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Introduction to activity and networks

Introduction:

Project management involves decision making for the planning, organizing, coordination, monitoring and control of a number of
interrelated time bound activities.

Project Manager, therefore, often depends on tools and techniques that are effective enough not only for drawing up the best
possible initial plan but also capable of projecting instantaneously the impact of deviations so as to initiate necessary corrective
measures. The search for an effective tool has resulted in development of a variety of techniques. These project management
techniques can be classified under two broad categories i.e., Bar Charts and Networks.

Project management generally consists of three phases.

Planning:
Planning involves setting the objectives of the project. Identifying
various activities to be performed and determining the requirement of resources such as men, materials, machines, etc.

The cost and time for all the activities are estimated, and a network diagram is developed showing sequential interrelationships
(predecessor and successor) between various activities during the planning stage.

Scheduling:
Based on the time estimates, the start and finish times for each activity are worked out by applying forward and backward pass
techniques, critical path is identified, along with the slack and float for the non-critical paths.

Controlling:
Controlling refers to analyzing and evaluating the actual progress against the plan.
Reallocation of resources, crashing and review of projects with periodical reports are carried out.

Components:
1. Activity:
An activity represents an action and consumption of resources (time, money, energy) required to complete a portion of a project

A. Predecessor activity – Activities that must be completed immediately prior to the start of another activity are called predecessor
activities.

B. Successor activity – Activities that cannot be started until one or more of other activities are completed but immediately
succeed them are called successor activities.

C. Concurrent activity – Activities which can be accomplished concurrently are known as concurrent activities. It may be noted
that an activity can be a predecessor or a successor to an event or it may be concurrent with one or more of other activities.

D. Dummy activity – An activity which does not consume any kind of resource but merely depicts the technological dependence is
called a dummy activity.

The dummy activity is inserted in the network to clarify the activity pattern in the following two situations

To make activities with common starting and finishing points distinguishable

To identify and maintain the proper precedence relationship between activities that is not connected by events.

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For example, consider a situation where A and B are concurrent activities. C is dependent on A and D is dependent on A and B
both. Such a situation can be handled by using a dummy activity as shown in the figure.

2. Event

An event represents a point in time signifying the completion of some activities and the beginning of new ones. This is usually
represented by a circle in a network which is also called a node or connector.

The events are classified in to three categories

A. Merge event – When more than one activity comes and joins an event such an event is known as merge event.

B. Burst event – When more than one activity leaves an event such an event is known as burst event.

C. Merge and Burst event – An activity may be merge and burst event at the same time as with respect to some activities it can be
a merge event and with respect to some other activities it may be a burst event.

3. Network

It is a graphical representation of logical and sequentially connected activities and events of a project. Network diagram includes
all the activities and events that should be completed to reach the project objectives. The activities and events are laid in a
planned sequence of their accomplishments.

There are two types of notations used in the network diagram. They are as under,

1. Activity-on-Arrow (AOA)

In this method, the arrows represent activities while the nodes represent the start and the end of an activity (usually named as
events) . The length of the arrow connecting the nodes has no significance and may be straight, curved, or bent. When one
activity depends upon another, both appear on the diagram as two arrows having a common node.

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2. Activity-on-Node (AON).

In this method, the nodes represent activities, and the arrows represent logical relationships among the activities. If the arrow
starts from the end side of an activity (activity A) and ends at the start side of another activity (activity B), then A is a

predecessor of B.

Last modified: Monday, 17 October 2022, 4:06 PM

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