Project Planning Flashcards
What is project planning?
- Breaking down the work into parts and assign these to project team members
- Anticipate problems that might arise and prepare tentative solutions to those problems.
What is project scheduling (3 points)
How to organize the project in tasks - how and when they will be executed.
Estimate calendar time needed
Estimate resources needed to complete each task.
What are the activities of project scheduling
Split project into tasks
Organize tasks
Minimize task dependencies.
What are the components of project activities (tasks)?
A duration (days/months)
An effort estimate (persondays)
deadline
defined end-point (successful tests, etc)
Milestones vs deliverables
Milestones are points in the schedule against which you can assess progress
Deliverables: work products delivered to the customer.
What is work breakdown structure
hierarchical tree struscture of deliverables and tasks that need to be performed to complete a project.
What does WBS contain?
A description of all significant work.
A clear task decomposition for assignment of responsibilities.
A framework for scheduling, budgeting, and expenditure tracking.
What are the two main ways to organize the representation of work?
By functional responsibilities.
According to life-cycle phases, showing each phase as a top-level breakdown.
What is a Gantt chart
A timeline chart (also called a Gantt chart) is a horizontal bar chart which helps to plan, coordinate, and track specific tasks in a project.
Finish to start (FS)
Task B cannot start until task A finishes
Start to start (SS)
Task B cannot start until A starts
Finish to finish (FF)
task b cannot finsih until task a finishes
Start To finish
task B cannot finish until A starts
Steps in building an activity on node network
Identify the specific activities and their duration.
How many days it takes to finish an activity (task)
Determine the proper sequence of the activities.
Construct a network diagram.
Estimate the time required for each activity.
Earliest start/finish and latest start/finish.
Determine the critical path.
Update the graph as the project progresses.
What is identifying activities (Node Network)
This consists in identifying the activities that are required to complete the project.
What is determining the activity sequence (Node Network)
This is determinitng the order of the activities, this is usually paired with the identification process; some others will require more analysis to figure out order
Construct the network diagram.
This means showing the sequence of serial and parallel activities.
Estimate time required for activities
commonly used unit of time for activity completion, but any consistent measure is fine
The 4 types of time quantities for an activity
Earliest start time (ES)
Earliest finish time (EF)
Latest start (LS)
Latest finish (LF)
What is earliest start time
The earlierst time at whcih teh eactivity can start given that its precedent activities must be completed first.
Earliest finish time (EF)
Equal to the earliest start time for the activity plus the time required to complete the activity.
Latest start time (LS)
Equal to the latest finish time minus the time required to complete the activity
What is latest finish time (LF)
The latest time at which the activity can be completed without delaying the project.
What is the forward pass rule
Used to determine earliest times:
Earliest start date for the current activity = earliest finish date for the previous
When there is more than one previous activity, take the latest earliest finish
What is the backward pass
Used to determining the latest times
The latest start and finish times are the latest times that an activity can start and finish without delaying the project.
Start from the last activity:
Latest finish (LF) for last activity = earliest finish (EF).
Work backwards:
Latest finish (LF) for current activity = Latest start for the following
More than one following activity - take the earliest LS.
Latest start (LS) = LF for activity – duration.
What is a float
The difference between the earliest start date (ES) and the latest start date (LS).
Float is a measure of how much the start or completion of an activity may be delayed without affecting the end date of the project.
zero float means it’s critical - any delay will affect completion of entire project
