Project Management

(Contd.)
COM 412 (HND II)

…though raw but helpful

Babalola Olawale
(Not for sale)
 Project Planning
This is the next phase to the project definition stage. The phase describes the road maps for all the project
stakeholders and how the maps will be duly followed till the project completion or termination stage. Project life
cycle breathes through this phase-the heart of project life cycle.
It involves creating a set of plans to help guide your team through the implementation and closure phases of the
project. Notable constraints on projects such as time, cost, scope, changes are well planned here, it is also the most
challenging phase for a project manager.
Purpose of Project Planning Phase
i. Business requirements are identified and established during this stage
ii. Educated guess about staff, resources and equipment is done at this stage
iii. Plans around both human and non-human resources are carried out at this stage
iv. Communications and procurement activities are put into consideration at this stage
v. Delivery dates, list of deliverables at each stage, cost requirements and schedule are established during this
stage.
vi. The projects objectives which were gathered during initiation stage are refined and articulated in planning
phase and the steps to meet up with these objectives are identified
Project Planning Activities
The basic processes of project planning are:
i. • Scope planning – specifying the in-scope requirements for the project to facilitate creating the work
breakdown structure
ii. • Preparation of the work breakdown structure – spelling out the breakdown of the project into tasks
and sub-tasks
iii. • Project schedule development – listing the entire schedule of the activities and detailing their sequence
of implementation
iv. • Resource planning – indicating who will do what work, at which time, and if any special skills are
needed to accomplish the project tasks
v. • Budget planning – specifying the budgeted cost to be incurred at the completion of the project •
Procurement planning – focusing on vendors outside your company and subcontracting
vi. • Risk management – planning for possible risks and considering optional contingency plans and
mitigation strategies
vii. Quality planning – assessing quality criteria to be used for the project
viii. • Communication planning – designing the communication strategy with all project stakeholders
Description of Project Goals
After recognizing project objectives, each of them must be well scrutinized and articulated to have a better
understanding of what we are looking at, this articulation forms the basis for development of requirement.
Measurable or concrete terms are fully described and quantifiable description (cost, schedule and quality) are
given to the qualitative terms by the project managers alongside with the users.
Example 1 on Goal Description
A specific and tangible way of describing a fast system should be all screens must load in under three second.
This is a quantitative objective with time limit.
Example 2
Let’s say that a company is going to produce a holiday batch of eggnog. The objective statement might be stated
this way:
Christmas Cheer, Inc. will produce two million cases of holiday eggnog, to be shipped to our distributors by
October 30, at a total cost of N1.5 million or less.
The objective criteria in this statement are clearly stated and successful fulfillment can easily be measured.
Stakeholders will know that the objectives are met when the two million cases are produced and shipped by the
due date within the budget stated
Rules during Articulations of Project Objectives: SMART
One of the rules which must be followed while articulating project objectives is SMART, an acronym described
thus
S : Smart
M : Measurable
A : Acceptable
R : Realistic
T : Time based
• Specific – get into the details. Objectives should be specific and written in clear, concise, and
understandable terms.
• Measurable – use quantitative language. You need to know when you have successfully completed the task.
• Acceptable – agreed with the stakeholders.
• Realistic – in terms of achievement. Objectives that are impossible to accomplish are not realistic and not
attainable. Objectives must be centred in reality.
• Time based – deadlines not durations. Objectives should have a time frame with an end date assigned to them.
 Tools for Project Planning or Project Management Techniques
Tools for project planning include but not limited to the following
i. WBS
ii. Gantt chart
iii. PERT Chart
iv. RAM
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Its Design
The WBS defines the scope of the project and breaks the work down into components that can be scheduled,
estimated, and easily monitored and controlled. Now that we have the deliverables and requirements well defined,
the process of breaking down the work of the project via a work breakdown structure (WBS) begins.
WBS is a hierarchical decomposition of the project into phases, deliverables, and work packages. It is a tree
structure, which shows a subdivision of effort required to achieve an objective (e.g., a program, project, and
contract). In a project or contract, the WBS is developed by starting with the end objective and successively
subdividing it into manageable components in terms of size, duration, and responsibility (e.g., systems,
subsystems, components, tasks, subtasks, and work packages), which include all steps necessary to achieve the
objective
The arrangement of folders and files in computer memory follows project work breakdown structure. The
technique involves breaking down of a complicated task into smaller tasks until it cannot be further subdivided.
You stop breaking down the work when you reach a low enough level to perform an estimate of the desired
accuracy. Operating and working at the simpler levels becomes easy and estimating the monetary and time costs
becomes easy with this technique, easier than addressing the individual task at the complex levels. The project
work becomes detailed and more detailed at each sub-level stage.
Purpose of WBS
i. The products and services to be delivered by a project is described by WBS
ii. How a project work is broken and how each unit is related to other unit is described i.e. deliverable
decomposition
iii. Organization and total work scope are detailed through the breakdown by WBS
iv. A WBS also provides the necessary framework for detailed cost estimating and control
v. It provides guidance for schedule development and control

Example of a WBS
If I want to clean a room, I might begin by picking up clothes, toys, and other things that have been dropped on the
floor. I could use a vacuum cleaner to get dirt out of the carpet. I might take down the curtains and take them to the
cleaners, and then dust the furniture. All of these tasks are subtasks performed to clean the room. As for
vacuuming the room, I might have to get the vacuum cleaner out of the closet, connect the hose, empty the bag,
and put the machine back in the closet. These are smaller tasks to be performed in accomplishing the subtask
called vacuuming.
It is very important to note that we do not worry about the sequence in which the work is performed or any
dependencies between the tasks when we do a WBS. That will be worked out when we develop the schedule
Project Scheduling
As described in the above, WBS does not take into cognizance the order in which activities are carried, it is all
about decomposition into smaller manageable units. In contrast, some tasks are necessary to be in place before
scheduling tasks. They are
i. Activity Definition
ii. Activity Sequencing
iii. Resource Estimation
iv. Time estimation

Activity Definition:
Here, the WBS package elements are further broken down and documentation of specific activities needed to fulfil
deliverables at a point is done during activity definition. Lessons and experience of the project team members in
previous contract may be useful during project definition.
The deliverables detailed in WBS need some units of works that must be completed before the deliverables can be
fulfilled, these are activities, therefore, activities are not deliverables themselves.

Case Study:
Susan and Steve have decided to tie the knot, but they don’t have much time to plan their wedding. They want the
big day to be unforgettable. They want to invite many people and provide a great time. They’ve always dreamed
of a June wedding, but it’s already January. Just thinking about all of the details involved is overwhelming.
Susan 113 has been dreaming of the big day since she was 12, but it seems that there’s so little time for all the
tasks to be completed. When they were choosing the paper for the invitations, the couple realized that they needed
help. Much work has to be done before June. First, Sally figures out what work needs to be done.
She starts to put together a to-do list:
• Invitations
• Flowers
• Wedding cake
• Dinner menu
• Band
Since many different people are involved in the making of the wedding, it takes much planning to coordinate all
the work in the right order by the right people at the right time. Initially, Sally was worried that she didn’t have
enough time to make sure that everything would be done properly. However, she knew that she had some powerful
time management tools on her side when she took the job, and these tools would help her to synchronize all the
required tasks. To get started, Sally arranged all the activities in a work breakdown structure.
The next exercise presents part of the WBS Sally made for the wedding.
• Shop for shoes
• Create guest list
• Have the tailoring and fitting done
• Shop for dress
• Find caterer
• Cater the wedding
• Wait for RSVPs
• Mail the invitations
• Finalize the menu
• Print the invitations
• Choose the bouquet
The above list can be arranged into the Work breakdown structure (WBS) based on project phase to show how the
work items decompose into activities.
Activity List
The project activity list is a list of everything that needs to be done to complete your project, including all the
activities that must be accomplished to deliver each work package.
Each activity is further described with their order and these descriptions are kept in the project activity attributes.
Other contents of activity attributes are the predecessor activities, successor activities, constraints and other time
and cost information.
Predecessor has three main kinds;
i. finish-to-start (FS)
ii. start-to start (SS)
iii. and finish-to-finish (FF).
The most common kind of predecessor is the finish- to-start, here, the first activity’s finish leads into the second
activity’s start.
Depending on their nature, predecessors can be External, discretionary or mandatory.
External Predecessors:
These are activities that depend on other predecessors that are outside the project being worked upon, for instance,
decoration of the wedding party hall depends on other factors outside the wedding activities
Discretionary Predecessors:
These are usually process-or procedure-driven or best-practice techniques based on past experience. It involves the
use of discretion in terms of preference, instance, guests to arrive the reception before the couple is a discretionary
predecessor.
Mandatory Predecessors:
Securing the wedding party hall is a mandatory activity for hosting the invited guests. Mandatory predecessors are
the kinds that have to exist just because of the nature of the work.
Sometimes, a delay may be intentionally placed between predecessor task and the successor, that is, between
project activities, this is called lags. Instance, in the wedding activities, when the bride and her father dance, the
others wait a while before they join them. A lag means making sure that one task waits a while before it gets
started.
The Activity Sequencing Process
As stated in the above, there are activities required to make a project wedding work, the order of accomplishment
also matters, this is the focus of activity sequencing process.
 Gantt chart
Interrelated time bound activities usually require some decision makings for planning, organizing etc., the
planning and the instantaneous projection into some eventualities require some techniques, these techniques are
broadly categorized viz;
i. Bar Charts
ii. Project Network Diagrams
Gantt Charts are horizontal bar chart used to diagrammatically display schedule activities with respect to their
duration or on horizontal time scale. It was officially developed by Henry Gantt. The charts can be manually
drawn but it’s more efficient when some software packages are used.
Notable among the features on the charts are
i. start and the finish date
ii. the work breakdown structure of the project
iii. dependency relationship between activities
Purpose
i. Project managers use Gantt Charts to provide the rough estimate turnaround time of key tasks
ii. Used for project monitoring and control as the project progresses
What to note while drawing a Gantt Chart
i. Start the key stages at the Top Right Corner (TRC) and end the drawing in the bottom right corner (BRC).
ii. Break each project into physically identifiable and controllable units called tasks.
iii. The length of the bar indicates the time frame, the width has no significance.
Limitations of Gantt Chart.
i. The graphical technique is not too handy in handling complex project
Milestone Chart
The inherent drawbacks in Gantt Chat are corrected by introducing the concept of milestone. Milestones are
usually represented by a circle over a task in the bar chart. This circle indicates the completion.
In milestone charts;
i. a task is broken down into specific phases
ii. aafter accomplishment of each of the specific activity a milestone is reached or in other words an event
occurs
iii. sequential relationship among the events within same task is also revealed.
Note, event in a milestone doesn’t relate with another milestone in another task.
Drawbacks in Milestone Chart
i. Despite the advantages of Milestone over Grant Charts, below are its inherent drawbacks:
ii. Does not show interdependence between tasks.
iii. Does not indicate critical activities.
iv. Does not consider the concept of uncertainty in accomplishing the task.
v. Very cumbersome to draw the chart for large projects.
 Network Diagrams: Design of PERT and CPM
Project network diagram is a modification of Gantt Milestone Chart whereby the interrelationship between and
among all the milestones in an entire project is captured.
Network Analysis refers to a number of techniques for the planning and control of complex projects.
A network is a graphical diagram consisting of certain configuration of “Arrows” ( ) and “Nodes” (O) for showing
the logical sequence of various tasks to be performed to achieve the project objective
Rules Of Network Construction
1. Each defined activity is represented by one and only one arrow in the network.
2. Before an activity can be undertaken, all activities preceding it must be completed.
3. The arrows depicting various activities are indicative of logical procedure only. The length and bearing of the
arrows are of no significance.
4. The arrow direction indicates the general progression in time. Head events and Tail events.
5. When a number of activities terminate at one event, it indicates that no activity emanating from that event may
start unless all activities terminating there have been completed.
6. Events are identified by numbers.
7. The activities are identified by the numbers of their starting and ending events or by alphabets.
8. A network should have only one initial and terminal node.