Project Time

Management

Information Technology
Project Management,
Seventh Edition
 Importance of Project Schedules
 Managers often cite delivering projects on time as
one of their biggest challenges
 Time has the least amount of flexibility; it passes no

matter what happens on a project

 Schedule issues are the main reason for conflicts

on projects, especially during the second half of

projects

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 Individual Work Styles and Cultural
Differences Cause Schedule Conflicts
 One dimension of the Meyers-Briggs Type
Indicator focuses on peoples’ attitudes toward
structure and deadline
 Some people prefer to follow schedules and meet

deadlines while others do not (J vs. P)

 Difference cultures and even entire countries have

different attitudes about schedules

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 Media Snapshot
 In contrast to the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic
Games (see Chapter 4’s Media Snapshot), planning and
scheduling was very different for the 2004 Summer
Olympic Games held in Athens, Greece
 Many articles were written before the opening ceremonies
predicting that the facilities would not be ready in time. …
many people were pleasantly surprised by the amazing
opening ceremonies, beautiful new buildings, and state-of-
the-art security and transportation systems in Athens
 The Greeks even made fun of critics by having
construction workers pretend to still be working as the
ceremonies began

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 Project Time Management Processes
 Planning schedule management: determining the policies,
procedures, and documentation that will be used for planning,
executing, and controlling the project schedule
 Defining activities: identifying the specific activities that the project
team members and stakeholders must perform to produce the project
deliverables
 Sequencing activities: identifying and documenting the relationships
between project activities
 Estimating activity resources: estimating how many resources a
project team should use to perform project activities
 Estimating activity durations: estimating the number of work periods
that are needed to complete individual activities
 Developing the schedule: analyzing activity sequences, activity
resource estimates, and activity duration estimates to create the project
schedule
 Controlling the schedule: controlling and managing changes to the
project schedule

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 Planning Schedule Management
 The project team uses expert judgment, analytical
techniques, and meetings to develop the schedule
management plan
 A schedule management plan includes:

◦ Project schedule model development

◦ The scheduling methodology
◦ Level of accuracy and units of measure
◦ Control thresholds
◦ Rules of performance measurement
◦ Reporting formats
◦ Process descriptions

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 Defining Activities
 An activity or task is an element of work normally
found on the work breakdown structure (WBS) that
has an expected duration, a cost, and resource
requirements
 Activity definition involves developing a more
detailed WBS and supporting explanations to
understand all the work to be done so you can
develop realistic cost and duration estimates

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 Activity Lists and Attributes
 An activity list is a tabulation of activities to be
included on a project schedule that includes
◦ the activity name
◦ an activity identifier or number
◦ a brief description of the activity
 Activity attributes provide more information such
as predecessors, successors, logical
relationships, leads and lags, resource
requirements, constraints, imposed dates, and
assumptions related to the activity

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 Milestones
 A milestone is a significant event that normally
has no duration
 It often takes several activities and a lot of work to
complete a milestone
 They’re useful tools for setting schedule goals and
monitoring progress
 Examples include obtaining customer sign-off on
key documents or completion of specific products

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 What Went Wrong?
 At the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), poor time
management was one of the reasons behind the failure of Trilogy, a
“disastrous, unbelievably expensive piece of vaporware, which was
more than four years in the (un)making. The system was supposed
to enable FBI agents to integrate intelligence from isolated
information silos within the Bureau.”*
 In May 2006, the Government Accounting Agency said that the
Trilogy project failed at its core mission of improving the FBI’s
investigative abilities and was plagued with missed milestones and
escalating costs. Sentinel replaced Trilogy in 2007.
 During a test exercise in 2011, Sentinel experienced two outages,
and the FBI determined that the current hardware structure was
inadequate. Unfortunately, history seemed to repeat itself as troubles
still loomed with Sentinel in 2012
*Roberts, Paul, “Frustrated contractor sentenced for hacking FBI to speed deployment,”
InfoWorld Tech Watch, (July 6, 2006).

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 Sequencing Activities
 Involves reviewing activities and determining
dependencies
 A dependency or relationship is the sequencing

of project activities or tasks

 You must determine dependencies in order to use

critical path analysis

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 Three types of Dependencies
 Mandatory dependencies: inherent in the nature
of the work being performed on a project,
sometimes referred to as hard logic
 Discretionary dependencies: defined by the
project team., sometimes referred to as soft logic
and should be used with care since they may limit
later scheduling options
 External dependencies: involve relationships
between project and non-project activities

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 Network Diagrams
 Network diagrams are the preferred technique for
showing activity sequencing
 A network diagram is a schematic display of the

logical relationships among, or sequencing of,

project activities
 Two main formats are the arrow and precedence

diagramming methods

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 Figure 6-2. Network Diagram for
Project X

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 Arrow Diagramming Method (ADM)
 Also called activity-on-arrow (AOA) network
diagrams
 Activities are represented by arrows
 Nodes or circles are the starting and ending points

of activities
 Can only show finish-to-start dependencies

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 Precedence Diagramming Method
(PDM)
 Activities are represented by boxes
 Arrows show relationships between activities
 More popular than ADM method and used by

project management software

 Better at showing different types of dependencies

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 Estimating Activity Resources
 Before estimating activity durations, you must have
a good idea of the quantity and type of resources
that will be assigned to each activity; resources
are people, equipment, and materials
 Consider important issues in estimating resources
◦ How difficult will it be to do specific activities on this
project?
◦ What is the organization’s history in doing similar
activities?
◦ Are the required resources available?
 A resource breakdown structure is a hierarchical
structure that identifies the project’s resources by
category and type
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 Activity Duration Estimating
 Duration includes the actual amount of time
worked on an activity plus elapsed time
 Effort is the number of workdays or work hours

required to complete a task

 Effort does not normally equal duration
 People doing the work should help create

estimates, and an expert should review them

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 Three-Point Estimates
 Instead of providing activity estimates as a
discrete number, such as four weeks, it’s often
helpful to create a three-point estimate
◦ an estimate that includes an optimistic, most likely, and
pessimistic estimate, such as three weeks for the
optimistic, four weeks for the most likely, and five weeks
for the pessimistic estimate
 Three-point estimates are needed for PERT and
Monte Carlo simulations

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 Developing the Schedule
 Uses results of the other time management
processes to determine the start and end date of
the project
 Ultimate goal is to create a realistic project
schedule that provides a basis for monitoring
project progress for the time dimension of the
project
 Important tools and techniques include Gantt
charts, critical path analysis, and critical chain
scheduling, and PERT analysis

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 Gantt Charts
 Gantt charts provide a standard format for
displaying project schedule information by listing
project activities and their corresponding start and
finish dates in a calendar format
 Symbols include:
◦ A black diamond: a milestones
◦ Thick black bars: summary tasks
◦ Lighter horizontal bars: durations of tasks
◦ Arrows: dependencies between tasks

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 SMART Criteria
 Milestones should be
◦ Specific
◦ Measurable
◦ Assignable
◦ Realistic
◦ Time-framed

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 Critical Path Method (CPM)
 CPM is a network diagramming technique used to
predict total project duration
 A critical path for a project is the series of
activities that determines the earliest time by
which the project can be completed
 The critical path is the longest path through the
network diagram and has the least amount of
slack or float
 Slack or float is the amount of time an activity
may be delayed without delaying a succeeding
activity or the project finish date

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 Calculating the Critical Path
 First develop a good network diagram
 Add the duration estimates for all activities on

each path through the network diagram

 The longest path is the critical path
 If one or more of the activities on the critical path

takes longer than planned, the whole project

schedule will slip unless the project manager
takes corrective action

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 Figure 6-8. Determining the Critical
Path for Project X

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 More on the Critical Path
 A project team at Apple computer put a stuffed gorilla
on the top of the cubicle of the person currently
managing critical task
 The critical path is not the one with all the critical
activities; it only accounts for time
 There can be more than one critical path if the lengths
of two or more paths are the same
 The critical path can change as the project
progresses

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 Using Critical Path Analysis to Make
Schedule Trade-offs
 Free slack or free float is the amount of time an
activity can be delayed without delaying the early
start of any immediately following activities
 Total slack or total float is the amount of time an

activity may be delayed from its early start without

delaying the planned project finish date
 A forward pass through the network diagram

determines the early start and finish dates

 A backward pass determines the late start and

finish dates

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 Figure 6-9. Calculating Early and Late
Start and Finish Dates

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 Table 6-1. Free and Total Float or
Slack for Project X

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 Using the Critical Path to Shorten a
Project Schedule
 Three main techniques for shortening schedules
◦ Shortening durations of critical activities/tasks by adding
more resources or changing their scope
◦ Crashing activities by obtaining the greatest amount of
schedule compression for the least incremental cost
◦ Fast tracking activities by doing them in parallel or
overlapping them

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 Importance of Updating Critical Path
Data
 It is important to update project schedule
information to meet time goals for a project
 The critical path may change as you enter actual

start and finish dates

 If you know the project completion date will slip,

negotiate with the project sponsor

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 Buffers and Critical Chain
 A buffer is additional time to complete a task
 Murphy’s Law states that if something can go
wrong, it will
 Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill
the time allowed
 In traditional estimates, people often add a buffer to
each task and use it if it’s needed or not
 Critical chain scheduling removes buffers from
individual tasks and instead creates
◦ a project buffer or additional time added before the
project’s due date
◦ feeding buffers or additional time added before tasks on
the critical path

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 Program Evaluation and Review
Technique (PERT)
 PERT is a network analysis technique used to
estimate project duration when there is a high
degree of uncertainty about the individual activity
duration estimates
 PERT uses probabilistic time estimates

◦ duration estimates based on using optimistic, most likely,

and pessimistic estimates of activity durations, or a
three-point estimate

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 PERT Formula and Example
 PERT weighted average =
optimistic time + 4X most likely time + pessimistic time
6
Example:
PERT weighted average =
8 workdays + 4 X 10 workdays + 24 workdays = 12 days
6
where optimistic time= 8 days
most likely time = 10 days, and
pessimistic time = 24 days
Therefore, you’d use 12 days on the network diagram
instead of 10 when using PERT for the above example

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 Schedule Control Suggestions
 Perform reality checks on schedules
 Allow for contingencies
 Don’t plan for everyone to work at 100% capacity

all the time

 Hold progress meetings with stakeholders and be

clear and honest in communicating schedule

issues

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 Controlling the Schedule
 Goals are to know the status of the schedule,
influence factors that cause schedule changes,
determine that the schedule has changed, and
manage changes when they occur
 Tools and techniques include
◦ Progress reports
◦ A schedule change control system
◦ Project management software, including schedule
comparison charts like the tracking Gantt chart
◦ Variance analysis, such as analyzing float or slack
◦ Performance management, such as earned value (chapter 7)

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 Reality Checks on Scheduling
 First review the draft schedule or estimated
completion date in the project charter
 Prepare a more detailed schedule with the project

team
 Make sure the schedule is realistic and followed
 Alert top management well in advance if there are

schedule problems

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 Working with People Issues
 Strong leadership helps projects succeed more
than good PERT charts
 Project managers should use

◦ empowerment
◦ incentives
◦ discipline
◦ negotiation

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