Project Schedule Management 

Defining and Sequencing Activities

INTRODUCTION

When you decide to make a new dish for dinner, you usually do not toss everything together and it comes out perfect. With that sort of thinking and action, you will end up with a big mess and a weird taste in your mouth or takeout. To combat this, you would follow a recipe to ensure the dish is tasty and edible. This is the same approach you should take as a project manager when creating a project schedule. As a project manager, you have many responsibilities that involve making an easy-to-understand and successful plan for your project team to complete a project. Without it, you ensure frustration, confusion, and chaos in your environment. You do not want a disorganized project and a mess to clean as you go. This is why project schedule management is so important. In this blog, we will discuss how you define and sequence activities for the project.

Defining Activities

In schedule management, you may need to define activities in greater detail. Though the planning in scope management has already described projects in detail, schedule management will go more in depth. “Defining activities involves identifying the specific actions that will produce the project deliverables in enough detail to determine resource and schedule estimates”(Schwalbe). This can help clear up any confusion for activities that are felt by the project team. The project team is involved in schedule management like in scope management. To start defining activities, they will review the plan for schedule management, enterprise environmental factors, scope baseline, and organizational processes. The outputs of the process are:

• An activity list

• Activity attributes

• A milestone list

• Project management plan updates

An activity list is a list of all the activities that will be on the project schedule. It will include a name, number/ identifier, and a short description of the activity. The activity attributes “provide schedule-related information about each activity, such as predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads and lags, re- source requirements, constraints, imposed dates, and assumptions related to the activity”(Schwalbe). Both the activity list and activity attributes should be in agreement with the WBS and WBS dictionary which you created in scope management. As more information is learned, it will be added to the activity attributes. Typically, the new information will be from later processes. This includes logical relationships and resource requirements. To keep track of activity-related information, many project teams will use an automated system. 

A significant event that normally does not have a set duration is called a milestone. It is composed of many activities and requires a lot of work to complete, but it helps to identify necessary activities. Milestones are used to set schedule goals and monitor progress. They showcase the most important and visible events. Keep in mind that every output or deliverable is not a milestone. 

In project schedule management, activity information is required to determine activity sequencing, develop the schedule, durations, and to control the schedule. As a project manager, you should remember the triple constraints of project management. This includes, balancing scope, time, and cost goals. “The order of these three items reflects the basic order of the processes in project schedule management: defining activities (further defining the scope), sequencing activities (further defining the time), and estimating activity resources and activity durations (further defining the time and cost)” (Schwalbe). For project schedule management, those processes cover the basis.

What is the Goal of Defining Activities?

The goal of defining activities is for the project team to fully understand the work they have to do as a part of the project scope so that project scheduling can start. In my example earlier, if you want to make a new dish for dinner, you have to ask yourself. “What are my skills'', “How long do I want to spend making this dish”, “What type of food do I want to make”? All of this is important for you to understand before you choose a recipe to follow. It is the same for a project team in project management. Defining activities are supporting details for important product information. Because of this, be sure that the project team reviews the activity list and activity attributes with stakeholders before you move on to the next step of schedule management. That way the scheduling is done correctly and efficiently and without misunderstandings and unrealistic schedules.

Sequencing Activities

When you finally decide on a dish you want to make, you do not throw the ingredients together and call it a day. You would follow a recipe that you find for it. This is the same as sequencing activities for schedule management. You want to correctly sequence the tasks of the project. This allows the project to finish on time and within budget to avoid messy results and optimize resources. Dependencies are how project tasks are sequenced. You cannot start task two before task one is complete. There are multiple reasons for dependencies for project activities.

• Mandatory dependencies: inherent of the work performed on a project

• Discretionary dependencies: defined by the project team

• External dependencies: relationships between project and non-project activities

• Internal dependencies: relationships between project activities inside the project team's control

When you define the sequence of activities, you can use scheduling tools like network diagrams and critical path analysis.

Scheduling Tools

A network diagram or project schedule network diagram (PERT chart) is a “schematic display of the logical relationships among project activities and their sequencing”(Schwalbe). In a network diagram, the letters A through J represent “activities with dependencies that are required to complete the project”(Schwalbe). The activities are from the WBS and the defining process. To format the network diagram, use the activity-on-arrow approach (AOA) or the arrow diagramming method (ADM). This is where the activities are arrows that are connected to nodes. Nodes are the starting and ending points of an activity. Every task on the WBS does not have to be on the diagram. Only the ones with dependencies are shown. After you have a reason for a dependency between activities, now you can determine the type of dependency. 

• Finish-to-start dependency: one task is finished before the next task starts

• Start-to-start dependency: two tasks start at the same time

• Finish-to-finish dependency: one task cannot finish before another task can finish 

• Start-to-finish dependency: one task has to start before another task can finish

A precedence diagramming method (PDM) is the same as an ADM but is represented with boxes. It is used more than an AOA because of several advantages: most management software use it, dummy activities, and can show different dependencies. A dummy activity is used for logical relationships between activities but have no duration or resources. An AOA diagram can only represent a finish-to-start dependency. However, a PDM can show any type of dependency.

Conclusion

In conclusion, defining activities is important in schedule management. It shows more detail for tasks and can avoid misunderstandings for the project team and stakeholders. Sequencing activities is also important for schedule management because it sets an appropriate order for tasks to be completed. It lessens confusion and avoids unpredictable scheduling that can affect time, resources and budget.

Resources

Information Technology Project Management Textbook, e9, Schwalbe, Kathy.

"The Project Manager's Guide to Activity Sequencing"

https://nulab.com/learn/project-management/the-project-managers-guide-to-activity-sequencing/#:~:text=In%20project%20management%2C%20activity%20sequencing,helps%20you%20optimize%20resources%20efficiently.