Budgeting, timing (PERT, Gant Charts) in Project Management

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Many criteria are involved in the activity sequencing :[7]

Activity list: This is the main input to sequence activities at it consists of all known activities to be included within the plan.

Activity attribute: These are only needed for large complex projects, and include activity aspects such as detailed description, constraints assumptions, resource requirements, etc.

Project scope statement: Having a complete understanding of the project’s scope will give clues as to the most appropriate order ( sequence activities) in which certain activities must be carried out. In addition, by using the project scope statement as an aid to the logical sequence, this will ensure that all of the activities are considered and included.

Milestone list: Milestones are zero duration activities, and will often be created as a result of key activities being completed at a particular point in time. They are also used to name and identifying key control points when monitoring and controlling during project execution. Such milestones may influence or impose the sequence of activities and are hence vital to be used here.

Organizational process assets: This is a common inputs used for many processes, and in this case may influence activity sequence via either use of similar previous project plans, procurement sequence procedures, or duration estimating data for activities. It is also worth considering using organizational process assets to seek out any information on previous similar projects in terms of the activities used and their relationships to help determine the best way to sequence activities.

[pic 3]

Sequencing Activities process and stages [8]

1.3. Resource Estimating for Activities

Resource Estimating for Activities is defined by PMBOK as:

« The process of estimating the type and quantities of material, people, equipment or supplies required to perform each activity.[9]»

Expert Judgement is used for determining which material and which skills and how many of them are necessary to execute an activity. Alternatives analysis tries to find other solutions.

Publishing estimating data contains published information about production rates and so on.

Project management software is often used to plan resource pools, to develop resource estimates, to organise resource breakdown structures and to offer resource calendars to the project manager.

Also, bottom-up estimating is the method, by which a global unit (here the activity) is decomposed into smaller pieces, which can be reasonable estimated and whose single values can be added bottom up to the searched global value.[10]

1.4. Duration and Effort Estimation

Duration and Effort Estimation is defined by PMBOK as:

« The process of approximating the number of work periods needed to complete individual activities with estimated ressources.[11] »

This is one of the key steps in the project planning process. Since estimates are all about the time (duration), this step should be completed with a higher accuracy. For this step, there are many estimation mechanisms in place, so your project should select an appropriate one. Most of the companies follow either WBS based estimating or Function Points based estimates in this step.

Once the activity estimates are completed, critical path of the project should be identified in order to determine the total project duration. This is one of the key inputs for the project time management.[12]

1.5. Development of the Schedule

Development of the Schedule is defined by PMBOK as:

« The process of analyzing activity sequences, durations, ressources requirements (money, knowledge,time), and schedule constraints to create the project schedule.[13]»

Putting all components together, one gets not only the order of the tasks, but also the durance and the needed resources. Formally one can see at this point whether the project will fulfill the schedule constraints (by respecting the cost and quality constraints too) or not. If this act of aggregation fails the first time one should try to solve the contradictions by redoing the small row « resource estimating, durances estimating and schedule development ».[14][pic 4]

Basic project scheduling: Gantt [15]

1.6. Schedule Controls

Schedule Control is defined by PMBOK as:

« The process of monitoring the status of the project progress and managing changes to the schedule baseline. »[16]

Controlling Schedule is the project management activity in which progress on project activities is compared against Schedule baseline to understand whether project is ahead of the schedule or behind. Based on the deviation you can plan on corrective or preventive actions and manage changes to baseline. This process helps thus reduces the risk of delivery slippage when managed well.[17] It helps to determine current status of project based on completed deliverables against planned iteration.

Also, at the end of each iteration , it is useful to conduct retrospective review meetings to identify improvement areas and adjust project backlog based on outcome of these meetings.

Find out iteration velocity (number of features implemented per fixed duration of iteration (such as 2 wks).

If all this needs schedule to change, manage the changes and baseline it again to make it more efficient. TIME IS MONEY!

1.7. Description of different tools of project time management

There many tools which allows to manage time in project management. We will describe PERT and Gantt.

1.7.1. Pert chart

First PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart was designed in 1958 by the U.S Navy with aerospace company Lockheed Missile Systems and consultancy firm Booz Allen & Hamilton while working on the Polaris missile project during the Cold War.[18] They wanted to complete the Polaris project as soon as possible because