Project Time Management

One Minute Thirty Second Overview

My Favorite Triple Constraint View

Think of it as Schedule Management

• If Scope grows/changes, schedule must adapt• There will be unknowns do deal with – making

it important to--define sequence of activities--estimate time needed for each one--build in some contingency time

-- AND MONITOR, all the way through

It is surprising how slow-going the route from 80% complete to 100% complete can be.

Tools to help manage time with complex projects include GANTT Charts and Critical Path Analysis.

What’s Critical Path Analysis?• The critical path is simply all the tasks that determine the end

date in your project schedule.

Float is….• In project management, float or slack is the amount of time that a

task in a project network can be delayed without causing a delay to:

• subsequent tasks ("free float")• project completion date ("total float")

• http://cms.chicostatepm.webnode.com/capm/

Time Management

• Includes all the processes used to assure timely completion of the project.

Most important output: the project schedule.

• How it all relates….

Time

• The scope planning process list of activities

-

Activity List is the input to activity sequencing, activity resource estimating, activity duration estimating processes.

Time

• The activity sequence process identifies the dependencies among the schedule activities that must be performed.

Time

• The main output of the activity seq. process are the diagrams used to used to show the timelines, schedule of work, and dependencies. Here’s a simple one -

Time• The diagrams + activity resource requirements

(simply, what you need) that you got from the resource estimating process ….

• PLUS the activity duration estimates you got from the activity duration estimating process…

Become the input item to the what?

SCHEDULE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Time

• The schedule development process the project schedule; once approved, it becomes the schedule baseline, which becomes an input to…..

SCHEDULE CONTROL PROCESS

Understand How This is Fitting Together

• Major task of the activity definition process is to generate the activity list by decomposing the WBS work packages into activities.

• Major task of the activity sequencing process is to determine the dependencies among the activities in the activity list. This makes the list a “what-put” to the sequencing process?

INPUT

Time

• The output of the activity sequencing process is a diagram or schema that displays the dependencies.

• Once you figure out what the activity resource requirements are, you can estimate the duration of each activity. (Imagine your own schedule)

Example – Activity Sequencing

Example: Activity Sequencing

IT Sequencing Example

Any Activity Sequencing

“Models real-world workflows of business processes…displays which actions need to take place, and what the dependencies are.”

Time

The approved project schedule acts as a baseline against which the project process is tracked.

Things to be careful about…

• Changing the quantity of a resource will affect the duration estimate (e.g. do more with less.)

• Each activity on a critical path has zero (or negative) float time and thus poses a schedule risk. Monitor all critical path activities carefully.

Also Remember

• That the schedule activities are not the components of the WBS –they are components of the project schedule.

• What are components of the WBS?

WBS

Remember for CAPM

• The activity list, generated as an output of the activity definition process, becomes a component of the PM plan. Of course!

• Fast-tracking compresses the schedule by performing activities in parallel which will otherwise be performed in a sequence whereas…

Remember

• Crashing compresses the schedule by assigning more resources.

Can you think of an example of crashing, or tell us what it might look like?

Have Knowledge of This for CAPM

• You need to know what CRITICAL PATH refers to.

• Know what “float” is and basically how to calculate it.

• You can refer to the glossary on our site if needed.