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Software Project Management 4th Edition: Activity Planning
Software Project Management 4th Edition: Activity Planning
Management
Chapter 6
4th Edition
Activity planning
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©The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2005
Scheduling
‘Time is nature’s way of stopping everything
happening at once’
Having
– worked out a method of doing the project
– identified the tasks to be carried
– assessed the time needed to do each task
need to allocate dates/times for the start
and end of each activity
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Activity networks
These help us to:
• Assess the feasibility of the planned
project completion date
• Identify when resources will need to be
deployed to activities
• Calculate when costs will be incurred
This helps the co-ordination and
motivation of the project team
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Work breakdown structure
• This technique (sometimes called a
system breakdown structure)
is used to define and organize the total
scope of a project.
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Identifying activities
• Work-based: draw-up a Work
Breakdown Structure listing the work
items needed
• Product-based approach
– list the deliverable and intermediate
products of project – product breakdown
structure (PBS)
– Identify the order in which products have
to be created
– work out the activities needed to create
the products
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The final outcome of the
planning process
A project plan as a bar chart
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Hybrid approach
Do B
PERT
Do A Do D
Do C
CPM
Do B
Do A
Do D
Do C
7days
Acceptance Install new
testing release
20 days 1day
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Types of links between
activities
Finish to start
Software
development Acceptance testing
Test prototype
2 days
1 day Document
Amendments
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Types of links between
activities
• Start to finish
Operate temporary
system
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Start and finish times
Latest
Earliest start finish
activity
Float = LF - ES - duration
ES EF
Activity description
LS LF
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Complete for previous example
EF = day10
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Example of an activity
network
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Complete the table
Activity ES duration EF
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
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Latest start dates
• Start from the last activity
• Latest finish (LF) for last activity = earliest
finish (EF)
• work backwards
• Latest finish for current activity = Latest
start for the following
• More than one following activity - take the
earliest LS
• Latest start (LS) = LF for activity - duration
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Example: LS for all activities?
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Complete the table
Activity ES Dur EF LS LF
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
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Float
FLOAT
LF
ES
activity
Latest start
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Complete the table
Act- ES Dur EF LS LF Float
ivity
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
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Critical path
• Note the path through network with
zero floats
• Critical path: any delay in an activity on
this path will delay whole project
• Can there be more than one critical
path?
• Can there be no critical path?
• Sub-critical paths
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Free and interfering float
A 7w
0 7 B can be up to 3 days late
2 9 and not affect any
2 other activity = free float
B 4w D 1w E 2w
0 4 7 8 10 12
5 9 9 10 10 12
5 2 0
C 10w
0 10
0 10
0 B can be a further 2 days late – affects
D but not the project end date =
interfering float
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