Project Schedule Planning

Project Activity Definition

An activity definition is a description of an activity or work package.There are two main purposes for the activity description: to document the activity for each team member and to serve as a quality check on the WBS.Every input must either be an output from a previous activity or come from a source outside the project, and every output must be an input to another activity or a project deliverable.Inputs that have no source or outputs that have no destination are usually indications of missing activities.

Definition of Work Breakdown Structure

The main tool required for the definition of an activity as well as the determination of the duration and sequence of activities is work breakdown structure (WBS).The WBS definition from PMBOK Guide reads: “The WBS is a deliverable-oriented grouping of project elements which organizes and defines the total scope of the project.Each descending level represents an increasingly detailed definition of a project component.Project components may be products or services.”

As more detailed information becomes available during the various design stages, more levels can be added to the cascaded structure.This process creates a tree-like structure called the WBS and is the means of dividing a large project into components or elements called work packages.The lowest level is always the detailed task to be performed.Using the WBS, the planner can tackle one clearly defined part of a project at a time instead of trying to grapple with the whole.Fig 2-2 shows general elements of WBS.

General WBS Figures

Generally speaking, projects have similar WBS figures.Here, let’s simply look at two WBS examples as shown in Fig 2-3 and Fig 2-4 to find out what WBS figures look like.

Coding the WBS

The WBS is typically a chart that looks similar to an organization chart.A full WBS would show the branches and work packages flowing from each component at each level.This visual representation of a WBS is excellent for providing an overall view of the project and its structure.Fig 2-5 shows the full branches of only the pickling plant buildings structure of a factory project.

Source: Enzo Frigenti, Dennis Comninos.The Practice of Project Management: a Guide to the Business-focused Approach.

Codification is the basic framework upon which any system using the WBS is built.It provides a common “language” of identification to facilitate the use of computers and for ease of communication for all concerned with project scheduling and costing.Tab 2-1 gives the codes for the chart in Fig 2-5.It is now easy to allocate costs, quantities, progress and so on to a code such as 1.1.1.1.1 (Excavation for the structure of the pickling plant buildings).Note the use of an indented table as a non-graphic method of presenting a WBS.

The size of the WBS and the number of levels depend on the size and complexity of the project.The most common structure consists of five levels.

(1) total project.

(2) sub-project (deliverables or accomplishments).

(3) work package.

(4) tasks.

(5) activities.

Tab 2-1 Coding the WBS

Source: Enzo Frigenti, Dennis Comninos.The Practice of Project Management: a Guide to the Business-focused Approach.

Project Activity Sequencing

Activity sequencing is the process of identifying and documenting relationships among the project activities, where the sequence of what work can be done and when is the input needed should be identified.The activity’s identity comes from the WBS.Once the WBS is completed, the bottom of the work breakdown structure defines the individual pieces of work that are necessary to complete the project.These individual pieces of work are the same items that become the activities in the project schedule.Since an activity requires something from another activity, which is that activity’s output, both activities must be done in sequence or at least partly so.An activity that is not completed but delivers enough of its outputs to the dependent activity to allow it to start can overlap the dependent activity.Taking advantage of this and scheduling activities to be done in parallel when they would have otherwise been done in sequence is called fast tracking.

There are two important management considerations for sequencing.Firstly, there is a concept called technical sequence, which is based on the technology of the project.A second consideration of sequencing falls behind the technical issues.That is, many activities can be performed at various times.In these cases, the project manager may sequence them to accommodate availability of resources, weather, or other factors.In both the technical and arbitrary sequencing situations, it is incumbent on the skills of the project team to make the appropriate activity sequencing decision.However, it is important to recognize that these decisions do impact the schedule results, so sequencing considerations are often interactive ones until the plan is fixed.

Activity Resources and Time Estimating

Resources, such as people, materials, equipment, facilities, money, or a combination of any of these, are fundamental in executing a project, and are required throughout the entire project lifecycle.Activity resources estimating is the process for estimating the type and quantities of resources required to perform each schedule activity, where one has to determine what resources and what quantities of each resource will be used.Determining resource requirements is critical to successful project time management, and the ability to estimate the duration of each project activity is equally essential.Time estimating is the so called activity duration.Duration can be defined as the total number of the work periods (not including holidays or other non-work time) required to complete a schedule activity.

It is sensible to identify the people who will work on each activity as early as possible since they often have the most knowledge about how to actually do the work and how long it will take.Also, the length of time to perform an activity is often dependent upon who will do that work.When estimating how long activities are expected to take, each activity should be evaluated independently.All assumptions and constraints made when estimating should be documented since if one of these changes, it could change the estimate.For the first estimate of each activity, a normal level of labor and equipment and a normal work week should be assumed.If overtime is planned right from the start, the project manager is unlikely to have much flexibility if the schedule needs to be accelerated.Negotiation with a customer or supplier may be necessary, but the project manager needs to understand what is reasonable under normal circumstances before entering those negotiations.When a past project is being used as a guide, the actual time it took to perform the activities should be used, not the time that was initially estimated.

Tab 2-3 Suggestions for Creating Duration Estimates

Source:Timothy J.Kloppenborg .Contemporary Project Management.

Schedule Planning

Scheduling a project requires both a scientific and an artistic touch, because the schedule has to reflect the work breakdown structure tasks in a logical and interrelated way to optimize resources across the organization.

The following is the basic way for project scheduling.

• Create milestones in the timescale. Typically marked by a high level event such as completion, endorsement or signing of a deliverable, a milestone is the end of a stage that marks the completion of a work package or phase, and it can add significant value to project scheduling.Project schedule planning requires project-wide conception and project team commitment to milestone events.
• Establish production schedule priorities.Project schedule planning requires you to consider primary activities critical to the project.
• Predict problems. Project schedule planning should predict problems and production bottlenecks in activities and operations.
• Solve those problems. Project schedule planning allows you to evaluate what doesn’t work and to consider what might be done to make it work.With a plan detailing your assumptions and expectations, it is much easier to identify what has gone wrong when problems arise in the project schedule.
• Profitability.Both the activities’ cost and the owners’ cost need to be considered before committing funding resources in project schedule planning
• Motivation. Thorough project schedule planning also encourages a fuller participation from the project team and motivates everyone concerned to put forth his best efforts to a positive outcome in the project schedule.
• Cost control.Project schedule planning controls costs by creating a specific type of report sorts for each project team member.The project manager and site supervisor need periodic reporting.
• Schedule development.As the only way to put milestones into the operational phases of the schedule accurately, project schedule planning should focus on balancing activities among completion needs, demands for resources, and milestones timescale.