Project Management in Computing Week 6 & 7 (finals)

Why do schedules matter

because delivering on time is one of the biggest challenges and main cause of problems in projects, time is the least flexible attribute but overall there is other issues like individual work styles and cultural differences that can also cause conflicts to schedule.

what is the six schedule process

1. Plan Schedule management

2. Define activities

3. Sequence activities

4. Estimate activity durations

5. develop schedule

6. control schedule

what is the project schedule model development rules when to make a schedule

1. determine level of accuracy

2. provide units of measures

3. controls thresholds

4. provide rules for performance measurement

5. reports formats

6. make process descriptions

7. make it informal or formal

what is an activity (task)

element of work normally found on the work breakdown structure (WBS) that has an expected duration, cost and resource requirements.

what is activity list

tabulation of activities to be included on project schedule like: activity name, identifier/number and brief description

what is activity attributes

provides more information such as predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads and lags, resource requirements, constraints, imposed dates and assumptions related to activity.

what is milestones

a significant event that normally has no duration. a useful tool for setting schedule goals and monitoring progress and important to include early in Gantt chart, start small and frequent, then all-encompassing, then once binary (complete or incomplete) monitor the critical path.

what is sequencing activites

reviewing activities and determining dependencies

what is a dependency and the three types of dependencies

dependency: relationship of sequencing project activities/tasks

mandatory dependency: inherent work being performed on project, AKA hard logic

discretionary dependency: defined by project team; AKA soft logic and should be used with care since this limits later scheduling options

external dependency: involves relationships between projects and non-project activities.

what is a network diagram

schematic display of logical relationships among, or sequencing of, project activites

what is the arrow diagramming method (ADM)

network diagram where activities are represented by arrows, nodes/circles are starting and ending points of activities and can only show finish-to-start dependency

what is the precedence diagramming method (PDM)

network diagramming technique where boxes represent activities

what are the 4 types of task dependency

finish-to-start: relationship where from activity or predecessor must finish before to activity or successor CAN START.

start-to-start: relationship where from activity CANNOT START until to activity or successor is started

finish-to-finish: relationship where from activity must finish before to activity FINISHES

start-to-finish: relationship where from activity MUST START before to activity finishes

what are the important issues in estimating resources

1. how difficult it is to do specific activities on this project

2. what is the organization’s history in doing similar activities

3. are the resources avaliable?

what is the resource breakdown structure

hierarchical structure that identifies project’s resources by category and type

what is duration & effort

duration: actual amount of time worked on activity plus elapsed time

effort: number of workdays/hours required to complete task (does not equal duration)

what is the three-point estimate

1. optimistic (best-case)

2. pessimistic (worst-case)

3. most likely (expected scenario)

this is the basis for PERT probabilistic time estimates

what is Gantt charts

standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format. (diamond = milestone, black bar = summary task, light bar = duration, arrow = dependency)

what is the SMART criteria for milestones

1. (S)pecific

2. (M)easurable

3. (A)ssignable

4. (R)ealistic

5. (T)ime-framed

what is critical path & the critical path method (CPM)

critical path: series of activities that determines earliest time when project can be completed, longest path in network diagram

CPM: network diagramming technique used to predict total project duration

what is slack/float along with its two other types

slack: amount of time activity might be delayed without delayed a succeeding activity or project finish date

total slack: amount of time activity may be delayed from early start without delaying the planned project finish date

free slack: amount of time activity can be delayed without delaying early start of any following activities

what is forward and backward pass

forward pass: through the network diagram determines early start and finish date

backwards pass: determines last start and finish dates

what are the three main techniques for shortening schedules

1. shortening durations of critical activities by adding more resources or changing scope

2. crashing activities by obtaining greatest amount of schedule compression for least incremental cost

3. fast tracking activities by doing them in parallel or overlapping them

what is critical chain scheduling

method of scheduling that considers limited resources when creating project schedule and includes buffers to protect project completion date

what is buffer and its two types

buffer: additional time to complete task

project buffer: additional time added before project due date

feeding buffer: additional time added before tasks on critical path

what is PERT

network analysis technique used to estimate project duration when there is high degree of uncertainty about individual activity duration estimates, this is related to three-point estimate