ACTIVITY PLANNING

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)
Approaches to identify activity

 Activity- based Approach

 Product- based Approach
 Hybrid Approach
Activity-based approach

Draw-up a Work Breakdown Structure listing the work itemsneeded.

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
In this approach, an alternative work breakdown structure is constructed based
on:
• A simple list of final deliverables.
• For each deliverable, a set of activities is required to produce that product.
IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) recommends that the following 5
levels should be used in the work breakdown structure:
• Level-1: Project:
It includes the actual project that software development team wants to develop
after completion of the complete software development life cycle. This is the main
objective and output of the whole development process and hence, must be
defined in a detailed manner.
• Level-2: Deliverable:
These are the sub-products which are generated after every milestone
like Software Requirement Specification (SRS), Software Design Document (SDD),
etc. These also helps to analyze the project progress at every milestone achieved.
• Level-3: Components:
These are the key items required to produce the deliverable during the project
development life cycle as modules and tests to produce system software.
• Level-4: Work-packages:
These are the major items or collection of tasks required to produce a component
which in turn acts as the basis of building the deliverables afterwards.
• Level-5: Tasks:
These are the ones which are meant to be assigned to a single person/ team for its
completion and are the basic building blocks of a project.
Sequencing and Scheduling Activities
Project schedule is prepared listing down step by step in sequential order the jobs
involved in the implementation of the project. The steps should be well-defined
along with the required time to complete each step.
This project schedule becomes a “tool” to ensure timely implementation of the
project. When a final decision has been taken to launch, the Project Manager is to
entrust the jobs involved to personnel within the Project Team with assigned
responsibility to ensure that the steps are completed within the time-frame allotted
and within the budgeted cost.

The chart tells us who is doing what and when.

i.e. Sequencing and scheduling
Activities. A project plan as a bar chart.
 Network Planning Models
Network planning is the categorization of the activities involved in project
implementation in a sequential order followed by a schematic presentation of the
activities necessary for the entire project.
The steps are to:
A. Identify and list the category of activities involved from the start to the
completion of the project. The activities are grouped in categories which are
different from each other.
B. Arrange the list of activities, as in A above, in sequential order of their
performance. There may be activity that can be started only after the completion of
some other activity, whereas there may also be some other independent activity
that can be started simultaneously.
In network planning, such independent and interdependent activities are laid down
along with their estimated schedule, i.e. the duration estimated from the start to
the completion of the activity.
C. With the details of A and B above, draw the diagram of the network of the
activities so that the operational planning of the execution of the entire project can
be visualized.
This whole procedure is the network planning of the project schedule which makes
the monitoring and controlling of the project easier than looking around the list of
activities and locating lapses, if any.
PERT is an activity-on-node notation – the ‘nodes’ are the boxes that represent
activities
CPM uses an activity-on-arrow notation where the arrows are the activities.
Formulating a Network Model
 Constructing Precedence Network

The first stage in creating a network model is to represent the activities and their
interrelationships as a graph. In activity-on-node, we do this by representing activities as
links (arrowed lines) in the graph — the nodes (circles) representing the events of activities
starting and finishing.

Constructing precedence networks

• One start node

• One end node
• Node has duration
• Links have no duration
• Precedents are the intermediate preceding activities
• Time moves from left to right
• No loops
• Network should not contain dangles
Representing lagged activities
• We might come across situations where we wished to undertake two activities
in parallel so long as there is a lag between the two. We might wish to document
amendments to a program as it was being tested - particularly if evaluating a
prototype.
• Where activities can occur in parallel with a time lag between them we
represent the lag with a duration on the linking arrow.

This indicates that documenting amendments can start one day after the start of
prototype testing and will be completed two days after prototype testing is
completed.
Forward Pass and Backward Pass
Forward pass:
• Start at the beginning (Day 0) and work forward following chains.
• Earliest start date for the current activity = earliest finish date for the previous
• When there is more than one previous activity, take the latest earliest finish
Backward pass:
• Start from the last activity
• Latest finish (LF) for last activity = earliest finish (EF)
• work backwards
• Latest finish for current activity = Latest start for the following
• More than one following activity - take the earliest LS
• Latest start (LS) = LF for activity - duration
Identifying critical path

• There is at least one path in the network which defines the

duration of the project. It is known as the critical path.
• Activity’s float – the difference between an activity’s earliest start date
and latest start date.
Activity Float

Float = Latest finish - Earliest start – Duration

Float can also be calculated as the difference between the

earliest and latest start dates for an activity or the difference
between the earliest and latest finish dates.
 Critical path

• Note the path through network with zero floats

• Critical path: any delay in an activity on this path will delay whole
project
• Can there be more than one critical path?
• Can there be no critical path?
• Sub-critical paths
There could be more than one critical path if the two longest paths
through the network were of equal length.
Identifying Critical Activities

• The critical path identifies those activities which are critical to

the end of the project.
• Activities may use up some of their floats
• Non-critical activities may become critical
 Activity-on-Arrow Networks
The activity on arrow (AoA) technique is a project management tool for
mapping and scheduling activities, such as tasks or events. Project
managers use circles, referred to as nodes, to represent each activity of a
project. Each node has sections that denote the earliest and latest event
start times. These professionals use arrows to connect nodes. The arrow
represents the duration, or float, of the activity. To make an AoA, project
managers determine how long each project takes to complete, starting with
the first activity of a project and ending with the project's final activity.

The activity name is shown above the arrow and its duration is shown
below. Its float is shown in brackets after the duration.
Rule and Conventions

• One start node

• One end node
• Node has no duration
• Time moves from left to right
• Node are numbered sequentially
• No loops
• No dangles