PMI PMP Project Management Professional – Introducing Project Schedule Management Part 2

6. Rolling Wave Planning

Rolling wave planning is where we have iterations of planning and doing and planning and doing. And this is a concept we’ll see throughout the pinball, and I’ve already mentioned it a couple of times in this course. So let’s have a good, clear definition of rolling wave planning. The idea is that the imminent work, I can plan in detail, stuff that’s way out in the future, I can plan at a high level. We already do this in your life. What plans do you have for next weekend? But you have a pretty good idea. What plans do you have a weekend a year from now? It’s probably a bit more hazy.

So as we get closer to the work in our project, we can plan much more precisely and accurately future work approaches. We do more planning, so we always focus on what’s most important and what’s most imminent. And this is an example of progressive elaboration. Remember, I start very broad, and I get very specific to visualize rolling wave planning. It looks like a wave plan, do plan, do planning and executing. It’s possible we could do rolling wave planning with phase gates. We have phase gate planning. So this curve that you see over here, each of those green dots, those represent a milestone in a phase gate. So we start off the project at that green dot. That’s the initiation or the kickoff meeting.

And then we do planning for the next phase of the project from now until the next green dot, the next phase gate, we get to the next green dot, we pause and do planning for the next chunk of the work, and then we get to the next phase gate. You do planning for the next chunk of the work and so on. So you could see you have this idea that you’re planning for each phase.

As you enter the phase, you know what your milestones are. But I need to define how will I get to those milestones? In adaptive environments, we also have rolling wave planning. So we have this idea of a sprint backlog planning. What goes into the sprint backlog that we create deliverables through these short cycles of work. And then we do some quick planning. We reorder or prioritize our product backlog, and then we go back and do execution. So plan, do, plan do. And this is all creating deliverables in each iteration. And then the team starts the cycle all over again. So you will see some questions on rolling away planning, maybe one or two. It’s a pretty easy concept to grasp, and I’m sure you’re doing fine. All right, keep moving forward. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

7. Compiling the Activity List

Now let’s get to work actually creating the activity list. First off, templates part of our organizational process assets. If you are doing the same types of projects over and over and over, there’s no reason to start from scratch every time. Creating your activity list. Let’s take a previous project, project some historical information, part of OPA and just adapt it to the current project.

So that’s a real quick way of building your template or building your activity list based on a template. Now a template could also be that you always have certain activities that you do in your type of work. So it could be a pre populated form or a plan and then you just adapt it to your project. So historical information or prepopulated, both of these are part of organizational process assets. The activity list is a separate document, it’s not wrapped into the WBS, it’s a separate document that lists all of the project activities. Typically we have an activity Identifier, much like we do in the work breakdown structure. So it’s a numbering sequence for each one of our activities. And then along with this we have a scope of work description. So it might say install the big screen TV. Well, what big screen TV, which one and what room, what are the components I need?

So it might have just a quick narrative about the make and model, where it’s located in the house, any other characteristics about that work. When it comes to installing that big screen TV, each activity has a name and a description. So we just talked about the activity ID. It also can link back to that work breakdown structure identifier, the work package that the activity is building that it’s creating. Are there any relationships between activities? Like you can’t install that TV until the wire has been run to the house, you can’t install the TV until the cable company actually turns on the cable and can do the testing or whatever the case may be. So are there any relationships that affect when the activity can take place? We also need to look at leads and lags. So some new terms here for you and we’ll see this again in this lecture or in this section, but let’s go ahead and define these. Now a lead means hurry up, that I’m bringing it closer to my start date. So lead is considered negative time. It’s typically when we allow activities to overlap.

So I have to prime the walls and then I can paint the walls. But we have so many walls to prime, I don’t have to have them all done in this building before painting can start. So I prime the walls and then I do some lead time negative two days from its scheduled start date. So it kind of tucks under the task. And now I’ve got people still priming while painting has started. So it’s an opportunity to compress the schedule. Lag time is just the opposite lag time. Think about lagging behind you’re adding time. It’s positive time. So you prime the wall, but it’s really humid and ordinarily it only takes one day for the primer to cure, but it’s so humid, it’s taking a long time to dry to set up. So we have to add a day. So we have a lag on the painting activity of plus one day. So it pushes it out. Instead of tucking it under, it’s pushing it out. We have to wait to begin painting. So lag time is waiting time. So procurement, we always talk about lead time and people get well, lead time, we’re talking, I need a way out there. Isn’t that lag? No, it’s still lead.

So I need those cabinets 30 days from tomorrow and the procurement takes 30 days. So I have to start the procurement process right now. What I’m leading the lead time is the delivery of the cabinets, not the procurement process. So I need the cabinets 30 days from now. Well, in essence, it takes 30 days to get those. So my lead time is as if I want them right now because it takes 30 days to get here. So it’s lead time, your negative time right here because it’s going to take 30 days for that activity for the cabinets to be delivered. Lead time is always negative time. You’re bringing it closer to your start date. Lag time is always positive. You’re pushing it away. You’re adding to the schedule duration. Some other activity attributes. We have resource requirements, what resources you need, people and materials. Are there any imposed dates? Like you have to get this work done by a deadline because the inspector is coming, or there’s a trade show, or we’re contractually obligated to hit that date. Are there any constraints and assumptions? There always are.

You have to use a particular resource. You have a team member that’s going on vacation in the middle of your project. You only have so much time. You can only be at the work site between eight in the morning and six at night. So what constraints do you have? What assumptions do you have? You assume everyone’s going to be on the project. You assume the vendor will deliver on time. But those are things that can all affect your schedule, the actual duration, and any other information you have to add to your activity attributes. Effort and project activities. So I mentioned this a little bit earlier. Loe level of effort. These are support activities, the project manager activities. So things like reporting, budgeting, inspecting, meeting, creating memos or emails, or just the management, that’s level of effort, they really don’t contribute to the project scope, but they’re needed to manage the work. Discrete activities are the activities that we describe actually creates the project scope. So discrete effort activities are things like installing the fixtures, installing those cabinets, and doing the electrical work.

Those are discrete because they are focused on creating the deliverable a proportioned effort are the project management work, so things like quality insurance, integrated change control and communications. So level of effort and effort apportioned effort. It’s hard to say those are activities that support the project. So those two are typically well, sometimes they’re called non value because they sometimes because they aren’t contributing to the business value. I would take a small stand against that and say they are a value add because you have to do those in order to contain and manage and keep the project moving forward. But they are support activities. They aren’t really contributing to the project scope, but we need to do them so they’re seen as overhead. All right, so be familiar with those terms for your exam, especially the idea of an activity list and how it relates to the work breakdown structure and work packages. All right, good job. Keep moving forward. Forward.

8. Creating the Milestone List

Throughout your project, you’ll be working to hit your target milestones. But what are milestones? Milestones are just a marker that show progress. The idea of a milestone is from the Roman era and creating these oblisque or an obelisk that would be separated about every 1 mile, and then they’re giving a unique number. So you have mile marker 1, mile marker 45 or whatever, and it shows how far you’ve come and how far you have to go between cities. So in a project, we use that same term to describe how far you’ve come and how far there’s still to go. Or we have markers here for significant delivery. We have a milestone for the foundation being signed off, we have a milestone for the framing being signed off. So those are significant events. Typically, we get a milestone at the end of a project phase or key deliverables in a project. Those are milestones in project management. A milestone typically has no duration. It’s just a marker. There’s no duration on a milestone, so don’t let that fool you. Milestones also have no resources assigned to them. They’re just a marker in the project.

So you can look at your schedule and see these milestones. A milestone chart is a way to visualize when milestones are scheduled and when you actually hit the milestone. So the little white up triangle that’s planned, the solid down triangle, that’s what was actual. And then the line between the two shows, how much of a variance did you have? So you want those triangles to be close together. So in this example, you can see the permits took a little bit longer than what was planned and where it actually was. And if you look down at electrical, you can see it’s kind of pushed everything out. Electrical them. We were planning to hit it in February. We actually hit it looks like right at the top of March. So it’s the line between shows the variance. That’s a milestone chart. And you can see all the different milestones are typically the end of a phase like we have here. Great job. That’s our milestone information. Know that for your exam. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

9. Sequencing Project Activities

Now that we’ve created our activity list and we know what our milestones are, we can begin putting these activities in the order in which they should happen. So now we’re sequencing project activities. There’s a couple of different ways you can do this. computer driven is probably the most common. We’re going to use Microsoft Project or Primavera or whatever PMIs that you choose, your project management information system, your manual process, though probably not a lot of people doing this, but you could where you write out the activities on little posit notes or sticky notes and you put them up on the wall and move them around.

You might do that for smaller projects, but larger projects that gets pretty cumbersome when you consider you might have thousands of activities to manage. A blended approach. I sometimes like to do this when I have even a large project, but I’ll take just a chunk of the more complex work and then I can move it around and visualize it before I take that and put it into Microsoft project because it’s easier to me to put them up on the whiteboard and the whole team and everybody can see the flow. Where in projects sometimes it can be tricky even if you put it on an overhead to be moving tasks around.

Much easier just to move postit notes or stick it notes around. So however you do it’s, fine. Just know for your exam sequencing project activities computer or manual or a blended approach, they don’t really care which one you like to do. Our edo’s here for sequencing the project activities, our inputs, the project management plan in particular, our schedule management plan and the scope baseline. Some project documents I need activity attributes, obviously the activity list, that’s what we’re sequencing, the assumption log and the milestone list and of course EEF and OPA tools and techniques precedence diagramming method. We’re going to be looking at that in detail, but it’s predecessors and successors. Dependency determination. Understanding what this activity is dependent upon what is upstream in our schedule model leads and lags and then your PMIs outputs will be the project schedule.

The project schedule network diagram technically are project document updates. The activity attributes may be updated the activity list, your milestone log or milestone list rather and assumption log that those are all ETOs for sequencing activities. All right, dependency determination, I just quickly mentioned that a moment ago. Let’s nail this down. Some activities have to be done in a particular order. Other activities you can do in whatever order that you wish. Activities that must follow a particular order. Like you have to install the hard drive before you can put the operating system on. You have to have the operating system installed before you can install software. That’s hard logic, it just has to work that way. You have to have the foundation poured before you can start framing. Those are mandatory. Dependencies must happen. ABC must happen in this particular order. So that’s hard logic. A discretionary dependency is soft logic.

We could paint the walls and then put the carpet in. But if we really wanted to, we could put the carpet in first, then paint the walls. So it’s not always best practices. Or you might have a good reason to change the order. But that’s soft logic where it would still work. The common sense. It’s not always ABC, right? You can mix things up but some things are ABC you have to have a foundation to build on before you can build you have to have the computer before you can use it. That’s hard logic. We also have external dependencies. You have an external constraint in construction. You need that inspector to come sign off on the work and you can’t move forward if you’re waiting on the inspector. So an external constraint, you’re waiting on a vendor. The vendor needs to deliver the materials to the job site so it’s external I’m waiting on the vendor to get there to give me the materials. It could also be I’m waiting on another project to create their deliverable, which will be a component in my project. So it’s external.

A great example of external constraints are vendors and inspectors so we have very little control, some, but very little of when it actually happens. An internal dependency is a type of hard logic so internal to the project you have a project team member that they are taking a vacation, so it’s an internal dependency or you are saying it has to be done in this order or management has said I want this resource on that activity. So that’s a type of hard logic you must do it a precedence diagramming method, which we’re going to look at in detail in this section is a way of describing the flow of the work. In this example, look at the blue squares in the upper left here, a to B. That’s your most common in the precedence diagramming method. This is what’s called a finish to start. Activity A must finish so activity B can start. Activity A is called a predecessor and activity B is called a successor because a precedes B B succeeds A. So A to B finish to start, A has to finish so B can start. So you have to finish priming the walls in order to paint the walls. This is the most common relationship you’ll see in a network diagram or in any project. Finish to start. Very easy to visualize and see. It’s the most common one. Then we have a start to start. Activity A must start so that activity B can start.

So this start to start is a way of letting two activities happen at the same time. Typically, A will start just a little bit before B. So if you have two activities, like, we have to start developing the training. So the material, the help desk, the manuals, so we have to start doing that. Well, what activity? B. What could be activity. B. That could start once training starts. So once people go to training, they’re in class, we’re going to push out the software to their desk. So once they log in in the classroom, then they get the software installed on their laptop. So start to start. We want those activities to happen at the same time or about the same time. The reverse of that is you have to finish an activity for another activity to finish.

So you have to finish installing all of the network cable for the electrician to punch down that network cable in your patch panel. So you have a network, they have to finish pulling all that wire, your network cable, so that computers can be connected. So as soon as he makes one network drop and it’s installed, you can plug in that computer, you can plug in that network drop. So finish to finish, you want two activities to finish about the same time. He’ll finish all of the network drops before you finish installing or connecting all the computers. So it’s like you kind of chase each other in the task. So start to start and finish to finish are very similar. The most unusual, the one that you probably won’t even see on your exam, because even the Pinbox tells us it’s reserved for scheduling experts, is a start in order to finish. This is where you have a cyclic production, like in manufacturing. So an example of a start to finish is we have a manufacturing project and we are creating bottles, plastic bottles, water bottles for customers. And we print their logo on it, or the little phrase or whatever they want. But each bottle is unique for the customer. So they’re going to print 10,000 bottles with their logo on it. And then we have a different customer, different logos. This isn’t just creating plain water bottles. Each run is a project.

We have an order for 10,000 water bottles. We only have so much space in our manufacturing environment for about 3000 bottles at a time. So we keep on hand 3000 bottles. As we begin to use those 3000 bottles, as they’re actually being consumed and printed, we immediately want to go and get 3000 more bottles to kind of backfill our inventory. And so it’s this constant, these are being produced and this is the backfill in inventory. So this is a just in time inventory or just in time scheduling that we only backfill as we use material. So how it relates to a start to finish, you have to start producing these unique bottles in order to finish the inventory activity. So the consumption is A and the replenishment is B. So I start using 3000 bottles and then I can begin to backfill those bottles. So I always have 3000 on hand, no matter how many I’m creating, is that I always backfill. So start in order to finish. One of the most unusual ones. Pretty rare. I really doubt you see it on your exam at all. You will see for certain finish to start because it is the most common. You might see start to start and finish to finish. All right. Great job keeping moving forward. We’re making great progress.

10. Creating Network Diagrams

Now that we’ve created our activity list and we know what our milestones are, we can begin putting these activities in the order in which they should happen. So now we’re sequencing project activities. There’s a couple of different ways you can do this. computer driven is probably the most common. We’re going to use Microsoft Project or Primavera or whatever PMIs that you choose, your project management information system, your manual process, though probably not a lot of people doing this, but you could where you write out the activities on little posit notes or sticky notes and you put them up on the wall and move them around.

You might do that for smaller projects, but larger projects that gets pretty cumbersome when you consider you might have thousands of activities to manage. A blended approach. I sometimes like to do this when I have even a large project, but I’ll take just a chunk of the more complex work and then I can move it around and visualize it before I take that and put it into Microsoft project because it’s easier to me to put them up on the whiteboard and the whole team and everybody can see the flow.

Where in projects sometimes it can be tricky even if you put it on an overhead to be moving tasks around. Much easier just to move postit notes or stick it notes around. So however you do it’s, fine. Just know for your exam sequencing project activities computer or manual or a blended approach, they don’t really care which one you like to do. Our edo’s here for sequencing the project activities, our inputs, the project management plan in particular, our schedule management plan and the scope baseline. Some project documents I need activity attributes, obviously the activity list, that’s what we’re sequencing, the assumption log and the milestone list and of course EEF and OPA tools and techniques precedence diagramming method.

We’re going to be looking at that in detail, but it’s predecessors and successors. Dependency determination. Understanding what this activity is dependent upon what is upstream in our schedule model leads and lags and then your PMIs outputs will be the project schedule. The project schedule network diagram technically are project document updates. The activity attributes may be updated the activity list, your milestone log or milestone list rather and assumption log that those are all ETOs for sequencing activities. All right, dependency determination, I just quickly mentioned that a moment ago. Let’s nail this down. Some activities have to be done in a particular order. Other activities you can do in whatever order that you wish. Activities that must follow a particular order. Like you have to install the hard drive before you can put the operating system on. You have to have the operating system installed before you can install software. That’s hard logic, it just has to work that way.

You have to have the foundation poured before you can start framing. Those are mandatory. Dependencies must happen. ABC must happen in this particular order. So that’s hard logic. A discretionary dependency is soft logic. We could paint the walls and then put the carpet in. But if we really wanted to, we could put the carpet in first, then paint the walls. So it’s not always best practices. Or you might have a good reason to change the order. But that’s soft logic where it would still work. The common sense. It’s not always ABC, right? You can mix things up but some things are ABC you have to have a foundation to build on before you can build you have to have the computer before you can use it. That’s hard logic. We also have external dependencies. You have an external constraint in construction. You need that inspector to come sign off on the work and you can’t move forward if you’re waiting on the inspector. So an external constraint, you’re waiting on a vendor. The vendor needs to deliver the materials to the job site so it’s external I’m waiting on the vendor to get there to give me the materials. It could also be I’m waiting on another project to create their deliverable, which will be a component in my project.

So it’s external. A great example of external constraints are vendors and inspectors so we have very little control, some, but very little of when it actually happens. An internal dependency is a type of hard logic so internal to the project you have a project team member that they are taking a vacation, so it’s an internal dependency or you are saying it has to be done in this order or management has said I want this resource on that activity. So that’s a type of hard logic you must do it a precedence diagramming method, which we’re going to look at in detail in this section is a way of describing the flow of the work. In this example, look at the blue squares in the upper left here, a to B. That’s your most common in the precedence diagramming method. This is what’s called a finish to start. Activity A must finish so activity B can start. Activity A is called a predecessor and activity B is called a successor because a precedes B B succeeds A. So A to B finish to start, A has to finish so B can start. So you have to finish priming the walls in order to paint the walls. This is the most common relationship you’ll see in a network diagram or in any project. Finish to start. Very easy to visualize and see.

It’s the most common one. Then we have a start to start. Activity A must start so that activity B can start. So this start to start is a way of letting two activities happen at the same time. Typically, A will start just a little bit before B. So if you have two activities, like, we have to start developing the training. So the material, the help desk, the manuals, so we have to start doing that. Well, what activity? B. What could be activity. B. That could start once training starts. So once people go to training, they’re in class, we’re going to push out the software to their desk. So once they log in in the classroom, then they get the software installed on their laptop. So start to start. We want those activities to happen at the same time or about the same time. The reverse of that is you have to finish an activity for another activity to finish.

So you have to finish installing all of the network cable for the electrician to punch down that network cable in your patch panel. So you have a network, they have to finish pulling all that wire, your network cable, so that computers can be connected. So as soon as he makes one network drop and it’s installed, you can plug in that computer, you can plug in that network drop. So finish to finish, you want two activities to finish about the same time. He’ll finish all of the network drops before you finish installing or connecting all the computers. So it’s like you kind of chase each other in the task. So start to start and finish to finish are very similar. The most unusual, the one that you probably won’t even see on your exam, because even the Pinbox tells us it’s reserved for scheduling experts, is a start in order to finish. This is where you have a cyclic production, like in manufacturing. So an example of a start to finish is we have a manufacturing project and we are creating bottles, plastic bottles, water bottles for customers. And we print their logo on it, or the little phrase or whatever they want. But each bottle is unique for the customer. So they’re going to print 10,000 bottles with their logo on it. And then we have a different customer, different logos. This isn’t just creating plain water bottles. Each run is a project.

We have an order for 10,000 water bottles. We only have so much space in our manufacturing environment for about 3000 bottles at a time. So we keep on hand 3000 bottles. As we begin to use those 3000 bottles, as they’re actually being consumed and printed, we immediately want to go and get 3000 more bottles to kind of backfill our inventory. And so it’s this constant, these are being produced and this is the backfill in inventory. So this is a just in time inventory or just in time scheduling that we only backfill as we use material. So how it relates to a start to finish, you have to start producing these unique bottles in order to finish the inventory activity. So the consumption is A and the replenishment is B. So I start using 3000 bottles and then I can begin to backfill those bottles. So I always have 3000 on hand, no matter how many I’m creating, is that I always backfill. So start in order to finish. One of the most unusual ones. Pretty rare. I really doubt you see it on your exam at all. You will see for certain finish to start because it is the most common. You might see start to start and finish to finish. All right. Great job keeping moving forward. We’re making great progress.