Introduction to planning

1- Introduction

Each day to plan will be treated as a project and we apply the techniques of project planning. Each activity will be considered as a task.

2 - Tasks decomposition

The classic technique for project planning is to break the project work into tasks, define the estimated duration of each task, and define the precedence links between tasks (a task must be completed before other tasks).

From these data and the date or time of beginning of the project, we can calculate the dates or start and end at the earliest of each task and associated margins and represent them in the form of tables or diagrams (Gantt chart or relationship diagrams).

2 - Free margin and total margin, critical path

Classically two margins are calculated for each task:

• the free margin is possible shift of a task without causing the shift of another task,
• the total margin is possible shift of a task without causing shift the end of the project.

A task with a total margin of zero is called critical. The set of critical tasks is the critical path.

A margin must not be negative. If there, there is a problem, all constraints were not met.

3 - Characteristics of a task

The task is the basic unit for planning and project management.

For project management a task is a set of project work for which we can define:

• a beginning and an end,
• a clear content,
• a single manager,
• inputs and outputs.

To make planning it will be estimated the expected duration for each task.