.

Estimating Activity Resources is the process of figuring out what type of resources, and how much of each type of these resources would it take to perform the activity.

Resources could mean people, hardware, software, materials, tools, equipment, supplies, machinery, or anything that is used to execute an activity.

[continue reading…]

John just finished planning exercise of his house construction project.

He figured out all activities and activity attributes required to build Josh’s 3-bedroom duplex house. Take a quick look at what he has come up with using Define Activities process, as shown in the image below.

Now he needs to figure out any possible dependencies between them and sequence them in such a way that he finishes preliminary work up front and do not let any of the further activities held up.

When he does this, every activity will have at least one predecessor and one successor activity – except for the very first and very last activity which does not have a predecessor and successor activity respectively.

This is because he is chaining entire set of activities together, in other words, he’s conducting sequence activities process. Most of the predecessor and successor activity information is already available in their activity attributes.

Figure: Activity list for John’s building project

Now he needs to figure out any possible dependencies between them and sequence them in such a way that he finishes preliminary work up front and do not let any of the further activities held up. When he does this, every activity will have at least one predecessor and one successor activity – except for the first and last activity which will not have a predecessor and successor activity respectively.

This is because he is chaining entire set of activities together. Most of predecessor and successor activity information is already available in their activity attributes. [continue reading…]

What is logical next process to take up after creating Work Breakdown Structure from the project scope? To define activities.

This means that, by now you have identified all the work packages from scope. Work packages are created in such a way that they cover all of the deliverables.

If you are able to identify all the tasks from work packages then you are pretty much guaranteed to implement all the requirements, and not miss any scope in the deliverables that reach customer!

A work package is broken down into activities – the smallest unit of work that can be estimated, scheduled, assigned, and tracked to completion.

What you need to define project activities

At this stage, to define activities you have the work packages. A work package is nothing but a WBS item and it’s  corresponding WBS dictionary. Which is what goes into scope baseline. So this would be the first and prominent input to this process.

In Define Activities project management activity each of the work packages is broken down into activities/tasks. [continue reading…]

What is that one thing that you, as a project manager, would not have most of the time?

Time!

Customer always wants things as of yesterday. There are always deadlines and a mad rush to get things ‘out of the door’ as soon as possible.

Indeed. We need to get deliverables done in the shortest possible time.

And this is done by determining – to whatever accuracy possible and to whichever level of confidence possible – the time it takes to perform individual tasks (or activities) on the project. And then to by understanding what kind of dependencies and blockers might cause delays, and then looking at the shortest path (aka critical path) that it takes to complete the project deliverables.

In other words, by understanding how to come up with a schedule for the project.

Figuring out the tasks, which tasks are to be done first and which ones are done later, who is best suited to do them, how long will they take, how to ensure that time is not wasted between tasks, how do I pull things back when a task is delayed… these are all things on your mind when you manage a project.

I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.
– Louis E. Boone

Re-read the above paragraph from PMP Exam’s perspective –

“Figuring out the tasks (define project activities), which tasks are to be done first and which ones are done later (sequence all these activities considering dependencies), who and what is best suited to do them (estimate resources required for activity – people, equipment, server, etc), how long will they take (estimate duration of each activity), how to ensure that time is not wasted between tasks (develop a project schedule), how do I pull things back when a task is delayed (control changes to project schedule)… these are all things on your mind when you manage a project.” [continue reading…]

The next logical step after defining scope is to identify smaller chunks of work from the requirements. These chunks of work are called work packages. These are self-contained, measurable pieces of scope that can be cost-estimated and scheduled.

Later in this post you will see that there will be control-accounts associated with work packages to get a hierarchical view of cost and schedule.

As an example, your organization’s accounts department can calculate the cost for implementing Accounts Payable module of the accounting package your team is building for the customer.

Now the question is,

Why do we really need a Work Breakdown Structure

Scope is a coarse much grained piece of requirement to assign to a team member. This needs to be broken down into smaller pieces, and is done as a hierarchical structure, where each level of the hierarchy breaks deliverables into more accurate and measurable chunks. And this is called Work Breakdown Structure, or WBS in short.

Many a times even this level of granularity is not good enough to assign to team member for work. For this we have Define Activities process. The lowest level of WBS is called work package.

There is another advantage of creating WBS. With this structure you ensure that all of the requirements are guaranteed to be delivered to customer.

How? [continue reading…]