Chapter 6

Activity Planning:
Traditional and Agile
Initial Project Coordination and the
Project Charter
• Early meetings are used to decide on participating
in the project
• Used to “flesh out” the nature of the project
• Planning is done to facilitate later accomplishment
• Outcomes include:
• Technical scope
• Areas of responsibility
• Delivery dates or budgets
• Risk management group

6-2
Traditional Project Activity Planning

• Project objectives should be tied to the overall

mission, goals and organizational strategy.
• “Launch meetings”
• Important for a senior manager to attend
• Success of “launch” meetings dependent on well-defined
objectives
• Useful to review major risks facing the project now
• Don’t let plans, schedules, and budgets go beyond the
most aggregated levels at this point

6-3
Outside Clients

• When it is for outside clients, specifications cannot

be changed without the client’s permission
• Client may place budget constraints on the project
• May be competing against other firms

6-4
Project Charter Elements

A formal document that authorizes the project

manager to begin the project.
Gives a clear understanding of the project’s scope,
objectives and measures of success and others.

6-5
Project Charter Elements

• Purpose (long-term, meaningful goals)

• Objectives (short-term goals)
• Overview
• Schedules
• Resources
• Stakeholders
• Risk management plans
• Evaluation methods

6-6
Project Charter Sample

6-7
Project Charter Sample

6-8
Project Charter

• Student Activity
• Make a pair of students, Consider yourself working as
project manager and devise a project charter for your
innovative idea.

6-9
The Project Plan Addresses: (Slide 1 of 2)

• The process for managing change

• A plan for communicating with and managing stakeholders
• Specifying the process for setting key characteristics of the
project deliverable (technically referred to as configuration
management)
• Establishing the cost baseline for the project and developing a
plan to manage project costs
• Developing a plan for managing the human resources
assigned to the project
• Developing a plan for continuously monitoring and improving
project work processes
6-10
The Project Plan Addresses: (Slide 2 of 2)

• Developing guidelines for procuring project materials and

resources
• Defining the project’s scope and establishing practices to
manage the project’s scope
• Developing the Work Breakdown Structure
• Developing practices to manage the quality of the project
deliverables
• Defining how project requirements will be managed
• Establishing practices for managing risk
• Establishing the schedule baseline and developing a plan to
manage the project’s schedule
6-11
A Whole-Brain Approach to Project
Planning
• Project managers typically use left side of brain-
logical and analytical
• Should also use right side – creative
• A whole-brained approach is mind mapping

6-12
Mind Mapping Advantages

• It is a visual approach that mirrors how human brain

records & stores information
• It helps tap the creative potential of the entire
project team
• helps increase quantity and quality of ideas
• Team members find it enjoyable
• Helps generate enthusiasm
• Helps obtain buy-in from team members

6-13
Final Mind Map for Full-Time Engineering

6-14
Final Mind Map for Full-Time Engineering

6-15
Final Mind Map for Full-Time Engineering

6-16
Mind Map

• Student Activity
• Make a pair of students, Consider yourself working as
project manager and draw a mind map for your
innovative idea.

6-17
Project Planning in Action

• Considers the sequence of activities required to

carry the project from start to completion.
• Software and hardware developers may divide the
project into nine segments:
1. Concept evaluation
2. Requirements identification
3. Design
4. Implementation
5. Test
6. Integration
7. Validation
8. User test and evaluation
9. Operations and maintenance

6-18
The WBS: A Key Element (Slide 1 of 2)

To layout, What is to be done, When it is to be started

and finished and Who is going to do it

Identify activities that must be done sequentially or

simultaneously
Each detail is uncertain and subjected to risk

6-19
Hierarchical Planning

• Major tasks are listed

• Each major task is broken down into detail
• This continues until all the activities to be completed
are listed
• Need to know which activities “depend on” other
activities

6-20
A Form to Assist Hierarchical Planning

6-21
Career Day

6-22
The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

• A hierarchical planning process

• Breaks tasks down into successively finer levels of
detail
• Continues until all meaningful tasks or work
packages have been identified
• These make tracking the work easier
• Need separate budget/schedule for each task or
work package

6-23
A Visual WBS

6-24
Steps to Create a WBS

1. List the task breakdown in successive levels

2. Identify data for each work package
3. Review work package information
4. Cost the work packages
5. Schedule the work packages
6. Continually examine actual resource use
7. Continually examine schedule

6-25
WBS of AUTOCONEX

• Student Activity
• Make a pair of students, Consider yourself working as
project manager and draw a work breakdown structure.

6-26
Human Resources

• Useful to create a table that shows staff needed to

execute WBS tasks
• One approach is a organizational breakdown
structure
• Organizational units responsible for each WBS element
• Who must approve changes of scope
• Who must be notified of progress
• WBS and OBS may not be identical

6-27
The Responsibility (RACI) Matrix

• Another approach is the Responsible, Accountable,

Consult, Inform (RACI) matrix
• Also known as a responsibility matrix, a linear
responsibility chart, an assignment matrix, a responsibility
assignment matrix

6-28
The Responsibility (RACI) Matrix

Responsible: Does the work to complete the task, at

least one or several.
Accountable: Makes sure the responsible completes
work on time. Only one accountable and no more.
Consult: Provide input and feedback and have a stake
in the outcomes as it could affect their current or
future work.
Inform: They need to know what’s going on because it
could affect their work, but they’re not decision
makers in the process.
6-29
Sample RACI Matrix

6-30
 Agile Project Planning and Management
• Agile project management was developed to deal
with two issues in IT:
• When scope cannot be determined in advance, traditional
planning does not work
• Change is a constant
• Small teams are located at a single site
• Entire team collaborates
• Utilizes sprints
• Team deals with one requirement at-a-time with the
scope frozen
• Waterfall is a batch process; APM is a flow process
6-31
Benefits of APM

• Better project outcomes

• Increased customer satisfaction
• Improved morale
• Increased collaboration and project visibility

6-32
Managing Projects by Phases and
Phase-Gates
• Break objectives into shorter term sub-objectives
• Project life cycle is used for breaking a project up
into component phases
• Focus on specific, short-term output
• Lots of feedback between disciplines

6-33
 Chapter 8

Scheduling
Useful Abbreviations

• CPM - Critical Path Method

• PERT - Program Evaluation and Review Technique

8-35
Background

• Schedule is the conversion of a project action plan

into an operating timetable
• Basis for monitoring a project
• Not all project activities need to be scheduled at the
same level of detail
• Most of the scheduling is at the WBS level, not the
work package level
• Most of the scheduling is based on network
drawings

8-36
Network Scheduling Advantage (Slide 1
of 2)

• Consistent framework
• Shows interdependencies
• Shows when resources are needed
• Ensures proper communication
• Determines expected completion date
• Identifies critical activities

8-37
Network Scheduling Advantage (Slide 2
of 2)

• Shows which of the activities can be delayed

• Determines start dates
• Shows which task must be coordinated
• Shows which task can be run parallel
• Relieves some conflict
• Allows probabilistic estimates

8-38
Network Scheduling Techniques:
PERT (ADM) and CPM (PDM)

• PERT was developed for the Polaris

missile/submarine project in 1958
• CPM developed by DuPont during the same time
• Initially, CPM and PERT were two different
approaches
• CPM used deterministic time estimates and allowed
project crunching
• PERT used probabilistic time estimates
• Microsoft Project (and others) have blended CPM
and PERT into one approach

8-39
Terminology (Slide 1 of 3)

• Activity - A specific task or set of tasks that are

required by the project, use up resources, and take
time to complete
• Event - The result of completing one or more
activities
• Network - The combination of all activities and
events that define a project
• Drawn left-to-right
• Connections represent predecessors

8-40
Terminology (Slide 2 of 3)

• Path - A series of connected activities

• Critical - An activity, event, or path which, if delayed,
will delay the completion of the project
• Critical Path - The path through the project where, if
any activity is delayed, the project is delayed
• There is always a critical path
• There can be more than one critical path

8-41
Terminology (Slide 3 of 3)

• Sequential Activities - One activity must be

completed before the next one can begin
• Parallel Activities - The activities can take place at
the same time
• Immediate Predecessor - That activity that must be
completed just before a particular activity can begin

8-42
Sequential Activities

8-43
Activity ON Node (AON) and Activity of
Arrow(AOA) Format

8-44
Example from Figure 8-4

8-45
Constructing the Network

• Begin with START activity

• Add activities without precedences as nodes
• There will always be one
• May be more
• Add activities that have those activities as
precedences
• Continue

8-46
Sample of Network Construction

8-47
Sample of Network Construction

8-48
Problem 1

8-49
Solving the Network

8-50
Calculating Activity Times
• Use three time estimates:
• Optimistic
• Pessimistic
• Most likely

8-51
The AON Network From The Previous Table

8-52
An Important Insight on Estimating
Activity Times
• It is vital to good project management to be
meticulously honest in estimating the time required
to complete each of the various tasks included in the
project
• No false deadlines
• Evaluate alternative ways of completing work.

8-53
Calculating Activity Times

TE 
a  4m  b 
6
 b  a  
2

 
2

 6 
  2

8-54
The Results

8-55
Critical Path and Time (Slide 1 of 2)

8-56
Critical Path and Time (Slide 2 of 2)

8-57
Slack (aka, Float)
• LS - ES or LF - EF

8-58
Slack Values

8-59
Gantt (Bar) Charts

• Developed by Henry L. Gantt

• Shows planned and actual progress
• Easy-to-read method to know the current status

8-60
Advantages and Disadvantage

• Advantages
• Easily understood
• Provide a picture of the current state of a project
• Disadvantage
• Difficult to follow complex projects

8-61
Microsoft Project Gantt Chart

8-62
Microsoft Project AON Network

8-63
 Uncertainty of Project Completion
Time (Z Table)

(𝐷 − 𝜇) 50 − 43 7
𝑍= = = = 1.22
33 5.745
𝜎𝜇2

9-64
8-65
8-66
Solved Example

8-67
Solved Example (Solution at page 318)

8-68
Problem 8

8-69
Problem 8-27

9-70
Problem 8-27 (cont.)

8-71
 Chapter 9

Resource Allocation
What is Resource Allocation?

• Allocating resources (human, technical, etc) to

projects
• Use in both individual and multiple, simultaneous
projects
• Relates to scheduling and costs

9-73
Critical Path Method—Crashing a
Project
• Time and costs are interrelated
• Faster an activity is completed, more is the cost
• Change the schedule and you change the budget
• Thus many activities can be speeded up by spending
more money

9-74
What is Crashing / Crunching?

• To speed up, or expedite, a project

• Of course, the resources to do this must be available
• Crunching a project changes the schedule for all
activities
• This will have an impact on schedules for all the
subcontractors
• Crunching a project often introduces unanticipated
problems

9-75
 Activity Slope

Crash Cost  Normal Cost

Slope 
Crash Time  Normal Time

9-76
An Example of Two-Time CPM

9-77
Activity Slopes—Cost per Period for
Crashing

9-78
Crashing the Project

9-79
Seven Day Schedule

9-80
Six Day Schedule

9-81
Five Day Schedule

9-82
Four Day Schedule

9-83
Cost-Crash Curve

9-84
Fast-Tracking

• Fast-tracking is another way to expedite a project

• Mostly used for construction projects
• Can be used in other projects
• Refers to overlapping design and build phases
• Increases number of change orders
• Increase is not that large

9-85
Problem 9-4

9-86
Problem 9-4 (cont.)

9-87
Problem 9-15

9-88
Problem 9-15 (cont.)

9-89
9-90
Problem 2

9-91
Problem 2 (cont.)

9-92
Problem 3

9-93
Problem 3 (cont.)

9-94
Problem 3 (cont.)

9-95