Time Management in IT Project Management by Riela Antonio

2. Project Time Management
 Involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of
a project.
 Seven main processes:
1. Planning schedule management
2. Defining activities
3. Sequencing activities
4. Estimating activity resources
5. Estimating activity durations
6. Developing the schedule
7. Controlling the schedule

4. 1. PLANNING SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT
 Includes the following information:
o Project schedule model development
o The scheduling methodology and the scheduling tool to
use when developing the project schedule model
o Level of accuracy and units of measure
o Control thresholds
o Rules of performance measurement
o Reporting formats
o Process descriptions
 Output: schedule management plan

5. 2. DEFINING ACTIVITIES
 Goal: to ensure that the project team completely
understands all the work it must do as part of the
project scope so the team can start scheduling the
work.
 Involves identifying the specific actions that will
produce the project deliverables in enough detail
to determine resource and schedule estimates.
 Output: activity list, activity attributes, milestone list,
and project management plan updates

6.  Activity list - tabulation of activities to be included
on a project schedule. The list should include the
activity name, an activity identifier or number, and
a brief description of the activity.
 Activity attribute - provide more schedule-related
information about each activity, such as
predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads
and lags, resource requirements, constraints,
imposed dates, and assumptions related to the
activity.
 Milestone - a significant event that normally has no
duration.

7.  Activity information - required input to the other
time management processes.
 You cannot determine activity sequencing,
resources, or durations, develop the schedule, or
control the schedule until you have a good
understanding of project activities.

8. 3. SEQUENCING ACTIVITIES
 Done after defining project activities
 Involves evaluating the reasons for dependencies
and the different types of dependencies.
 Input: schedule management plan, activity list and
attributes, project scope statement, milestone list,
and organizational process assets.
 Output: project schedule network diagrams and
project documents updates.

9.  Dependency or relationship - pertains to the
sequencing of project activities or tasks.
 Determining relationships or dependencies among
activities has a significant impact on developing
and managing a project schedule.
 Three reasons for dependencies in project activities:
1. Mandatory dependencies
2. Discretionary dependencies
3. External dependencies

10.  Network Diagram - preferred technique for showing
activity sequencing.
 A schematic display of the logical relationships among project
activities and their sequencing

12.  Four types of dependencies or relationships:
1. Finish-to-start dependency: A relationship in which the
“from” activity or predecessor must finish before the “to”
activity or successor can start.
2. Start-to-start dependency: A relationship in which the
“from” activity cannot start until the “to” activity or
successor is started.
3. Finish-to-finish dependency: A relationship in which the
“from” activity must be finished before the “to” activity
can be finished. One task cannot finish before another
finishes.
4. Start-to-finish dependency: A relationship in which the
“from” activity must start before the “to” activity can be
finished. This type of relationship is rarely used, but it is
appropriate in some cases.

14.  Precedence diagramming method - used more often than
AOA network diagrams and offers a number of advantages
over the AOA technique.
 Most project management software uses the precedence
diagramming method.
 Using this method avoids the need to use dummy activities.
 This shows different dependencies among tasks, whereas AOA
network diagrams use only finish- to-start dependencies.

15. 4. ESTIMATING ACTIVITY RESOURCES
 Having a good idea of the quantity and type of
resources (people, equipment, and materials) that will
be assigned to each activity.
 Nature of the project and the organization will affect
resource estimates.
 The people who help determine what resources are
necessary must have experience and expertise in similar
projects and with the organization performing the
project.
 Output: activity resource requirements, a resource
breakdown structure, and project documents updates.

16.  Important questions to answer when estimating activity
resources:
o How difficult will specific activities be on this project?
o Is anything unique in the project’s scope statement that will
affect resources?
o What is the organization’s history in doing similar activities? Has
the organization done similar tasks before? What level of
personnel did the work?
o Does the organization have people, equipment, and
materials that are capable and available for performing the
work? Could any organizational policies affect the availability
of resources?
o Does the organization need to acquire more resources to
accomplish the work? Would it make sense to outsource some
of the work? Will outsourcing increase or decrease the
amount of resources needed and when they will be
available?

17.  Resource breakdown structure - a hierarchical
structure that identifies the project’s resources by
category and type.
 Resource categories might include analysts,
programmers, and testers. Types of programmers
might include Java programmers or COBOL
programmers.

18. 5. ESTIMATING ACTIVITY DURATIONS
 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.
 Three-point estimate includes:
o Optimistic estimate
o most likely estimate
o pessimistic estimate

19. 6. DEVELOPING THE SCHEDULE
 Schedule development uses the results of all the
preceding project time management processes to
determine the start and end dates of the project and its
activities.
 Project time management processes often go through
several iterations before a project schedule is finalized.
 Goal: to provide a basis for monitoring project progress
for the time dimension of the project.
 Output: project schedule, a schedule baseline, schedule
data, project calendars, project management plan
updates, and project documents updates.

20.  Several tools and techniques for schedule
development:
o Gantt chart
o Critical path analysis
o Critical chain scheduling
o PERT analysis

21.  Gantt charts - provide a standard format for displaying project
schedule information by listing project activities and their
corresponding start and finish dates in calendar form.

22.  Different symbols on the Gantt chart :
o black diamond represents a milestone.
o thick black bars with arrows at the beginning and end
represent summary tasks.
o light gray horizontal bars represent the duration of each
individual task.
o Arrows connecting these symbols show relationships or
dependencies between tasks.
 *Gantt charts often do not show dependencies, which is their
major disadvantage.

24. Best Practice
(Luc Richard founder of www.projectmangler.com)
The five key points of using project milestones include the following:
1. Define milestones early in the project and include them in the Gantt chart to
provide a visual guide.
2. Keep milestones small and frequent.
3. The set of milestones must be all-encompassing.
4. Each milestone must be binary, meaning it is either complete or incomplete.
5. Carefully monitor the critical path.
Additional best practices for software development projects include the
following:
 Monitor the project’s progress and revise the plan.
 Build on a solid base.
 Assign the right people to the right tasks.
 Start with high-risk tasks.
 “ Don’t boil the ocean.” - if the entire project consists of high-risk tasks, then
the project itself is a high risk and bound for failure.
 Integrate early and often, and follow practices like the daily build process

26.  Critical path method (CPM) - a network
diagramming technique used to predict total
project duration. This helps you combat project
schedule overruns.
 Critical path - series of activities that determine the
earliest time by which the project can be
completed.
 Slack or float - is the amount of time an activity may
be delayed without delaying a succeeding activity
or the project finish date.

27.  Calculating the Critical Path:
 Add the durations for all activities on each path through the network
diagram. The longest path is the critical path.

28.  A technique that can help project managers make
schedule trade-offs is determining the free slack and
total slack for each project activity.
 Free slack or free float - the time an activity can be
delayed without delaying the early start date of any
immediately following activities.
 Total slack or total float – the time an activity can be
delayed from its early start without delaying the planned
project finish date.
 Project managers calculate free slack and total slack by
doing a forward and backward pass through a network
diagram.

30.  Two Techniques to Use Critical Path to Shorten a
Project Schedule:
1. Crashing- is a technique for making cost and
schedule trade-offs to obtain the greatest
amount of schedule compression for the least
incremental cost
2. Fast tracking - involves doing activities in parallel
that you would normally do in sequence.
 Note: It is important to update the schedule with
actual data. These revisions often cause a project’s
critical path to change, resulting in a new
estimated completion date for the project.

31. Critical Chain Scheduling
 Another technique that is the application of TOC that
addresses the challenge of meeting or beating project finish
dates
 A method that considers limited resources when creating a
project schedule and includes buffers to protect the project
completion date.
 The availability of scarce resources. Some projects cannot be
done unless a particular resource is available to work on one
or several tasks.
 Assumes that resources do not multitask or at least minimize
multitasking.

33.  Critical chain scheduling removes buffers from
individual tasks and instead creates a project
buffer, which is time added before the project’s
due date.
 Critical chain scheduling protects tasks on the
critical chain from being delayed by using feeding
buffers.
 The task estimates in critical chain scheduling
should be shorter than traditional estimates
because they do not include their own buffers.

35.  Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) –
a network analysis technique used to estimate
project duration when there is a high degree of
uncertainty about the individual activity duration
estimates.
 Applies the critical path method (CPM) to a
weighted average duration estimate.
 uses probabilistic time estimates based on using
optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates of
activity durations:

36.  By using the PERT weighted average for each
activity duration estimate, the total project duration
estimate takes into account the risk or uncertainty
in the individual activity estimates.
 Advantage: Attempts to address the risk associated
with duration estimates and may help in developing
schedules that are more realistic
 Disadvantage: More work than CPM because it
requires several duration estimates, and there are
better probabilistic methods for assessing schedule
risk.

37. 7. CONTROLLING THE SCHEDULE
 A portion of the integrated change control process
under project integration management.
 Goal to know the status of the schedule, influence the
factors that cause schedule changes, determine that
the schedule has changed, and manage changes
when they occur.
 Input: project management plan, project schedule,
work performance data, project calendars, schedule
data, and organizational process assets.
 Output: work performance measurements,
organizational process assets updates such as lessons-
learned reports related to schedule control, change
requests, project management plan updates, and
project documents updates.

38.  Some of the tools and techniques include:
o Performance reviews
o A schedule change control system
o A scheduling tool and/or project management software,
such as Project 2010 or similar software
o Variance analysis,
o What-if scenario analysis
o Adjusting leads and lags
o Schedule compression
o Resource optimization techniques

39. Reality Checks and Needed Discipline
 Review the draft schedule that is usually included in the project
charter.
 Prepare a more detailed schedule and get stakeholders’
approval.
 Progress meetings with stakeholders.
 Use discipline to control project schedules.
 Do not rely too much on project management software.
 Understand the concepts behind creating a network diagram,
determining the critical path, or setting a schedule
 Understand the underlying concepts to successful use of project
management software, as is understanding the specific needs of
your project.