Unit III-Activity based Scheduling

Objectives of Activity planning

The objective of software project planning is to provide a framework that enables themanager to make
reasonable estimates of resources, cost, and schedule

1. Feasibility assessment: - Is the project possible within required timescales and resource
constraints? It is not until we have constructed a detailed plan that we can forecast a completion date with
any reasonable knowledge of its achievability.

2. Resource Allocation: - What are the most effective ways of allocating resources to the project,
When should the resources be available? The project plan allows us to investigate the relationship
between timescales and resource availability,

3. Detailed Costing: - How much will the project cost and when is that expenditure likely to take
place? After producing an activity plan and allocating specific resources, we can obtain more
detailed estimates of costs and their timing.

4. Motivation: - Providing targets and being seen to monitor achievement against targets is an
effective way of motivating staff, particularly where they have been involved in setting those
targets in the first place.

5. Co-ordination: - When do the staff in different departments need to be available to work on a

particular project and when do staff need to be transferred between projects? The project plan,
particularly with large projects involving more than a single project team, provides an effective
vehicle for communication and coordination among teams.

Project Schedules:
A schedule in your project‟s time table actually consists of sequenced activities andmilestones that
are needed to be delivered under a given period of time.

Project schedule simply means a mechanism that is used to communicate and know about that
tasks are needed and has to be done or performed and which organizational resources will be
given or allocated to these tasks and in what time duration or time frame work is needed to be
performed. Effective project scheduling leads to success of project, reduced cost, and increased
customer satisfaction. Scheduling in project management means to list out activities, deliverables,
and milestones within a project that are delivered. It contains more notes than your average
weekly planner notes. The most common and important formof project schedule is Gantt chart.
 Advantages of Project Scheduling:

There are several advantages provided by project schedule in our project management:
 It simply ensures that everyone remains on same page as far as tasks get completed,
dependencies, and deadlines.
 It helps in identifying issues early and concerns such as lack or unavailability of
resources.
 It also helps to identify relationships and to monitor process.
 It provides effective budget management and risk mitigation.

Projects Activities
Defining activities

 A project is composed of a number of related activities

 A project may start when at least one of its activities is ready to start
 A project will be completed when all of its activities have been completed
 An activity must have a clear start and a clear stop
 An activity should have a duration
 Some activities may require that other activities are completed before they can begin
Identifying activities
There are three approaches to identifying the activities or tasks that make up a project

 The Activity-Based Approach

 The Product-Based Approach And
 The Hybrid Approach.

1. The activity-based approach

 The activity-based approach consists of creating a list of all the activities that the project
is thought to involve.
 When listing activities, particularly for a large project, it might be helpful to sub-divide
the project into the main life-style stages and consider each separately.
 Rather than doing this in ad hoc manner, with the obvious risks of omitting or double
counting tasks, a much favored way of generating a tasks list is to create a Work
Breakdown Structure(WBS)

2. The Product-based approach

 It consists of producing a Product Breakdown Structure and a product flow diagram.

 PDF indicated, for each product, which other products are required as inputs.

 The PDF can therefore be easily transformed into an ordered list of activities
by identifyingthe transformation that turns some products into others.
 3. The hybrid approach

 The WBS is based entirely on a structuring of activities.

 The figure on the next slide is based on a simple list of final deliverables and,
for eachdeliverable, a set of activities required to produce that project.
 In a project of any size, it would be beneficial to introduce additional levels-
structuringis product and activities.

SEQUENCING AND SCHEDULING ACTIVITIES

Throughout a project, we will require a schedule that clearly indicates when each of
the project‟s activities is planned to occur and what resources it will need.

• One way of presenting such a plan is to use a bar chart.

In drawing up the chart, we have done two things:-

 1. Sequencing the Activities
Sequence activities are the process of identifying and documenting
relationships among the project activities. So the fundamental reason for the sequence
activities process is finalizing the interrelationship of activities to finish the project
scope and achieve the task objectives. (i.e., identified the dependencies among
activities dictated by the development process)

2.Scheduled them

The scheduling has had to take account of availability of staff and the way
in which the activities have been allocated to them. Project managers usually know the
expected completion date of a project long before they plan and schedule the activities
required to finish the project. To get your project finished on time, you need to schedule all the
necessary project activities as quickly as possible. A well-designed sequence of events is
essential to controlling every element of your project (i.e., specified when they should take
place)

Network Planning Models

 Scheduling techniques model the project‟s activities and their relationships as a “Network”. In
network time flows from left to right.
 There are two best techniques:
CRM (Critical Path Method)
PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique)
 Both use the “Activity on Arrow” approach to visualize the project as a network where
activities are drawn as arrows joining circles, or nodes which represent the possible start or
completion of an activity or set of activities.
 Sequencing the tasks according to their logical relationship, and then scheduling them taking
into account resources and other factors.

 Both of these techniques used an activity-on-arrow approach to visualizing the project as a

network where activities are drawn as arrows joining circles, or nodes, which represent the
possible start and/or completion activities.

 More recently a variation on these techniques, called precedence networks, has become
popular. This method uses activity-on-node networks where activities are represented as
nodes and the links between nodes represent precedence or sequencing requirements. It is this
method that is adopted in the majority of computer applications currently available.
Formulating Network Model
The first stage in creating a network model is to represent the activities and their
interrelationships as a graph. In activity-on-nodes we do this by representing activities as
links (arrowed lines) in the graph - the nodes (circles) representing the events of activities
starting and finishing.

 Constructing precedence networks

Before we look at how networks are used, it is worth spending a few moments
considering some rules for their construction.

 A project network should have only one start node

Although it is logically possible to draw a network with more than one starting node it is
undesirable to do so as it is a potential source of confusion. In such cases (For example,
where more than one activity can start immediately the project starts) it is normal to invent a
start activity which has zero duration but may have, for example, an actual start date.

 A project network should have only one end node

The end node designates the completion of the project and a project may only finish once.
Although it is possible to draw a network with more than one end node it will almost
certainly lead to confusion if this is done. Where the completion of a project depends upon
more than one 'final' activity it is normal to invent a 'finish' activity.

 A node has duration

A node represents an activity and, in general, activities take time to execute. This network
drawing merely represents the logic of the project and the rules governing the order in
which activities are to be carried out.

 Links normally have no duration

Links represent the relationships between activities. Program testing cannot start until both
coding and data take-on has been completed.

 Precedents are the immediate preceding activities

The activity Program test cannot start until both Code and Data take-on have been
completed and activity Install cannot start until the Program test has finished. Code and
Data take-on can therefore be said to be precedents of Program test, and Program test is a
precedent of Install.

 Time moves from left to right

If at all possible, networks are drawn so that time moves from left to right. It is rare that
this convention needs to be flouted, but some people add arrows to the lines to give a
stronger visual indication of the time flow of the project.
Activity relationships (FS, SF, SS, FF)
Project Schedule Network Diagram is the graphical representation of the logical relationships
among the project schedule activities.

After identification of activities, we analyze them if any relationships exist between those. If
relationships exist, it is better to show them to maintain the project schedule better. The relationship
exists between the two activities. Let‟s take two activities for understanding the concept and name
the activity A and B.

Here, activity A is a predecessor, and activity B is the successor activity. If something happens to
the predecessor activity, it impacts the successor activities. In this way, successor activity B is a
dependent activity on the predecessor activity A. So, you can see here – A is an independent
activity. Activity A logically comes before activity B in the schedule. The relationships between A
and B activity are either of four types:

 Finish-to-start (FS)
 Start-to-start (SS)
 Finish-to-finish (FF)
 Start-to-finish (SF)

We link the predecessor (Activity A) with the first character. It defines the state of processor
activity. And, in the same way, we link successor (Activity B) with the second character. The
character defines the rule which we have to apply on the successor activity.
Finish-to-start (FS)
“A logical connection in which a successor venture cannot start until a predecessor
activity has finished.”

If you have a question – which is the most commonly used logical relationship ?
Yes, Finish to Start is the most commonly used logical relationship.

You can see, this relation constraint does not impact the independent activity. Itonly affects the
dependent, so in our case, it is activity B.

Here the next question is – what does FS mean in project management?

Finish-to-start (FS)

From this FS relationship, F shows the finish state of activity A, and at this state, activity B can be
started. The second character „S‟ is the rule on a successor to make it dependent on the Finish state
of the successor activity.

Let’s take an Example –

You cannot start development until you finish the design. Here, development is the dependent
activity on the design activity. Design is the predecessor activity, and its finish state can only start
the development activity.

Start-to-start (SS)

“A logical relationship in which a successor activity cannot start until a predecessor

activity has started.”

So if activity B is bound to this relation, this means it cannot start till the predecessor (independent)
activity A is started. The start of activity A drives thestart of activity B.
 Start-to-start (SS)

Example:
The activity of marketing brochure preparation cannot start until user documentation has begun. In
this way, after the commencement of activity A, both A and B can go in parallel.

Finish-to-finish (FF)
“A logical relationship in which a successor activity cannot finish until a predecessor
activity has finished.”

Finish to Finish (FF)

So if activity B is bound with this relation it means it cannot finish till the predecessor
(independent) activity A is finished. So, B needs to finish itsdeliverable and keep working with
A till the time A is not done. Like, the broadcast of a football match cannot finish until the
match is finished. So the match is not depended in broadcast, but the broadcast is. If the match takes
longer than the initially estimated time broadcast will also continue till that time.
It could be possible that the broadcast is continued even after the match is finished.
The broadcast could be continued to discuss highlights and other things. It means it will end after
successor activities but necessarily immediately.

Start-to-finish (SF)
“A logical connection in which a successor activity cannot finish until a
predecessor activity has started.”
 Start-to-finish (SF)

So if activity B is bound to this relation in which it cannot finish till the independent activity A
starts. It looks confusing because in typical cases, predecessor activity gets performed before the
successor activity. But, in this case, the successor is happening first. But even if the successor is
happening first, the predecessor is not at all restricted by successor activity. It is independent. But the
successors (Activity B) cannot finish till the predecessor starts (Activity A starts)

Forward Pass & Backward Pass techniques:

Forward pass is a technique to move forward through network diagram to determining

project duration and finding the critical path or Free Float of the project.

Whereas backward pass represents moving backward to the end result to calculate late start
or to find if there is any slack in the activity.

How to plot Early Start (ES), Early Finish (EF), Late Start (LS) and Late Finish (LF) in a network
diagram?

Early Start (ES) is plotted on the 1st left corner box at the top. Likewise Early Finish (EF) is plotted
on top right corner box.

Late Finish (LF) is on the right corner box at the bottom and Late Start (LS) is plotted on the left
bottom corner box.

Activity name “B” is in the 2nd box duration represented by 10 is on the 5th box at the middle.
What is Early Start?
Early Start (ES) represents the earliest start of an activity considering the dependency preceding
task. If an activity is having more than one dependency predecessor, then ES will be the highest
Early Finish (EF) of the dependency task.
Early Start = Maximum (or Highest) EF value from immediate Predecessor(s)

How to apply Forward Pass to calculate Early Finish (EF)?

In order to calculate Early Finish, we use forward pass. Means moving from Early Start towards
right to come up with Early Finish of the project.
Early Finish (EF) = ES + Duration
If Early Start is 6 days and duration is 10 days, EF = 6 + 10 = 16 Days

What is Late Finish (LF)?

Late Start (LS) is the latest date that the activity can finish without causing a delay to the project
completion date.
How to apply Backward Pass to calculate Late Start (LS)?
In order to calculate Late Start (LS), we apply backward Pass moving from Late Finish and
deducting from activity duration.
LS = LF – Duration
If Late Finish is 30 days and duration is 10 days, LS = 30 – 10 = 20 Days
Critical Path concept and remedies

What is Critical Path?

Critical Path is the longest sequence of activity on a project that carries zero free float / slack.

Float Calculation
Float: Also known as slack, float is a term that describes how long you can delay a task before it
impacts its task sequence and the project schedule. The tasks on the critical path have zero float,
because they can‟t be delayed

The whole idea of network diagram and finding the project duration is to identify the critical path
and total float. Float represents how much each individual activity can be delayed without delaying
successor activities or project completion date.

Total Float = LS – ES or LF – EF

Total Float shows the difference between the Earliest Start (ES) and Latest Start (LS) of an activity
before the completion date is delayed.

Free Float = Lowest ES of successors – EF

Free Float represents the amount of time that an activity can be delayed before any successor‟s
activity will be delayed. A zero free float represents the activity is in critical path and there is no
space to delay the activity without delaying the entire project.
 What Is the Critical Path of a Project?

In project management, the critical path is the longest sequence of tasks that must be completed to
complete a project.
The tasks on the critical path are called critical activities because if they‟re delayed, the whole
project completion will be delayed.

Finding the critical path is very important for project managers because it allows them to:
 Accurately estimate the total project duration
 Identify task dependencies, resource constraints and project risks
 Prioritize tasks and create realistic project schedules

To find the critical path, project managers use the critical path method (CPM) algorithm to define
the least amount of time necessary to complete each task with the least amount of slack.
.
Using the critical path method is important when managing a project because it identifies all the
tasks needed to complete the project, and then determines the tasks that must be done on time, those
that can be delayed if needed and how much float or slack you have.

Float: Also known as slack, float is a term that describes how long you can delay a task before it
impacts its task sequence and the project schedule. The tasks on the critical path have zero float,
because they can‟t be delayed.