Ch06_Activity_planning.pptVIP

SPM (5e) Activity planning Software Project Management Chapter Six Activity planning Scheduling ‘Time is nature’s way of stopping everything happening at once’ Having worked out a method of doing the project identified the tasks to be carried assessed the time needed to do each task need to allocate dates/times for the start and end of each activity Activity networks These help us to: Assess the feasibility of the planned project completion date Identify when resources will need to be deployed to activities Calculate when costs will be incurred This helps the co-ordination and motivation of the project team Defining activities Activity networks are based on some assumptions: A project is: Composed of a number of activities May start when at least one of its activities is ready to start Completed when all its activities are completed Defining activities -continued An activity Must have clearly defined start and end-points Must have resource requirements that can be forecast: these are assumed to be constant throughout the project Must have a duration that can be forecast May be dependent on other activities being completed first (precedence networks) Identifying activities Work-based: draw-up a Work Breakdown Structure listing the work items needed Product-based approach list the deliverable and intermediate products of project – product breakdown structure (PBS) Identify the order in which products have to be created work out the activities needed to create the products Hybrid approach The final outcome of the planning process A project plan as a bar chart PERT vs CPM Drawing up a PERT diagram No looping back is allowed – deal with iterations by hiding them within single activities milestones – ‘activities’, such as the start and end of the project, which indicate transition points. They have zero duration. Lagged activities where there is a fixed delay between activities e.g. seven days notice has to be given to users that a new release has been signed