PMI RMP – PMBOK GUIDE – FAST REVIEW part 3 Question. part 1

4. SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT

Hi and welcome to a new lecture of this section. We are going to discuss the third knowledge area, the project schedule management. So what are the six processes within the schedule management knowledge area? I’m going to pass through the six processes. I’m going to highlight the important topics for the PMI exam as part of the schedule management knowledge area. So it includes the processes required to manage the timely completion of the project. The project scheduling provides a retail plan that represents how and when the project will deliver the products, services and results defined in the project scope and serves as a tool for communication, managing stakeholders expectations and as the basis for performance reporting.

It serves as a tool for communication as you will never prepare a report or a performance report for your senior management or for your sponsor without having the section talking about the project schedule detailed. Project schedule should remain flexible throughout the project to adjust for knowledge gain, increased understanding of the risk and added value activators. Now we have five processes as part of the planning processing group. The plan schedule management, define activities, sequence activities, estimate activity duration and develop schedule. And we have one process as part of the Control or monitoring and Controlling process group which is control schedule.

As shown from this chart, the schedule management processes are only within the planning process group and the monitoring and controlling process group. We have nothing to do with the schedule in the initiating, executing and closing process groups. Here are the six processes as taken from the project management body’s knowledge. The most important one is the developed schedule process where we are going to find out the project schedule, the schedule baseline and we are going to use the critical path method technique. Now, before we go through the first process, I want to mention a few considerations, few important techniques.

If you are using an agile based project or you are applying the agile environment in your project, the first technique is the Iterative scheduling with a backlog. The Iterative scheduling is a form of the rolling wave planning used in an adaptive lifecycle. Either was Iterative incremental or agile. Requirements are documented in user stories that are then privatized and refined prior to the construction. Product features are developed using the backlog. So what’s the role in wave planning? It’s the process of project planning in waves. As the project proceeds and later details become clear, work to be done in the near term only is based on high level assumptions. Also, high level minestones are set as the project progresses.

The rests, assumptions and milestones originally identified become more defined and valuable. So the rolling wave planning is based on planning in detail only. The work in the near term, the work in the future which is based on high level assumptions, will be planned only in a high level approach. So the project planning will be in wave. This is the rolling wave planning in which the estate rate of scheduling is based on. Now, what’s the product battle? It’s a document or a list of the new features, changes to existing features, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.

So it’s a document used in the Agile project as you are going to list all the features you are going to perform in the product in each iteration. This scheduling method is appropriate for many projects which use an adaptive development life cycle. Here’s an example of the product battle where all the features and requirements are mentioned. Let’s take for example ID Five. As an administrator I want to be able to delete commands so that offensive content is removed. The way this feature requirement is stated, it’s called a user story. Here is the priority of the requirement in which sprint you are now and what’s the status? Is it wip work in progress or is it done? So this is an example of the product backlog.

Now, what’s the user story? It’s a tool used in Agile software development projects to capture a description of a software feature from an end user perspective. The user story describes the type of user, what they want and why. A user story helps to create a simplified description of a requirement. An example as a user I want a button so that when click it will do something. This is the format of mentioning the features or the requirements from an end user perspective. It’s called the user story. Another term used in Agile project is the time box, a fixed period of time connectivity. Time boxing is used as a project planning technique.

The schedule is divided into a number of separate time periods or time boxes, with each part having its own little problems, deadline and budget. Here is an example of the time box. Here is the kickoff and the close out. Typically a time box will be between two and four weeks. And here is the scope you are going to perform within this time box. You will investigate, you will do the requirement and the consolidation. So timeboxing is used as a planning technique in Agile projects. The second consideration for Agile projects when dealing with project schedule is called on demand scheduling on demand as from the name. It does not rely on previously developed schedule for the development of the product or product increments.

It pulls work from a backlog or intermediate cue, work to be done as resources become available. Oftenly used for projects that evolve the product incrementally in operational or sustainable environments and typically used in Kanban systems. So what’s the Kanban system? The word Kanban itself means visual signal in Japanese. Kanban is a virtual communication approach to the project management process. It uses visual tools like sticky notes or virtual cards in an online bulletin vote to represent project tasks and to track and indicate progress throughout the project. It’s characterized by two key features. The first one is the visualization of work items.

The canvas system and the on demand scheduling are based on the visualization concept using sticky notes, signal cars or any other means. The second feature is the pull based system where work is pulsed by the next process based on available capacity under sources rather than being pushed by the previous process. Here is the Campbell board, which is the virtual communication system of the Kanban system. Here is the work to be done ideas, engineering, development, test ready testing, Uat deployment. And here is the signal charts and the polling system. This is an example of the Kanban board.

Now, the first process when it comes to the schedule management is the plan schedule management process. It’s the process of establishing the policies, procedures and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing and controlling the project schedule. So in this process we are going to think in advance about all what we are going to do for the project schedule management, how we are going to plan it, develop it to manage it through the executing part of the project and how we are going to monitor and control the project schedule. The key benefit of this process that it provides guidance and direction on how project schedule will be managed throughout the project. This process is performed once or at predefined point throughout the project life.

And the preferred project management software should be defined in the schedule management plan. The famous softwares to use are the Ms projects from Microsoft and the Primavera from Oracle. Whatever the software you are using for scheduling purposes, you need to define it and document it in the schedule management plan. The inputs for this process are the project chart as it contains high level information about the project schedule you will use. Also the scope management plan and the development approach. Few enterprise environmental practice and few organizational process assets, tools and techniques are the expert judgment data analysis techniques, mainly the alternative analysis and the meetings.

And the only output is the schedule management plan. So what’s the schedule management plan? It’s a component of the project management plan that establishes the criteria and activities for developing, monitoring and controlling the project schedule. It can be highly detailed or broadly defined based on the project needs and organization standards. Now, what’s inside the schedule management plan? First of all, the schedule and model development, the methodology and tool used, the release and the duration links. If you are using an agile project delivery of accuracy, the acceptable range of estimates, the units of measure, each unit of measurement is defined for resources.

The organization procedure links many with the wood breakdown structure as the wood breakdown structure will be the base for all the processes we are going to perform in this knowledge area. The schedule model, maintenance, updating status and reporting progress. The controlled threshold variance threshold should be specified, rules of performance measurement, how you are going to measure the performance of the project schedule and the reporting formats, types, format and frequency. The second process, once you have the Schedule Management Plan, is to define the project activities. So define activities as part of the planning process group. It’s the process of identifying and documenting the specific actions to be performed to produce the project deliverables.

The key benefit of this process is that it decomposes the work packages into schedule activities that provide a basis for estimating, scheduling, executing, monitoring and controlling the project work. So in this process, we are going to take the work packages, which were the lowest level of the WPS, decompose them faster to get the project activities, and this process is performed throughout the project. It’s about taking work packages in the Wbs level. The work package I explained in the previous lecture is the lowest level of the Wbs and decomposing them into the activities required to produce the work package deliverable. Some project managers, even myself, combine this process into Create Wbs process.

I will perform the Create Wbs process with the defined activities process. Once a time they decompose the work packages into activities rather than stopping at the work package level. Now, the inputs of the defined activities process are the Schedule Management Plan and the Scope Baseline. As the scope baseline contains the scope statement of work, the Wbs and the Wbs dictionary, the enterprise environmental factors and the organizational process. Assets to the means of this process are the expert judgment, decomposition, rolling waste, planning and meetings. Decomposition is only used in the KWBS process and Define Activities process. The primary outputs are the activity list, activity attributes and the Minestone list.

The Activity List will be a list documenting all the project activities. The attributes will contain the details of all the activities listed. We have also the Milestone List, which is a list describing all the critical events of the project. This is a milestone list. The change requests, the PM plan updates, the schedule and cost baseline. So from this process, the defined activities, we will have the Activity List and Activity Attributes. We will take these outputs and go to the Sequence Activities process. It’s the process of identifying and documenting relationships among the project activities. So now we have the Activity List with all the attributes needed. We need to sequence and find out the logical relationships between these activities.

The key benefit of this process is that it defines the logical sequence of work to obtain the greatest efficiency given on project constraints. This process is performed throughout the project and it’s the process of taking activities in the Activity List and sequencing them in the way work will be performed. Every activity except the first and last should be connected to at least one predecessor and one successor activity with an appropriate relationship. All the processes on the network diagonal the project should be connected to at least one predecessor and one successor. Except the first activity, it will not be connected to a predecessor and the last activity will not be connected to a successor. This process can be done using software’s, automated tools or manual.

In this lecture I’m going to explain the manual method. In your practical life, you are going to use the scheduling softwares to perform this process as a high level conclusion. The sequence activity process is concentrated on converting the activities of the project from the activity list you obtained in the previous process to an It diagram. So we are converting a list to a diagram, the tools of the sequence activities process and the inputs and outputs. First of all we have the schedule management plan and the scope baseline. As components of the project management plan, we have the activity list, activity attributes, the Minestrone list and the Assumption law. We have few enterprise environmental factors and few organizational process assets.

Now the tools and techniques for sequencing the project activities are the precedent diagramming method, dependency determination and integration leads and Lags project Management Information System. So I’m going to explain all the techniques of this process. The primary output, the only output you can say is the project schedule and network diagrams. It will show the sequence of all the project activities. Few project documents might be updated like the activity list, activity attributes, milestone list and the assumption below. So before we move to the following process, I’m going to explain the techniques used in the sequence activities process.

It’s a technique used for constructing a schedule model in which activities are represented by notes or boxes and are perfectly linked by one or more logical relationship to show the sequence in which activities are to be performed. A pure method diagram shows just dependencies or logical relationships between the activities. If activity duration estimates are added to the diagram, it can also show the critical path which I’m going to explain in the developed schedule process, if plotted again is time. The network diagram is a time scale schedule network diagram. The President’s diagram in methods is also called the Activity or no unknown where nodes or boxes are used to represent the project activities and arrows show activity dependencies.

Here’s an example of a portion of the network diagram. Activity A is represented by a box activity B as well and this arrow shows a finish to start. Relationship between activities A and B. Now, network diagram drawings can have four types of logical relationships between the project activities. First of all, we have the finish to start. The most commonly used relationship and activity should finish before the successor can start. So in this case, in this relationship, activity B cannot start unless activity A is completed. This is the first logical relationship. The second one is the start to start and active. They must start before the sex can start. Activity B cannot start before starting activity A.

The third relationship is the finish to finish, an activity must finish before the successor can finish. You cannot finish or complete activity B before the completion of activity A. This is a finish to finish relationship. The last one is a start to finish and activity must start before the successor can finish. This relationship is rarely used now. Dependency determination and integration usually characterized by the following attributes we have dependencies that are mandatory or discretionary, internal or external. There are four attributes but two can be applicable at the same time. First of all, mandatory dependency or hard logic inherent in the nature of the work or required by the contract.

For example, if you are managing a construction project, you cannot paint the block walls. So you cannot perform the painting activity before the completion of the block walls activity. This is the nature of the work. So this is a hard logic. Dependency the soft logic or the discretionary dependency. This is the way an organization has chosen to have work performed. They are very important when analyzing how to compress the schedule to decrease the project duration. Schedule composition techniques will be explained in the developed schedule process. So mandatory it’s required. It’s a must discretionary or soft logic. It’s the way we have chosen to perform the work. External dependency based on the needs or desires of a party outside the project, while internal dependency based on the needs of the project and the project team control.

So these are the attributes of the dependency determination and integration. We have the leads and life. So the lead is the amount of time a successor activity can be advanced with respect to the predecessor activity. It’s used to indicate that an activity can start before predecessor activity is completed. An example web page design can start five days before the database design is completed. This is a five day leap. Here is an example activity B can be advanced with respect to the activity A by five days or four days or three days lead. This is called a lead. The lag is the opposite. It’s the amount of time a successor activity will be delayed with respect to the predecessor activity. It’s the waiting time inserted between the activities.

Examples the painting work need to wait for two days after completion of the plaster job or work. Here’s an example of the last five days of waiting or three days of waiting. The waiting time inserted between two activities. Scope the light. Now here’s an example of the final output of this process. Sequence activity process. This is a pure project schedule network diagram with the start and the end and all the activities shown on the diagram and the logical relationships are defined. So now we have the skill to a network diagram. It’s the time to estimate the duration for each activity located on the network diagram. It’s the process estimate activity duration. It’s the process of estimating the number of work periods, days, hours or weeks needed to complete individual activities with estimated resources.

The key benefit of the process is that it provides the amount of time each activity will take to complete. This process is performed throughout the project and estimate activity durations uses information from the scope for required resource type or skill levels, estimated resources quantities and resources calendars. So you will have a lot of inputs from the resources management knowledge area as the duration estimates are based on the available resources to perform the work within the activity. This process requires an estimation of amount of work required to complete the activity and the amount of available resources estimated to complete the activity. Now, few factors to consider in estimating the project duration. First of all, low of diminishing returns.

It’s a low states that when one factor is used to determine the effort required to produce ionic work is increased while all other factors remain fixed. A point will eventually be reached at which additions of that one factor start to yield smaller increases in an output. Here is an example and this is the point of diminishing returns more increments at this point or at this point. Once this point is reached, additions of that one factor start to yield smaller increases on the output. So, this is the law of diminishing returns we need to consider while calculating the duration. The second factor is the number of resources. Adding more many resources to an activity may increase duration due to knowledge transfer, learning curve, additional coordination and other factors involved.

All these factors are a waste of time through knowledge transfer or due to learning curve or additional coordination required between resources. You need to consider while estimating the duration, advances in technology and the motivation of the staff performing the work. These are the major factors you need to consider. Now, the inputs of the estimate activity durations process are the project management plan with the schedule management plan component and the scope based line. We have a lot of the project documents, the assumption log, the activity list, activity attributes, the Mindstone list, Nissan Land register, the project team assignments comes from the resources management, resource breakdown structure, resource calendars and resource requirements.

All comes from the resources management knowledge area, the risk register as the Rest identified in the project and the plan responses might affect the duration of the project activities. You will need also a few enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets. The tools and Techniques first of all, the expert judgment. We have four important estimation techniques that are important as well. For the PMI Rmp example, I’m going to explain after this slide. We have also data analysis techniques, alternative analysis, reserve analysis, decision making techniques and meetings. The outputs we have the duration of estimates.

This is the primary output, the basis of estimates and few project document updates like the activity attributes, the assumption log and the recent length register. So the first estimation technique is the analogous estimating which is also called the top down estimate. It’s a technique to estimate duration or cost of an activity or a project using historical data from similar activities or projects. It uses expert judgment and historical information to predict the future which will be done on the project level. So this estimation technique is based only on the expert judgment on historical data from similar projects and the level of accuracy depends on how closely the project or activity matches the past history.

Analogous estimating is usually less costly and less time consuming than other estimation techniques, but still it’s also less accurate. It is most reliable when the previous activities are similar in fact and not in just appearance. So the analog is estimating. It’s less costly, less time consuming, but it’s less accurate and it’s based on the similar projects in the past. This is the first estimation technique, the top down of the analogous estimating. The second one is the parametric estimating and estimating technique in which an algorithm is used to calculate course or duration based on historical data and project parameters. So it’s based on an algorithm. It uses a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables to create an estimate for activity parameters such as cost and duration.

An example of the parameter estimate is time per linear meter, time per installation or cost per square meter. Sometimes when you are doing the estimation for construction projects you will say that for painting I’m going to code for $6 per meter square or 3 hours per linear meter. This is an example of the parametric estimating. It’s based on an algorithm. It produces higher level of accuracy depending on the sophistication and underlying data built into the model. An estimator can create a parametric estimates using two methods. The first one is the regression analysis or the Cape diagram shown in front of you here. This diagram will track two variables to see if they are related and if there is any algorithm between these two variables.

The learning curve, the room number 50 paint will take less time than the first room because that improve efficiency of the resources. This is a consideration when performing the parametric estimating. So first of all we have the analogous based on the historical data. We have the parametric based on the algorithm. The third one is the most accurate one. It’s called bottom up estimate. Bottom up you are starting from the lowest level. An estimating technique which involves creating detailed estimates for each part of an activity or work package. This type requires a clearer detailed WPS. The estimates are then rolled up into control accounts and finally into overall project estimates. It’s time consuming, it will take a lot of efforts from the team, but it is very accurate.

The last estimation technique is the three point estimating where we are going to use few formulas. The accuracy of single point duration estimates can be improved by considering estimation of uncertainty. And so this is the only estimation technique that will consider the uncertainty and risk within the activity. Using three point estimates helps define an approximate range for an activity’s duration. You will be considering three estimates for each activity. The first one is called the most likely M based on the duration of the activity, given the resources likely to be assigned, productivity, realistic expectations and dependencies. The second one is the optimistic O based on the analysis of the best case scenario of the activity, pessimistic p based on the analysis of the worst case scenario of the activity.

So for each activity you will have the most likely the optimistic and the Pessimistic estimates. Three point estimates can be used to calculate expected duration estimates for an activity by taking either a simple or weighted average. So now we have three estimates for an activity. How to find out the final estimate by using the simple average or the weighted average. The triangle distribution is also called the simple average, gives equal weight to each of the three point estimates when calculating the expected activity duration or host. The formula is p plus M plus O divided by three. This is why it’s called the simple average because it’s a really simple average. The second one is the beta distribution or the weighted average. It’s also called the first estimate.

It gives stronger consideration to the most likely estimate by applying the formula p plus four m plus O divided by six. This method leverage the benefits of risk management and reducing the uncertainty of estimates. So these are the two formulas. In a scenario that you don’t have enough experience or historical information, you should use the simple average or the triangle distribution. Now what’s the activity standard deviation? It’s the possible range of estimates. For example, if an activity takes 40 hours to complete with a standard deviation of plus minus four, it is expected to take between 36, which is 40 minus four, and 44, which is 40 plus 4 hours. Plus minus four is called the standard deviation.