IT 300601

IT Project Management
Lecture: Project Time Management
Agenda
• Activities
• Sequencing Activities
• Estimating Activity Resources & Durations
• Developing the Schedule
• Gantt Charts
• Critical Path Method
• Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
• Controlling the Schedule

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Importance of Project Schedules
• Many information technology projects are failures in terms of meeting
scope, time, and cost projections.

• delivering projects on time is one of the biggest challenges and the

main cause of conflict

• Not effective action to compare planned and actual project completion

times without taking into account approved changes in the project

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Project Time Management
• involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a project
• There are six main processes
• Defining activities
• An activity or task is an element of work normally found on the work breakdown structure
(WBS)

• Sequencing activities
• identifying and documenting the relationships between project activities.

• Estimating activity resources

• estimating how many resources people, equipment, and materials a project team should use
Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project
management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
 Project Time Management
• involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a project
• There are six main processes
• Estimating activity durations
• involves estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete individual activities

• Developing the schedule

• involves analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and activity duration estimates to
create the project schedule.

• Controlling the schedule

• involves controlling and managing changes to the project schedule.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Project Time Management

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Project Activities
• The activity list is a tabulation of activities to be included on a project
schedule
• The activity attributes provide more schedule-related information
about each activity
• predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads and lags, resource
requirements, constraints, imposed dates, and assumptions
• A milestone on a project is a significant event
• Often, takes several activities and a lot of work
• also useful tools for setting schedule goals and monitoring progress

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Project Activities
• The goal of the defining activities
• ensure that the project team has complete understanding of all the work they
must do as part of the project scope so they can start scheduling the work.

• Example: produce study report

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Sequencing Activities
• Coming after defining the project activities and their dependencies
• A dependency or relationship relates to the sequencing of project
activities or tasks
• There are three basic reasons for creating dependencies
• Mandatory dependencies

• Discretionary dependencies

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

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Sequencing Activities
• Network Diagrams
• technique for showing activity sequencing.

• schematic display of the logical relationships among, or sequencing of, project

activities.

• Sometimes refer to network diagrams as project schedule network diagrams

or PERT charts.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Sequencing Activities
• Network Diagrams

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Activity Dependencies
• After determining the reasons for dependencies (mandatory,
discretionary, or external), there are various types of dependency
• Finish-to-start dependency
• a relationship where the from activity or predecessor must finish before the to activity or
successor can start
• Start-to-start dependency
• a relationship in which the from activity cannot start until the to activity or successor is
started
• Finish-to-finish dependency
• a relationship where the from activity must be finished before the to activity can be
finished
• Start-to-finish dependency
• a relationship where the from activity must start before the to activity can be finished
Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project
management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Activity Dependencies

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Estimation of Activity Resources

• To know the quantity and type of resources (people, equipment, and

materials) assigned to each activity before estimating the duration of
each activity

• The nature of the project and the organization will affect resource
estimating

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Estimation of Activity Resources

• The main outputs of the resource estimating process include

• a list of activity resource requirements

• a resource breakdown structure

• hierarchical structure that identifies the project’s resources by category and type

• project document updates

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Resource
Breakdown
Structure:
Example

Reference: https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/resource-breakdown-structure-rbs
Estimation of Activity Resources

• Estimating activity resources provides vital information for

• project cost estimating

• project human resource management

• project communications management

• project risk management

• project procurement management

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Estimation of Activity Duration

• Done after defining the activities, determining their dependencies,

and estimating their resources

• Activity Duration
• includes the actual amount of time worked on an activity plus elapsed time

• affected by the assigned resources

• relates to the time estimate, not the effort estimate.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Estimation of Activity Duration
• There are several inputs to activity duration estimating.
• The activity list
• activity attributes,
• activity resource requirements
• resource calendars
• project scope statement
• enterprise environmental factors
• organizational process assets all include information that affect duration estimates
Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project
management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Estimation of Activity Duration
• Duration estimates are often provided as
• discrete number, such as four weeks
• range, such as three to five weeks
• three-point estimate which depends on

Where E: expected value, O: optimistic value,

Reference: https://staragile.com/blog/three-point-estimation
P: pessimistic value, M: most likely value

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Estimation of Activity Duration

• Three-point estimate: Example

E: ???

O: three weeks

P: five weeks

M: four weeks

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Schedule Development

• determine the start and end dates of the project depending on

project time management processes

• The goal: create a realistic project schedule that provides a basis for
monitoring project progress for the time dimension of the project

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Schedule Development
• Several tools and techniques assist in schedule development
• Gantt chart
• a common tool for displaying project schedule information.

• Critical path analysis

• a very important tool for developing and controlling project schedules.
• Critical chain scheduling
• a technique that focuses on limited resources when creating a project schedule.

• Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) analysis

• a means for considering schedule risk on projects.
Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project
management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
 Gantt chart
• standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project
activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Gantt chart

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Gantt chart
• To make milestones meaningful, it is preferred to use the SMART
criteria
• Specific

• Measurable

• Assignable

• Realistic

• Time-framed

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
 Tracking Gantt chart
to evaluate progress on a project by showing actual schedule information.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Critical Path Method
• A network diagramming technique used to predict total project
duration

• A critical path for a project is the series of activities that determine

the earliest time by which the project can be completed
• the longest path through the network diagram and has the least amount of
slack or float
• Slack or float is the amount of time an activity may be delayed without delaying a
succeeding activity or the project finish date

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Using Critical Path Analysis to Make Schedule
Trade-Offs
• Important to know what the critical path is throughout the life of a project
so the product manager can make trade-offs
• 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 is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without
delaying the early start date of any immediately following activities.
• Total slack or total float: the amount of time an activity can be delayed from its early
start without delaying the planned project finish date

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Using Critical Path Analysis to Make Schedule
Trade-Offs
• A technique that can help project managers make schedule trade-offs
is determining the free slack and total slack for each project activity.
• early start date for an activity: the earliest possible time an activity can start
based on the project network logic

• early finish date for an activity: the earliest possible time an activity can finish
based on the project network logic

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Using Critical Path Analysis to Make Schedule
Trade-Offs
• A technique that can help project managers make schedule trade-offs
is determining the free slack and total slack for each project activity.
• late start date for an activity: the latest possible time an activity might begin
without delaying the project finish date

• late finish date for an activity: the latest possible time an activity can be
completed without delaying the project finish date.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
 Using Critical Path Analysis to Make Schedule
Trade-Offs (Example)
Assume all duration estimates are in days

What is the critical path ?

Find its length.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Using Critical Path Analysis to Make Schedule
Trade-Offs (Example)

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Program Evaluation and Review Technique
(PERT)
• network analysis technique used to estimate project duration when
there is a high degree of uncertainty about the individual activity
duration estimates
• PERT applies the critical path method (CPM) to a weighted average
duration estimate
• PERT uses probabilistic time estimates duration estimates based on
using optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates of activity
durations instead of one specific or discrete duration estimate, as CPM
does.

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Program Evaluation and Review Technique
(PERT)
• Example

Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project

management, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.