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Schedule Each of the Activities/Tasks Either Automatically Using an Automated Planning Tool or By Hand

October 15, 2011 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Plan Development, Scheduling

Schedule Each of the Activities/Tasks Either Automatically Using an Automated Planning Tool or By Hand
By Richard Morreale

In the last article of the Project Planning Process series, we examined the topic of assigning resources, resource numbers, and resource types to each activity - Today’s article is the 8th installment of this series.

Generally, the schedule is simply produced as an outcome of the effort required on an Activity divided by the number of resources that can be and have been assigned to that Activity. So it is not very difficult to do either by hand (if your project is small) or using an automated planning tool. For instance, if the effort to complete an Activity is 10 days and it’s possible to put 2 people on the Activity, there is a good chance that the Activity can be done in 5 elapsed days. Adding resources doesn’t always cut the elapsed time down as neatly as the above example. However, it is worth looking at the Activity to determine how much elapsed time can be saved by adding resources, if resources are available.

When I first moved to the United Kingdom from Virginia, I was responsible for putting together the plan for the computerisation of the United Kingdom’s Income Tax System. The entire plan comprised approximately 7700 Activities for about 110 major Products with about 2200 of those Activities on the critical path. The 2200 critical path Activities were a generic set of about 20 Activities for each of the major Products. Those 2200 were the ones that had to be scheduled. The other 5000 were those that fit in around the Critical Path Activities.

I remember a weekend at my house in Shrewsbury, England when I removed the pictures from the living room walls, put flip chart paper on the walls around the entire room, divided the flip chart paper into weekly increments, listed the 110 Products down the left hand side of the first page and started scheduling the Project by hand, drawing the 20-Activity generic dependency network for each of the Products. It took 2 of us the whole weekend to complete the schedule because once we drew the initial schedule completing Step 8, we moved on to Step 9 of the Planning Process which I’ll describe in my next article.

Richard is a project manager, professional speaker, author and consultant specializing in Project Management, Leadership, Achievement and Customer Service.

You can book Richard for your next meeting or conference at richard@richardmorreale.com or 336 499 6677.

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