26024766 Project Planning Scheduling and Control References 1

8/6/2019 26024766 Project Planning Scheduling and Control References 1

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PROJECT PLANNING, SCHEDULING, AND CONTROL

References:

1. Daniel Sipper and Robert L. Bulfin, Jr., ProductionPlanning, Control, and Integration, McGraw-HillComp. Inc., 1997.

2. Microsoft Project: http://www.microsoft.com/project

Why project planning, scheduling, and control?

Many other problems can be viewed as projects:

moving from an old to a new plant, doing preventive maintenance on a machine,

developing a product,

building a house,

launching a space shuttle,

planning a political campaign,

writing a textbook.

Their common characteristics:

consisting of many activities,

having a specified goal.

Definition of a Project:

A set of partially ordered, interrelated activities thatmust be completed to achieve a goal.


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Historical Development

The Egyptians applied project planning, organization,and control over 6000 years ago on the pyramids.

Gantt Chart introduced the basic scheduling ideas ofproject planning, scheduling, and control in 1911.

In the mid-1950s, several independent research teamsdeveloped similar approaches to project planning,scheduling, and control. All were highly successful,reducing both completion times and project costs 30

percent to 40 percent. These areo The Operational Research Section of the British

Central Electricity Generating Board developed amethod to identify the critical path for reducing thetime to overhaul a generating plant in 1957.

o Employees of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation; Booz,Alien, and Hamilton Consultants; and the U.S. Navy

cut the costs and reduce completion time on thePolaris Weapon (Missile) System, by using PERTto plan, schedule, and control the project in 1959.

o Du Pont and Remington Rand Univac, introducedthe basic time/cost model and Critical Path Method(CPM) to reduce the time spent on plant overhaul,maintenance, and construction in 1959.

Commercial software packages developed formainframe computers in late 1960s and early 1970s.

Proliferation of PC has been the dominant factor for thelast 15 years.


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Planning, Scheduling, and Control- fundamental concepts of project management -

Planning

-- an organized approach to accomplish some goal (in thiscase, the project).

Defining project objectives

Determine component activities and how they interact

Estimate time and other resources required for eachactivity

Graphically represented all activities on a network.

Each activity corresponds to an arrow. If one activityprecedes another, the arrows are connected by anode.

Scheduling

-- The time-phased commitment of resources to carry outthe project.

Each activity is given a start time and a completiontime. These times determine the project completiontime and resource usage over time.

The schedule identifies certain critical activities(critical path), which, if delayed, cause the project's

completion to be delayed.

Control-- monitoring the progress of project activities and revises

the plan accordingly after the planned and scheduledproject has start to be carried out.


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Planning, Scheduling, and Control


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Benefits

Generate an in-depth consideration of the project beforeanything is done (what to do and how to do it.).

o Give a clear statement of project objectives

o Specify the activities that make up the project, aswell as the time and resources required to do eachactivity.

o Define interrelationships between the activities.

o Determine start and finish times of each activity

Identify the activities are most critical to the overallsuccess of the project (tightly control)

Lead to a master plan based on a global rather thanlocal view.

Determines overall resource requirements throughoutthe project.

Allow "what if" planning to take place(As the project proceeds, the expected results arecompared to what actually happens, and plans arerevised accordingly.)

Help managers meet deadlines and budgets.

Can be used at several levels of detail, and assignsresponsibility for each activity to a specific person.(Communication and coordination become easier,because all parties are working from a common base.More realistic expectations are obtained.)


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Product Development

A major application area of project planning, scheduling,

and control. Developing a new product takes a lot of time and

money.

Four major characteristics:

o Trade-offs between design parameters, cost, andperformance

o

Market dynamics, e.g., change in technology andcustomer needso Attention to detail, e.g., tolerances for each parto Time to market(a large number of different types of decisions)

A step-by-step procedure:

to conceive, design, and commercialize a product. Mission statement - identify the target market;

provides a functional description for the product andthe business goals of the effort.

Product developmenta) Concept developmentb) System level designc) Detailed designd) Testing and refininge) Production ramp-up

Product launch - when the product is available forpurchase in the market.


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PLANNING

Organizing the Project

Choose a project manager (leadership, soundorganizational skills, particularly in goal setting,planning, and analyzing.)

Assemble a project team of experts in their respectiveareas. Team members often work on the project part-time and continue their other duties. The projectmanager should have authority to pick all members.

Generate project plan Establish the reporting mechanism to check the

progress through routine meeting (verify thecompletion of important events - project milestones.)

Defining Activities and the Network

List all activities that make up the project.

Each activity should have a definite beginning andending point. Choose the correct level of detail for eachactivity. The level of detail should be no more than isneeded to assign resources and manage the activity.

Represent an activity by an arrow (or arc) with the tail ofthe arrow corresponding to the start of the activity andthe head its completion. The duration of the activity anda short description is often written over or under.


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Events -- the beginning and end of an activity. There isno time duration associated with an event. Graphically,we represent events by circles, called nodes, and label

it with a unique number. Precedence -- one activity cannot begin before another

is completed.

Successor -- the activity following the predecessor.

Project completion -- all activities with no successors

sharing an ending event, n.

A burst event -- any node having more than one arcleaving it.

A merge event -- an event with more than one arcentering it.


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A network -- a project that is represented by a collectionof nodes and arcs graphically.

(Or called an activity-on-arrow network).

A dummy arc -- not represent an actual activity butmaintains the logic of the network. Dummies areusually represented by dashed arcs, have no duration,and require no resources.


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SCHEDULING

Use the network to calculate times when things might takeplace (especially the project's completion).

For each activity, we calculate

o the earliest time it can start and finisho the latest time it can start and finish.

For each event, we also calculate an earliest and latesttime for its occurrence.

Calculation methods:

A forward pass is a sequence of calculations thatbegins with the project start event and determines theearliest time the project can be completed.In doing so, it assigns the earliest possible start andcompletion time to each activity.

A backward pass is the reverse of the forward pass. It

assigns a desired completion time to the ending eventand calculates the latest start and completion time foreach activity so the project will be completed by thedesired time.

i-j = an activity of the projectdi-j= the duration of activity i-jEi= the earliest time event i can occur

ESi-j= the earliest start time of activity i-jEFi-j = its earliest finish timeLSi-j= the latest start time of activity i-jLFi-j = the latest finish timeof activity i-jLi = the latest event time.


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Forward Pass

It is used to compute the earliest start and finish time foreach activity in the project.

The earliest finish time:EFi-j = ESi-j + di-j

The earliest event time:Ek = maxall I-k EFi-k

The earliest start of all activities with event k:ESk-l = Ek


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Backward PassIt is used to calculate the latest allowable start and finishtimes for each activity so the project is completed by a

specified time (a reverse of the forward pass). It beginswith the project completion and works toward the projectstart.

The latest start time:LSi-j = LFi-j - di-j

The latest event time:Lk = minall k-j LSk-j

The latest finish of all activities i-k:LFi-k = Lk


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Critical Path and Critical Activities

Slack of activity i-j: Si-j = LSi-j - ESi-j (or LFi-j - EFi-j)

A critical activity: if an activity with zero slack is notstarted and completed at the earliest time, the project isdelayed.

The critical path: path from 1 to n that has zero slack forevery activity on the path.Ln = En.A path from project start (1) to project finish (n) formedby the activities, 1-i, i-j,..., l-k, and k-n.

The Critical Path Method (CPM): identifying thebottleneck activity - each activity on the critical path.Delaying any activity on the critical path will delay theproject.

Near-critical activity: Ln = En-1,

Scheduling ActivitiesAssigning a start time to each activity between the earliestand latest start time for that activity.

Early start schedule: start all activities ASAP

Late start schedule: assign the latest start time for all.


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PROJECT CONTROL

Three key issues: time, cost, and quality.

To ensure that the project is finished on time, within itsbudget, and of required quality.

Tools for control:

Scheduling, budgeting, and technical specifications ofthe project (standards for time, cost, and quality).

Key:Measurement and reporting systems to monitor whatactually happens with the project.

Schedule Control -- following and updating the network.

Cost Control -- accurately estimate the cost of eachactivity, control cost in certain ways (e.g. uniform), and

check expense with the progress of the project.


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Cost/Schedule Control System Criteria (C/SCSC)

(Take into account actual and planned expendituresand work performed, USAFSC, 1976).

ACWP - The actual cost of work performed is themoney actually spent to accomplish the work that hasbeen done.

BCWP - The budgeted cost of work performed is theexpected cost of the actual work done at this time.

BCWS - Budgeted cost of work scheduled is theexpected cost of the work scheduled to be done at thistime.

Cost variance: VC= BCWP - ACWP

VC

> 0, spent less than anticipated.

VC< 0, over budget and cost overrun.

Schedule variance: VS= BCWP - BCWS

VS

> 0, more work than planned has been completed.V

S< 0, behind schedule.


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PERT APPROACH TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The probabilistic approach to project management -Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT).

A more reasonable approach: specifying an expectedproject completion date (probability).

Unfortunately, PERT requires certain assumptions,which do not always hold.

Distribution of Activity Duration

The duration follows some probability distribution of arandom variable, specified by the mean, , and

variance or standard deviation, .

Three related values:o The optimistic estimate, ao The pessimistic estimate, bo The most likely time, m

[a, b] is the range of the distribution. and

calculated using a, b, m for different distributions.

Normal, Uniform andBeta distribution are often used tohandle a large variety of distributions.

The calculations using PERT actually tend tounderestimate the project length and overestimate theprobability of completing the project by a particular time.


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Limited Resources

The CPM and PERT assume unlimited resources, while

limited human and material resources impose great impactto project progress. Although more accurate solutions canbe obtained using linear programming, the graphicapproaches are good for rough planning.

Resource Profile (or load profile or skyline graph) simplyplots resource usage versus time for a particular schedule,to identify any resource overuse or under use.


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Microsoft Project 2000

Introduction

Microsoft Project 2000 is a powerful, flexible tooldesigned to help you manage a full range of projects.

Schedule and closely track all tasks

Microsoft Project Central, the Web-based companion toMicrosoft Project 2000, to exchange project informationwith your team and senior management.


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Build a Project Plan

Microsoft Project 2000 helps you get started by creating aworking schedule with information you provide on tasks,resources, and costs.

Powerful new features include custom outline codes thatallow you to create a project outline structure tailored toyour company's work breakdown structure.

Take advantage of Deadline Dates, which usesinformation you provide to help you stay on track. And usetask calendars to create a schedule that factors inresource challenges such as scheduling conflicts orequipment downtime.


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Manage a Project

Once you've planned your project, you can easilyreview and analyze its progress using the advancedmanagement features in Microsoft Project 2000.

Custom fields allow you to enter project-specific data;views and tables display exactly the information youwant to review; and

Filters and groups help you prioritize and focus onwhat's important.

Network Diagram enhancements let you customizethe display of the Network Diagram, and view specificinformation without using add-on tools.

26024766 Project Planning Scheduling and Control References 1

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