One of the biggest factors and sometimes, a challenge, in delivering projects is time. This could be because time, out of all the other factors at play a part in project management, is the least flexible, and does not change no matter what happens on a project. This has the potential to cause many problems when it comes to measuring and delivering projects on deadlines. Nonetheless, project managers can use effective project schedule management techniques to minimize these conflicts. Project schedule management is a set of processes to help make sure projects are completed on time. There are about six different processes that encompass this type of management.
The first step in project schedule management is planning how exactly the schedule will be managed throughout the whole project. This step outputs a schedule management plan that can range from being broad to detailed based on the project needs. After that, the next step would be to define the activities that will need to be done based on the actions that will help produce the certain deliverables for the project. This will help determine, in more detail, exactly what and how many resources will be needed and a schedule estimate for the project. The next step after defining the activities is sequencing activities. This blog post will cover this step in detail to ensure that you can be an effective project manager by understanding the processes within project schedule management.
The sequencing activities process within project schedule management manages the purpose and various kinds of dependencies. Dependencies are the relationships between project activities and tasks and the details of that relationship. Before discussing more about what this process entails, it is important to note that there are a few things that you should have before entering this process. This includes, the project management plan, project documents like activity list, milestone list, etc, enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets.
In terms of dependencies within project activities, there are a few different types. Mandatory dependencies, sometimes called hard logic, are mandatory for the work you have to do. For example, you can’t develop an application before getting the requirement for it. Discretionary dependencies are made by the project team. For example, the project team can ensure to maintain strict communication in the planning process and then change it after certain requirements are acquired and tasks are assigned. External dependencies deal with the relationship between project and non-project activities. For example, in order to instal a certain application or operating system, you may need to rely on pieces of hardware. Since the hardware is not part of the project scope, it can be considered an external dependency. Last but not least, there are internal dependencies, which is basically the opposite of external dependencies. Instead of it being the relationship between project and non-project activities, it is the relationship between the project activities inside the control of the project team. This can include making a dependency between doing unit testing and system testing. The team can make it a requirement to finish the unit testing before starting the system testing. Therefore, system testing has an internal dependency of unit testing.
After these dependencies are identified and defined, you are prepared to use scheduling tools to make your project more effective. As a project manager, you have two important tools available for you, including network diagrams and critical path analysis.
Network diagrams, sometimes referred to as project schedule network diagrams (PERT), show a logical relationship between project activities and their sequencing. The image below represents an example of an arrow network diagram, which is a technique that uses arrows connected to nodes to show the sequence of activities.
In this diagram, the letters A to J represent activities with dependencies in the project. The Work Breakdown structure and activity definition provides the details of these activities and what they are, however, they only provide those activities that have dependencies. The arrows show the relationships between the tasks. In this example, Activity G cannot be completed without completing Activity C first and Activity I cannot be completed before completing Activity G. This means, they are all dependent on each other and each of these activities needs to be completed for the whole project to be considered complete.
There is also another network diagramming technique that can be used by project managers, which is called precedence diagramming method(PDM). In this method, there are boxes that represent activities instead of nodes. Below is an example of a PDM diagram.
In this diagram, the activities are placed in the boxes and the arrows show the relationship amongst the activities. Each of the boxes also includes a start and finish date, a specific task ID number, duration, and resources needed to complete the task.
Now to continue the discussion on the different dependencies, previously we discussed the reason for the need of a dependency for an activity, whether it is external, internal, mandatory, etc. However, there are different types of these dependencies as well. These dependencies include a finish to start dependency. This describes a dependency where the “from” activity needs to finish before the “to” activity can even start. Another is a start to start dependency. This is a dependency where the “from” activity has to wait to start until the “to” activity starts. A finish to finish dependency is where the “from” activity needs to be finished before the “to” activity can be finished. And lastly, there is a start to finish dependency, where the “from” activity needs to be started before the “to” activity can be finished.
In conclusion, to be an effective project manager, it is very important to be proficient in project schedule management. This blog post offers a detailed overview of the sequencing activity process within process schedule management, after the activities have been identified and defined. Using network diagrams within these processes helps to organize the information about the project and manage the time frame of the project in a better and more useful way.
References
Schwalbe, K. (2019). InformatIon technology Project management (9th ed.). Cengage.