Project Planning And Scheduling

Project Management Assignment 02

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Project Planning 3. Roles and responsibilities of Project Manager in Planning 4. Project Scheduling

5. Project Management Tools 6. Conclusion 7. References

PROJECT PLANNING AND SCHEDULING 1. INTRODUCTION A typical project involves a number of activities, and each activity requires human resources support. These activities and resources must be properly planned and scheduled in order to achieve optimum project time and cost. This paper proposes a process planning and scheduling system which is based on the concept of process planning typically used for the planning of project activities. An Advanced Planning System offers support at all planning levels along the supply chain while observing limited resources. As one of the most Page 1 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

challenging problems in project management, scheduling has been receiving considerable attention not only from researchers but also from practitioners. In the past few decades, the field of project management theory and practice has made tremendous strides forward (Rory Burke2003) However, as projects grow in complexity, finding realizable schedules that efficiently exploit scarce resources continues to be a challenging task within project management. Modern era demands an efficient scheduling to enhance the profitability of any enterprise. The resource-constrained project scheduling problem is a general scheduling problem which involves the scheduling of project activities subjected to some temporal constraints and resource constraints, so as to minimize the total project duration. Temporal constraints usually consist of precedence constraints, which imply that certain jobs must be completed before others can be started. A resource constraint specifies that every job requires different capacity of limited renewable resource types while being processed. The activities are usually ranked by using the priority rule, which determines the order that the activities are added to the schedule. There exists no constructive heuristic that outperforms all other constructive heuristics given a variety of different performance criteria. In addition to priority rules, another major component of constructive heuristics is the schedule generation scheme (SGS), which determines the way in which a feasible schedule is constructed by assigning starting times to the different activities. The serial SGS and parallel SGS constitute the two basic schedule generation schemes. When constructing a feasible schedule, we start with the dummy start activity and gradually schedule all activities until the dummy end activity has been assigned a starting time. This can easily be obtained by reversing all precedence relations and using the reverse priority list on the resulting network. The resulting starting times can then easily be adjusted so that the starting time of the dummy start activity equals 0. Finally, the application of all possible left shifts will result in an active schedule for the original problem instance. To that purpose, both forward and backward priority lists should be used in the bidirectional planning. During the each iteration of the bidirectional parallel scheduling scheme, the decision point of each direction with the smallest difference is considered (Rory Burke2003). In the case of a tie, both decision points are considered. At each decision point, the activities are scheduled in the order of forward or backward priority list. This is continued until no more activities can be scheduled to start or finish at these decision points. Then the decision point is updated and a new iteration takes place until all activities have been scheduled. Finally, the bidirectional schedule can be Page 2 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

translated into an active schedule by shifting the backward scheduled activities to the left in the order of their start times.

2. PROJECT PLANNING A major responsibility for the project manager is the initial planning of the project. The early stages of the project must be spent carefully establishing a baseline plan that provides a clear definition of how the project the project scope will be accomplished on time, to budget and using available resources. 1. Project initiation

At the beginning of a project, a Project Initiation Document (PID) should be produced. The PID contains: •

What is state of recent project?

•

Future project objectives

•

The come up to be taken to the project

•

Any areas excluded from the project

•

Any constraints such as budget or available resources Page 3 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

•

Any interfaces between this project and others organisations or part of the organisation

•

Any statement on which the PID is based

•

The communication plan (reports, meetings, etc...)

2. Time The schedule is the timetable for activities involved in achieving the project objective. The project will have a finite date for completion, either set by the banking consortium. The timetable must include these. The time plan lists all the activities, which will do that what and how long each is planned to take. This includes the milestone finish dates of each stage of the project life-cycle, and the estimated completion date of the whole project.

3. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF PROJECT MANAGER IN PLANNING

A project manager is the person who has the overall responsibility for the successful planning and execution of a project. The project manager must possess a combination of skills including an ability to ask penetrating questions, detect unstated assumptions and resolve interpersonal conflicts as well as more systematic management skills. Project managers use project management software, such as Microsoft Project, to organise their task and workforce. These software packages allow project managers to produce reports and charts in a few minutes, compared to the several hours it can take if they do not use a software package. The role of the project manager encompasses many activities including ➢ Planning and defining scope ➢ Activity planning and sequencing ➢ Resource planning ➢ Developing schedules ➢ Time estimating ➢ Cost estimating ➢ Developing a budget ➢ Controlling quality Page 4 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

➢ Managing risks and issues ➢ Creating schedules and charts ➢ Risk analysis ➢ Benefits realisation ➢ Scalability, interoperability and portability analysis ➢ Documentation ➢ Team leadership ➢ Strategic influencing

4. PROJECT SCHEDULING These are the important steps should be considered in scheduling procedures. •

Establishing objectives

•

Determining available resources

•

Sequencing activities

•

Identifying precedence relationships

•

Determining activity time and cost

•

Estimating material and worker requirement

•

Determining critical activities

5. PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS Gantt Chart A Gantt chart is a popular bar chart that aims to show the timing of tasks or activities as they occur across time. Although the Gantt chart did not initially indicate the relationships between activities, this has become more common in current use as both timing and interdependencies between tasks can be identified.

Links

Code

Description

Gantt Chart View

Page 5 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

Finish-Start

FS

Predecessor finishes and the other starts

Start-Finish

S-F

Task begins at the same time as its predecessor

Finish-Finish

F-F Both tasks finish at the same time

Start-Start

S-S

Start of the predecessor determines when the other starts

Logic Network A Logic Network shows the sequence of activities in a project across time. It shows which activity logically precedes or follows another activity. It can be used to identify the milestones and critical path of a project. PERT Chart PERT is basically a method for analysing the tasks involved in completing a given project, especially the time needed to complete each task and identifying the minimum time needed to complete the total project. Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) In project management, a Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) is an exhaustive, hierarchical tree structure of components that make up a project deliverable, arranged in whole-part relationship. A PBS can help clarify what is to be delivered by the project and can help build a work breakdown structure. The PRINCE2 project management method mandates the use of product based planning, part of which is developing a product breakdown structure. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is an exhaustive, hierarchical tree structure of deliverables and tasks that need to be performed to complete a project. Work breakdown Page 6 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

structure is a very common project management tool and the basis for much project planning. Critical Path Analysis Critical Path Analysis (CPA) is a project management tool that: •

Sets out all the individual activities that make up a larger project.

•

Shows the order in which activities have to be undertaken.

•

Shows which activities can only taken place once other activities have been completed.

•

Shows which activities can be undertaken simultaneously, thereby reducing the overall time taken to complete the whole project.

•

Shows when certain resources will be needed – for example, a crane to be hired for a building site.

In order to construct a CPA, it is necessary to estimate the elapsed time for each activity – that is the time taken from commencement to completion. Then the CPA is drawn up a based on dependencies such as: (Kelley JE 1963) •

The availability of labour and other resources

•

Lead times for delivery of materials and other services

•

Seasonal factors – such as dry weather required in a building project

Once the CPA is drawn up, it is possible to see the CRITICAL PATH itself – this is a route through the CPA, which has no spare time (called ‘FLOAT’ or ‘slack’) in any of the activities. In other words, if there is any delay to any of the activities on the critical path, the whole project will be delayed unless the firm makes other changes to bring the project back on track. The total time along this critical path is also the minimum time in which the whole project can be completed. Some branches on the CPA may have FLOAT, which means that there is some spare time available for these activities. The key rules of a CPA •

Nodes are numbered to identify each one and show the Earliest Start Time (EST) of the activities that immediately follow the node, and the Latest Finish Time (LFT) of the immediately preceding activities

•

The CPA must begin and end on one ‘node’

•

There must be no crossing activities in the CPA

•

East activity is labelled with its name or it may be given a label, such as ‘D’. Page 7 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02 •

The activities on the critical path are usually marked with a ‘//’ or dark line (Kelley JE ,1963)

The first stage in constructing a network for a project is to consult with the technical experts and summarise the information that they provide in a table, as in the following simple example. Activity

Predecessors

Duration

A

None

4 months

B

None

3 months

C

A

2 months

D

A, B

4 months

The predecessors impose constraints on the project: C cannot begin until A has been completed, whereas D cannot begin until both A and B has been completed. There are two types of network that we can draw for this project: 1. activity-on-arrow (AOA)

2. activity-on-node (AON)

The dummy activity (shown by the dotted line) is needed in the AOA network to show the predecessors correctly, i.e. that D depends on both A and B, but C depends only on A. AOA networks often need several dummy activities. AON networks do not need dummy activities. In the example below •

The Node is number 3

•

The EST for the following activities is 14 days

•

The LFT for the preceding activities is 16 days Page 8 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

•

There is 2 days’ float in this case (difference between EST and LFT)

•

The activity that follows the node is labelled ‘D’ and will take 6 days

Problem Environment In the resource constrained project scheduling (RCPS), the main objective is the minimization of makespan while considering temporal and resource constraints. In order to ease the solution strategy it is generally modelled as a travelling salesman problem (TSP) with precedence constraints. In this model, travelled distance between the two nodes (where nodes represent activities) corresponds to the processing time of the nodes. The precedence relationship shows the relation between two activities which are predecessor and successor to each other. While solving the RCPS problem the following assumptions are taken in consideration: 1. The processing time of each activity should be predefined. 2. The precedence relationship among the activities should be followed, i.e., any activity cannot be completed without performing its precedent activity. 3. The maximum numbers of resources available should be predefined. However, the number of available resources will change according to the completion and starting time of activities. 4. There should be no interruption between the activities.

6. CONCLUSION

Page 9 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

Project planning and scheduling are the very important process in every project, Project Manager is the most responsible person for these activities so first he/she should have good management skill and good experience. Project manager should have good software skill because nowadays all the planning and scheduling works are computerized and that software are helping to save the time and cost. Micro Soft Project is the famous software in worldwide so having a good experience in this software may be advantage for a Project Manager and their team. In a project every activities dependence so anybody they can’t do planning or scheduling works individually therefore working as a group may be more advantage. By updating every day activities project manager may be identify which activities are delay and he/she can mitigation for that. For a successful project proper planning and scheduling is important.

7. REFERENCES Page 10 of 11

Project Management Assignment 02

1. Rory Burke2003, Project Management planning and controlling techniques. 2. Lock D,2007.Project Management. 9th Edition Aldershot Gower. 3. Kelley JE (1963) The critical path method: resources planning and scheduling. In:

Muth JF, Thompson GL (eds) Industrial scheduling. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ 4. Blażewicz J, Lenstra J, Rinnooy KA (1983) Scheduling subject to resource

constraints: Classification and complexity. Discrete Appl Math 5:11–24 5. Alvarez-ValdEs R, Tamarit JM (1993) The project scheduling polyhedron: dimension,

facets and lifting theorems. Eur J Oper 6. Mingozzi A, Maniezzo V, Ricciardelli S, Bianco L (1998) An exact algorithm for the

resource-constrained project scheduling problem based on a new mathematical formulation. 7. Stinson JP, Davis EW, Khumawala BM (1978) Multiple resource constrained

scheduling using branch and bound. 8. J Sched (2006) Knowledge integration using problem spaces: A study in resource-

constrained project scheduling 9. Babcock, D. (1996) Managing Engineering and Technology,Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hall. Chen, J., K. Chu-hua and C. Madu (1995) A decision support systems approach to adjust maintenance float system availability levels, Computers and Industrial Engineering. 10. Expert Choice Inc. (2000) Analytic network process,

http://www.expertchoice.com/methodology. Fordyce, K., B. Gerard, R. Dunki-Jacobs, R. Sell and G. 11. Sullivan (1992) Logistics management system: an advanced decision support system

for the fourth decision tier dispatch or short-interval scheduling, Productions and Operations Management,

Page 11 of 11