06. Project Time Management
Project time management 
involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a project. There are six main activities involved in this stage. (refer to the table in part 03.)
01. Activity Definition: after project charter, scope statement and WBS have been performed, project managers and project team using the information accumulated, begin developing a detailed list of activities and their attributes. The activity list is a tabulation of activities to be included in a project schedule. The scope of the activity definition is to ensure that the project team has complete understanding about the work that must be done, so they can start scheduling the work.
2. Activity sequencing: involves reviewing the activity list and attributes, project scope statement, milestone list, and approved change requests to determine the relationship between activities. The sequencing of activities and the processes depends from their dependencies. Depending on the activities, the nature of dependencies can be: mandatory, discretionary and external dependencies. To show the dependencies among activities, a network diagram is used.
One of the most common diagrams used is the activity-on-arrow- diagram (AOA).
As shown in the figure, each letter represent activities with dependencies that are required to complete the project. The number beside the letters shows the period in frames on how long an activity will last. The starting end ending activities are known as nodes.
3. Activity resource estimating: in this stage, the resources needed to perform the activities that have been selected are estimated. Of course it will be depended of the nature of the organization and the project itself. The activity's output will be a list with the required resources.
4. Activity duration estimating: Duration includes the actual amount of time worked in an activity plus elapsed time. The list may be updated step by step as the project is being developed.
5. Schedule development: the final goal here is to create a schedule that will provide the basis to monitor the project progress throughout the project development.
Important tools for this process includes:
a) Gantt Charts - which provides standards for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format.
b) Critical Path Method - is a network diagramming technique used to predict total project duration. Calculating the critical path, means adding the duration of all the activities on each path in a network diagram. For example, according to the above picture of the AOA diagram, the longest path (A-E-H-J = 16) is the critical path. Even though is is the longest path in a diagram, it is the shortest path to finish the real project. For managers, to shorten the project time, one way would be to reduce the activities on the critical path. The duration of critical path can be shorten by allocating more resources or by changing the scope.
6. Schedule Control: the goal of schedule control, is to know the status of the schedule and makes sure to manage changes when they occur. Some important tips in this stage includes: perform reality checks on schedule, do not plan for every project member to work on 100% of their capabilities and hold progress meetings with stakeholders.
Throughout all the stages, from the beginning until the end of a project, it is important to have the support of the stakeholders and that everyone is fair and realistic in every task performing.
involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a project. There are six main activities involved in this stage. (refer to the table in part 03.) 01. Activity Definition: after project charter, scope statement and WBS have been performed, project managers and project team using the information accumulated, begin developing a detailed list of activities and their attributes. The activity list is a tabulation of activities to be included in a project schedule. The scope of the activity definition is to ensure that the project team has complete understanding about the work that must be done, so they can start scheduling the work.
2. Activity sequencing: involves reviewing the activity list and attributes, project scope statement, milestone list, and approved change requests to determine the relationship between activities. The sequencing of activities and the processes depends from their dependencies. Depending on the activities, the nature of dependencies can be: mandatory, discretionary and external dependencies. To show the dependencies among activities, a network diagram is used.
One of the most common diagrams used is the activity-on-arrow- diagram (AOA).As shown in the figure, each letter represent activities with dependencies that are required to complete the project. The number beside the letters shows the period in frames on how long an activity will last. The starting end ending activities are known as nodes.
3. Activity resource estimating: in this stage, the resources needed to perform the activities that have been selected are estimated. Of course it will be depended of the nature of the organization and the project itself. The activity's output will be a list with the required resources.
4. Activity duration estimating: Duration includes the actual amount of time worked in an activity plus elapsed time. The list may be updated step by step as the project is being developed.
5. Schedule development: the final goal here is to create a schedule that will provide the basis to monitor the project progress throughout the project development.
Important tools for this process includes:
a) Gantt Charts - which provides standards for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format.
b) Critical Path Method - is a network diagramming technique used to predict total project duration. Calculating the critical path, means adding the duration of all the activities on each path in a network diagram. For example, according to the above picture of the AOA diagram, the longest path (A-E-H-J = 16) is the critical path. Even though is is the longest path in a diagram, it is the shortest path to finish the real project. For managers, to shorten the project time, one way would be to reduce the activities on the critical path. The duration of critical path can be shorten by allocating more resources or by changing the scope.
6. Schedule Control: the goal of schedule control, is to know the status of the schedule and makes sure to manage changes when they occur. Some important tips in this stage includes: perform reality checks on schedule, do not plan for every project member to work on 100% of their capabilities and hold progress meetings with stakeholders.
Throughout all the stages, from the beginning until the end of a project, it is important to have the support of the stakeholders and that everyone is fair and realistic in every task performing.
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