Lecture 61 Project planning tool Lecture 62 Objectives Understand the reasons why projects sometimes fail Describe the different scheduling tools, including.

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Project planning tool

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Objectives

Understand the reasons why projects sometimes fail

Describe the different scheduling tools, including Gantt charts and PERT/CPM charts

Calculate completion times, start dates, and end dates for a project

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Keys to Project Success

Successful systems must satisfy business requirements, meet users’ needs, stay within budget, and be completed on time

The essential objective is to provide a solution to a business problem

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Keys to Project SuccessSome reasons for failure

– Unclear requirements, targets, or scope– Shortcuts or sloppy work– Poor design choices– Insufficient testing or test procedures– Lack of software change control– Changes in culture, funding, or objectives– Unrealistic cost estimates– Poor monitoring and control of progress– Inadequate reaction to early signs of problems– Failure to recognize activity dependencies– Personality conflicts and employee turnover

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Project Planning

A project plan is an overall framework for managing costs and schedules

The planning process involves– Activities (tasks)– Events (milestones)

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Project Planning

An activity, or task, is a basic unit of work that is planned, monitored, and tracked

An event, or milestone, is a reference point that is used to manage the project

Every activity has two events — one marks the start of the task, the other marks the end

Events must be easily recognizable

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Project Scheduling

The project manager must know– The duration of each task– The order in which the tasks will be

performed– The start and end times for each activity– Who will be assigned to each task

Assignments should not overload or under-utilize team members

A level workload is desirable

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Scheduling Tools

A project manager can use several graphical planning tools– Gantt charts– PERT/CPM charts

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Scheduling Tools

Gantt charts– A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart that

illustrates a schedule– Time is shown on the horizontal axis and

activities are arranged vertically– The position of a bar shows the start and end

of a task, and the length of the bar shows the task’s duration

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Scheduling Tools

Gantt charts– Tasks can be combined into activity groups to

simplify the chart– Various methods exist for tracking progress

• Shade the completed portion of a bar

• Use a triangle or arrowhead as an indicator

• Use a second bar to show the completed work

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Scheduling Tools

PERT/CPM– The Program Evaluation Review Technique

(PERT) and the Critical Path Method (CPM) were developed separately but now are referred to as PERT/CPM

– A PERT/CPM chart displays a project as a network diagram, with activities shown as vectors, and events represented by nodes

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Scheduling Tools

PERT/CPM charting conventions– The vectors representing tasks connect the

nodes, which indicate milestones– The activity’s estimated duration is shown

below the vector

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Scheduling Tools

PERT/CPM charting conventions– The vectors representing tasks connect the

nodes, which indicate milestones– The activity’s estimated duration is shown

below the vector– Tasks that must be completed in a specific

sequence are called dependent, or serial, tasks

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Scheduling Tools

PERT/CPM charting conventions– The vectors representing tasks connect the

nodes, which indicate milestones– The activity’s estimated duration is shown

below the vector– Tasks that must be completed in a specific

sequence are called dependent, or serial, tasks– Dummy activities can be used to show task

dependencies

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Scheduling Tools

PERT/CPM charting conventions– A project can be represented with a Gantt

chart and a PERT/CPM chart– Significant differences exist between the two

methods, and each method has strengths and weaknesses

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Scheduling Tools

Activity duration– A weighted formula can be used to estimate

activity duration– The formula calculates a weighted result

based on three separate estimates (optimistic (O), pessimistic (P), and most likely (M))

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Earliest completion times– The earliest completion time for an activity is

called the ECT– The ECT is the minimum amount of time

needed to complete all the activities that precede the event

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Scheduling Tools

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Earliest completion times– Working from left to right on the chart, the

ECT is calculated by taking the ECT of the preceding event and adding the duration of the immediately preceding task

– If the event has more than one preceding task, use the largest ECT of the preceding tasks, including any dummy tasks

– The ECT is shown as a number in the upper-right section of the event node symbol

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Scheduling Tools

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Latest completion times– The latest completion time for an activity is

called the LCT– The LCT is the latest time at which the event

can occur without delaying the overall project

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Scheduling Tools

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Latest completion times– To determine an LCT, you reverse the

procedure for an ECT– Work from right to left, and subtract the LCT

of the following task– If the event has more than one following task,

use the smallest LCT of the following tasks, including any dummy tasks

– The LCT is shown as a number in the lower-right section of the event node symbol

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Scheduling Tools

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Slack times– The slack time for an event is the amount of

time by which an event can be late without delaying the project

– The slack time is the difference between the LCT and the ECT, if any

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Scheduling Tools

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Critical path– A critical path is a series of events and

activities with no slack time– At least one complete path will exist where

every node has equal ECTs and LCTs– If any task on the critical path is delayed

beyond its LCT, the entire project falls behind by that amount of time

– Project managers focus on the critical path in order to keep the project on track

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Scheduling Tools

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Comparing Gantt charts and PERT/CPM– PERT/CPM charts show all task

dependencies, and are better for scheduling, monitoring, and controlling projects

– Gantt charts graphically display the timing and duration of activities, and can display task completion status effectively

– PERT/CPM charts are more complicated than Gantt charts, especially for larger projects

Scheduling Tools

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End of Lecture 6