project team once the dependencies have been determined. A lead can quicken a successor activity and a lag will delay one.

There are four outputs from activity sequencing:

• Sequence network diagrams

• Updates to the activity lists

• Updates to the activity attributes

• Requested changes.

Activity resource estimating is the process by which these resources are identified and quantified

Inputs:

• Enterprise environmental factors

• Organizational process assets

• The activity list

• The activity attributes

• Resource availability

• The program/project management plan (the former being related to resource levelling across the whole program)

-> Activity resource estimating is all about matching what you need to what is available.

-> Resource availability is, simply, information concerning the availability of the resources required for the project

Five tools and techniques available to the project manager for activity resource estimating:

• Expert judgement

• Project management software

• Alternatives analysis

• Published estimating data

• Bottom-up estimating.

This technique looks at the resource requirements and attempts to determine what alternatives there are to achieve the same result

Project managers can also make use of published estimating data produced by other organizations

These provide regularly updated production rate and unit costs of a wide range of resources, such as trade labor, raw materials, equipment, and so on

Bottom-up estimating is a technique that can be used when the activity cannot be fully resourced as is

• Activity resource requirement. This is a documented list of the resource requirements for the successful completion of the project and is the most significant output

• Resource breakdown structure. A hierarchical structure of resources by resource category and resource type

• Resource calendar. This calendar records resource requirements and availabilities throughout the project, including both workdays and non– workdays

• Activity attributes (update)

• Requested changes.

• Enterprise environmental factors

• Organizational process assets

• Project scope statement

• Activity list

• Activity attributes

• Activity resource requirements

• Resource calendar

• The project management plan (expected overall duration of the project)

—> The estimating of an activity duration should be carried out by the person doing the work

• Expert judgement

• Analogous estimating

• Parametric estimating

• Three-point estimating

• Reserve analysis.

Analogous estimating is a form of expert judgement

Parametric estimating allows the project manager to quantify the activity durations by using a simple (often linear) assumption to relate the amount of work to the productivity rate

The three-point estimate technique provides an average estimate of the time expected for an activity to be completed

The PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) estimating technique uses a weighted average to model the duration probability distribution, with M four times more likely to occur than O or P

• Activity duration estimates

• Updates to the activity attributes

Genral Overview:

Schedule development is the process that enables the project manager to take the time estimates derived in the activity resource and use them to create the project schedule

Inputs:

• Organization assets

• Project scope statement

• Activity list

• Activity attributes

• Project schedule network diagrams

• Activity resource requirements

• Resource calendars

• Activity duration estimates

• The project management plan.

• Schedule network analysis

• The critical path method (CPM) / PERT technique

• Schedule compression

• What-if scenario planning

• Resource levelling

• Critical chain method

• Project management software

• Applying calendars

• Adjusting leads and lags

• Schedule model

• The project schedule– at its bare minimum the project schedule will contain a start and finish date for each schedule activity

• The schedule model data

• The schedule baseline

• Resource requirement updates

• Activity attribute updates

• Activity duration estimate updates

• Project calendar updates

• Change requests

• Updates to the project management plan.

Schedule control is the final process within the time management process group. This process enables the project manager to verify the status of the project, influence proposed changes to the project schedule, identify changes to the schedule, and manage changes to the schedule

Inputs:

• bThe schedule management plan

• The schedule baseline

• Performance reports

• Approved change requests.

• Progress reporting – this is the reporting of actual progress against estimated

• Schedule change control system – this is a control system that defines the processes and procedures for requesting, accepting or rejecting, and implementing a change to the schedule

• Performance measurement – this technique measures actual performance against estimated performance

• Project management software

• Variance analysis – this measures and analyzes the variance between the estimated and actual schedule

• Schedule comparison bar charts – these provide a simple visual tool to enable comparison of schedule activities.

• Schedule model updates

• Schedule baseline updates

• Performance measurements

• Requested changes

• Recommended corrective actions

• Organizational process assets updates

• Activity list updates

• Activity attribute updates

• Updates to the project management plan.