SIX - Schedule Management Flashcards
What does Plan Schedule Management involve (P)?
Involves documenting how a PM will plan, manage, and control the project to the schedule baseline, and how they will manage schedule variances. Need to determine what the measures of performance will be, how and when they will capture data needed to evaluate schedule performance, how they will use the data to keep the project on track, and what they will do when variances occur
What questions does Plan Schedule Management answer?
Who will be involved?
What approach will be used to plan the schedule?
What processes and procedures will be used to create the schedule?
What are the outputs of Plan Schedule Management?
Schedule Management Plan
What is the Schedule Management Plan?
Can be formal or informal, and is part of the PM Plan. Defines the:
Scheduling methodology and software;
Estimate units;
Schedule baseline;
Threshold acceptance for variance;
Performance measures;
How variances will be managed;
Process that determines whether a variance should be acted upon;
Schedule change control procedures;
Required schedule reports;
Format and frequency of project reporting;
Number and timing of releases and iterations (adaptive life cycle)
What is Define Activities (P) Process?
Involves taking the work packages in the WBS and decomposing them into the activities that are required to produce the work package deliverables and thus achieve the project objectives
What should the activities be size was?
At a level small enough to estimate, schedule, monitor, and control.
What are inputs to Define Activities (P)?
Schedule management plan, scope baseline (WBS), OPAs, PM Plan, EEFs
What are the Tools and Techniques of Define Activities (P)?
Rolling Wave Planning, Decomposition
What is Rolling Wave Planning?
If there are many unknowns and it is difficult to break down the work and schedule it, consider Rolling Wave Planning. It is a technique of progressive elaboration (process of clarifying and refining plans as the project progresses). PM plans activities to the level of detail needed to manage the work just before they start the work. This technique plans to a higher level and then develop more detailed plans when the work is to be done
What may Rolling Wave Planning result in?
Iterations of rolling wave planning may result in additional activities being added, the further elaboration of other activities, may create need for updates to the PM plan which require integrated change control
What are the Outputs of Define Activities (P)?
Activity List and Activity Attributes
Milestone List
Change Requests (Look at Rolling Wave)
Updates to the PM Plan
What is Activity List and Activity Attributes?
Activity list includes all activities required to complete the project, and activity attributes, or details, regarding project activities.
Known attributes may be limited to the activity name and ID, as planned completion date, leads and lags, and predecessor and successor activities may be added
What is the Milestone list? What are Milestones?
Milestones are significant events within the project schedule that are not work activities and have no duration. Milestone list is part of project documents
What is Sequence Activities Process (P)? What is the result?
Involves taking the activities and sequencing them in the order in which the work will be performed. The result is a network diagram
What are the inputs to Sequence Activities?
PM Plan, EEFs, OPAs, Project Documents (Activity Attributes, assumption log, milestone list, and activity list)
What are the Tools and Techniques of Sequence Activities (P)?
Precedence Diagramming Method, Dependencies Determination, Leads and Lags, PMIS
What is the Precedence Diagramming Method?
Nodes or boxes are used to represent activities, and arrows are added to show activity dependencies. There can be four types of logical relationships between activities displayed in the precedence diagramming method
What are the four types of logical relationships between activities?
Finish to Start (FS) Activity must finish before the successor can start (Dig a hole — plant tree)
Start to Start (SS) (You must start designing, and wait two week’s lag before have enough designed to start coding)
Finish to Finish (FF) (Must finish testing before finish documentation)
Start to Finish (SF)
What are Dependencies Determination?
The sequence of activities may be based on the following dependencies:
Mandatory (Hard Logic) Dependency
Discretionary (preferred, or soft logic);
External;
Internal Dependency
What is a Mandatory Hard Logic Dependency?
A mandatory dependency is inherent in the nature of the work, or required by contract. You must design before you construct
What is Discretionary Soft Logic Dependency?
How an organization may choose to have work performed. There are other ways it could be done, but this is the preferred approach. They can be changed if necessary and are important to analyze when compressing the schedule
What are External Dependencies?
Based on the needs or desires of a party outside the project (government or supplier)
What are Internal Dependencies?
Based on the needs of the project and may be something the project team can control
What dependencies does the project team identify? What about the PM?
The mandatory and discretionary dependencies, while the PM identifies the external and internal dependencies.
Can more than one dependency be identified for the same work?
Yes. Example, mandatory internal, discretionary external, etc
What are Leads and Lags?
A lead indicates and activity can start before its predecessor activity is completed.
A lag indicated waiting time inserted between activities (wait 3 days after pouring concrete)
How is a PMIS helpful in sequence activities?
Automated software can schedule all leads and lags and activities easily
What are the outputs of Sequence Activities (P)?
Project Schedule Network Diagrams, Project Document Updates
What is the Project Scheduled Network Diagram?
An image depicting the flow of project activities in a logical order in which they will be performed. Shows dependencies of activities. It also helps plan which activities can be completed in parallel and determine where leads/lags are required.
What is a path convergence?
When an activity has two or more activities directly preceding it
What is a path divergence?
When an activity has two or more successor activities directly following it
What are path convergences and divergences indicators of?
Greater risk within the impacted activities
What are the benefits of the schedule network diagrams?
Helps to justify time estimate for the project;
Aid in planning, organizing, and controlling the project;
Show inter-dependencies of all activities, identifying riskier activities;
Shows workflow;
Identifies opportunities to compress the schedule;
Show project progress
What are the inputs to Estimate Activity Durations (P)?
Project documents (milestone list, project team assignments, resource calendars, risk register);
Activity list and attributes (leads/lags must be factored)
Assumption log
Lessons learned register
Resource breakdown structure
Resource requirements
What are the tools and techniques of Estimate Activity Durations?
Analogous (Top Down) Estimating Parametric Estimating Three-Point Estimating Bottom Up Estimating Data Analysis Decision Making
What is Analogous (Top-Down) Estimating?
Uses expert judgement and historical information to predict the future. Can use historical data from past, similar projects. Can be used at project level (last 5 projects similar to this one took 8 months) and activity level
