UNIT 4:

ACTIVITY PLANNING

Includes…
1. Objectives of activity planning, project schedule,
projects and activities
2. Sequencing and scheduling activities, network
planning model, representation of lagged activities
3. Adding the time dimension, backward and forward
pass, identifying critical path
4. Activity float, shortening project, precedence
networks
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Activity planning.
• An activity plan should provide a means of evaluating the
consequences of not meeting any of the activity target dates
and guidance as to how the plan might most eff ectively be
modifi ed to bring the project back to target.
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Objectives of activity planning.

• Feasibility assessment >>>
▫ Is the project possible within required timescales and resource constraints?
• Resource Allocation>>>
▫ What are the most effective ways of allocating resources to the project and when
should they be available?
▫ Timescale vs resource availability
• Detailed costing>>>
▫ How much will the project cost and when is that expenditure like to take place?
• Motivation>>>
▫ Providing targets and monitoring achievement against targets is an effective way
of motivating staff, particularly where they have been involved in setting those
targets in the first place.
• Co‐ordination>>>
▫ When do the staff in different departments need to be available to work on a
particular project and when do staff need to be transferred between projects?
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When to plan
• Planning is an ongoing process of refi nement, each iteration becoming more
detailed and more accurate than the last.
• During feasibility study and project start up>>>
▫ the main purpose of planning will be to estimate timescales and the risks of not
achieving target completion dates or keeping within budget
• As the project proceeds beyond the feasibility study, the emphasis will be placed
upon the production of activity plans for ensuring resource availability and cash
fl ow control.
• Throughout the project, until the final deliverable has reached the customer,
monitoring and re‐planning must continue to correct any drift that might prevent
meeting time or cost targets.
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Project Schedule
• Before work commences on a project, the project plan must be developed to the level
of showing dates when each activity should start and fi nish and when and how
much of each resource will be required.
• One the plan has been refined to this level of detail, we call it a project schedule.
• Creating a project schedule comprises four main stages.
▫ The first step in producing the plan is to decide what activities need to carried
out and in what order they are to be done. ‐‐‐‐‐ creating an activity plan
▫ The ideal activity plan will then be the subject of an activity risk analysis, aimed at
identifying potential problems.
▫ The third step is resource allocation.
▫ The final step is schedule production. Once resources have been allocated to each
activity, we will be in a position to draw up and publish a project schedule, which
indicates planned start and completion dates and a resource requirement statement
for each activity.
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Projects and activities: Defining Activities

• Activities must be defi ned so that they meet these criteria. Any activity that does
not meet these criteria must be redefi ned.
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Projects and activities: Identifying Activities

• Essentially there are three approaches to identifying activities that make
up a project.
▫ Activity based Approach
▫ Product based Approach
▫ Hybrid approach.
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The Activity Based

Approach
• Consists of creating a list of all the activities that the project is thought to involve.
• Might involve a brainstorming session involving the whole project team
• While listing activities for a large project, it might be helpful to subdivide the
project into subtasks using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
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The Activity Based

Approach
• When preparing a WBS, consideration must be given to the fi nal level of detail or
depth of the structure.
• Too great depth will result in a large number of small tasks that will be difficult
to manage.
• Too shallow structure will provide insuffi cient detail for project control.
• Each branch should, however, be broken down at least to a level where each
leaf may be assigned to an individual or responsible section within the
organization.
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The Product Based Approach

• Consists of a Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) and a Product Flow Diagram
(PFD).
• The PFD indicates, for each product, which other products are required as inputs
• The PFD can easily be transformed into an ordered list of activities.
• Is particularly appropriate for SSADM which clearly specifies, for each step, each of
the products required and the activities required to produce it.
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The Hybrid Approach

• IBM recommended 5 levels in WBS
• Level 1: Project
• Level Deliverables such as
2: manuals and training
software,
• courses
Level 3: Components which are the
key work items needed to produce
deliverables such as the modules and
tests required to produce the system
software
• Level 4: Work packages which are
major items, or collections of related
tasks, required to produce a
component
• Level 5: Tasks which are tasks that
will normally be the responsibility
of a single person
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Sequencing and Scheduling Activities

• Through out a project, we will require a schedule that clearly indicates when each of
the project’s activities is planned to occur and what resources it will need.
• On way of presenting such a plan is to use a bar chart.
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Network Planning Models

• CPM – Critical Path Method
• PERT – Program Evaluation and Review Technique
• Both CPM and PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) provide the user
with project management tools to plan, monitor, and update their project as it
progresses.
Similarities between PERT and CPM
• Both follow the same steps and use network diagrams
• Both are used to plan the scheduling of individual activities that make up a project
• They can be used to determine the earliest/latest start and finish times for each activity
Diff erences between PERT and CPM
• PERT is probabilistic whereas CPM is deterministic
• In CPM, estimates of activity duration are based on historical data
• In PERT, estimates are uncertain and we talk of ranges of duration and the probability
that an activity duration will fall into that range
• In routine projects where estimated time for each activity is known, CPM is a better
tool to control both time and cost.
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Formulating a Network Model

• The first stage in creating a network model is to represent the activities and
their interrelationships as a graph.
• Activity Network Rules and Conventions (Constructing Precedence Network)

• A project network should have only one start node:

▫ Although it is logically possible to draw a network with more than one starting node, it is
undesirable to do so as it is a potential source of confusion.

• A project network should have only one end node:

▫ The end node designates the completion of the project and a project may only fi nish once.

• A node has duration:

▫ A node represents an activity and in general, activities take time to execute.
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Formulating a Network Model

• Activity Network Rules and Conventions (Constructing Precedence Network)

• Links normally have no duration:

▫ Links represent the relationships between activities.
▫ In the figure below, neither installation cannot start until program testing is
complete.
▫ Program testing cannot start until both coding and data take on have been
Code
completed.

Program Test Install

Data Take-on

• Precedents are the immediate preceding activities:

▫ Program Test cannot start until both Code and Data Take‐on have been completed
▫ Install cannot start unit program test has finished.
▫ Code and Data Take‐on can therefore be said to be precedents of Program Test and Program
Test is precedent of Install
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Formulating a Network Model

• Activity Network Rules and Conventions (Constructing Precedence Network)
• Time moves from left to right
▫ Networks are drawn so that time moves from left to right.
▫ It is rare that this convention is flouted.
▫ People add arrow heads to the lines to give stronger visual indication of time flow
• A network may not contain loops
▫ A loop is an error in that it represents a situation that cannot occur in practice

Code Test Release

Program Program Program

Correct Diagnose
Errors Errors
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Formulating a Network Model

• Activity Network Rules and Conventions (Constructing Precedence Network)
• A network should not contain dangles:
▫ A dangling activity write user manual in the figure below should not exist as it is likely to lead
to errors in subsequent analysis
▫ In many cases dangling activities indicate errors in logic when activities are added as an
afterthought.

Design Code Test Install

Program Program Program Program

Write User
Manual
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Formulating a Network Model

Design Code Test Install

Program Program Program Program

Write User
Manual

Fig. Resolving a dangle

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Formulating a Network Model

• Activity Network Rules and Conventions (Constructing Precedence Network)
• Representing Lagged Activities:
▫ We might come across situations where we wish to undertake two activities in parallel so long
as there is a lag between the two.
▫ Eg. We would designate an activity “test and document amendments which would make it
impossible to show that amendment recording could start say 1 day after testing has begun
and finishing a little after the completion of testing.
▫ The figure indicates that the document amendments can start one day after the start of
prototype testing and will be completed two days after prototype testing us completed.

Build Test Revise

Prototype Prototype Specification

1 2

Document
Amendments

Fig. Indicating Lags

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Formulating a Network Model

Concept Check
State what is wrong
with each of them and
redraw where possible.

Answer
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Activity Labelling

Event
Number

Earliest Latest
Date Date

Slack
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The Forward Pass Rule

• The earliest date for an event is the earliest finish date for all the activities terminating
at the event.
• Where more than one activity terminates at a common event we take the latest of the
earliest finish dates for those activities.

The Backward Pass Rule

• The latest date for an event is the latest start date for all the activities that may
commence from that event.
• Where more than one activity commences at a common event, we take the earliest of
the latest start dates for those activities.
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Question!!!
An example project specifi cation with estimated activity durations
and precedence requirements
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Solution!!!

A CPM
network after
forward pass
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Solution!!!

A CPM
network after
backward
pass
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Identifying the critical path

• Slack : it is the diff erence between the earliest date and the latest date for an
event – it is a measure of how late an event may be without affecting the end
date of the project.
• The critical path is the path joining all nodes with a zero slack.
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Identifying the critical path

1 2 3>>(5-1) 4>>(2+1) 5
(5-4)
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Any Queries?