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BUILDING THE NETWORK DIAGRAM USING THE PRECEDENCE DIAGRAMMING METHOD : two types of methods: AOA & AON.
AOA. AOA: one of the early methods for representing project activities as a network dates back to the early 1950s and the Polaris missile program. it is called the activity on-the-arrow (AOA) method. as figure 6.1 shows, an arrow represents each activity. the node at the left edge of the arrow is the event begin the activity, while the node at the right edge of the arrow is the event end the activity. every activity is
AON. AON: The basic unit of analysis in a network diagram is the activity. Each activity in the network diagram is represented by a rectangle that is called an activity node. Arrows represent the predecessor/successor relationships between activities. Every activity in the project will have its own activity node .The entries in the activity node describe the time-related properties of the activity. Some of the entries describe characteristics of the activity, such as its expected duration (E), while others describe calculated values (ES, EF, LS, LF) associated with that activity. In order to create the network diagram using the PDM, you need to determine the predecessors and successors for each activity. The network diagram is logically sequenced to be read from left to right. Every activity in the network, except the start and end activities, must have at least one activity that comes before it (its immediate predecessor) and one activity that comes after it (its immediate successor). An activity begins when its predecessors have been completed. The start activity has no predecessor, and the end activity has no successor. These networks are called connected. In this book we have adopted the practice of using connected networks. Figure 6.4 gives examples of how the variety of relationships that might exist between two or more activities can be diagrammed.
DEPENDENCIES
A dependency is simply a relationship that exists between pairs of activities. To say that activity B depends on activity A means that activity A produces a deliverable that is needed in order to do the work associated with activity B. There are four types of activity dependencies,
Technical Constraints
Technical dependencies between activities are those that arise because one activity (the successor) requires output from another (the predecessor) before work can begin on it. In the simplest case, the predecessor must be completed before the successor can begin. Discretionary constraints. Discretionary constraints are judgment calls by the project manager that result in the introduction of dependencies. These judgment calls may be merely a hunch or a riskaversion strategy taken by the project manager. Through the sequencing activities the project manager gains a modicum of comfort with the project work. Best-practices constraints. Best practices are past experiences that have worked well for the project manager or are known to the project manager based on the experiences of others in similar situations. The practices in place in an industry can be powerful influences here, especially in dealing with bleeding-edge technologies. In some cases, the dependencies that result from best-practices constraints, which are added by the project manager, might be part of a risk-aversion strategy following the experiences of others. Logical constraints. Logical constraints are like discretionary constraints that arise from the project managers way of thinking about the logical way to sequence a pair of activities. We feel that it is important for the project manager to be comfortable with the sequencing of work. After all, the project manager has to manage it. Based on past practices and commonsense, we prefer to sequence activities in a certain way.
Management Reserve
Management reserve is a topic associated with activity duration estimates, but it more appropriately belongs in this chapter because it should be a property of the project network more so than of the individual activities. At the individual activity level, we are tempted to pad our estimates to have a better chance of finishing an activity on schedule. For example, we know that a particular activity will require three days of our time to complete, but we submit an estimate of four days just to make sure we can get the three days of work done in the four-day schedule we hope to get for the activity. Management reserve is nothing more than a contingency budget of time. The size of that contingency budget can be in the range of 5 to 10 percent of the total of all the activity durations in your project. The size might be closer to 5 percent for projects having few unknowns; it could range to 10 percent for projects using breakthrough technologies or that are otherwise very complex.