Week 4 - Introduction to Project Time Management

Introduction To Time Management

Time

• is easily and simply measured
• is often used to determine success of a project
• is inflexible
• passes no matter what happens on a project
• management involves ensuring timely completion of a project and the processes required to schedule the tasks and measure the time each requires.

Time Management Processes

The main processes involved in time management are

• Activity definition
• Activity Sequencing
• Activity Duration estimation
• Schedule development
• Schedule Control

Activity Definition

Activity Definition involves

• identifying the specific activities that the project team members and stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables
• An activity or task is an element of work
• The end result of defining the activities is a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Work Breakdown Structure

• The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is an analysis of the work to be done to complete a project. It provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs and changes.
• The Work Breakdown Structure is usually depicted as a task-oriented list of activities, organised around project products or phases. It can be in the form of a chart, or alternatively as an indented list of tasks.

There are several approaches you can use to develop work breakdown structures. These include:

• Using guidelines
• The analogy approach
• The top-down approach
• The bottom-up approach

Using Guidelines

Some organisations, especially government departments, have guidelines that must be followed when developing a Work Breakdown Structure.

If you are developing a project for an organisation that does, it is important that you follow them.

The guidelines have been produced so that if a number of organisations tender for a project, it is easy to compare the costs and time allocations.

The Analogy Approach

With this method, you start with a WBS from a similar project and make the necessary changes to suit the new project.

Some organisations keep a library of WBSs and other documentation from previous projects that can be reviewed and used as a basis for other projects.

Top-Down Approach

The top-down approach is where you start with the largest items of the project and then break them into the smaller tasks.

As the tasks are broken down into the smaller items, more detail is included.

At the end of the process, all resources should be assigned at the work package level.

This approach is best suited to project managers who have vast technical insight and a big-picture perspective

Bottom-Up Approach

In this approach, team members start by identifying as many specific tasks related to the project as possible.

The tasks are then grouped into summary activities or higher levels in the WBS.

Activity Sequencing

From the WBS, the activities can be sequenced.

Sequencing involves putting the tasks into the order that they will be done or at least commenced.

Sequencing also involves looking at relationships and dependencies of each task

Sequencing Example - Tea making

I love a nice cup of tea – what individual tasks or activities are sequenced together for me to do this?

• Put on jug to boil water
• Get a mug from cupboard
• Get teapot from bench
• Put tea leaves in teapot
• When jug boiled, pour water into teapot
•  
• Wait for tea to brew
• Pour tea into mug
• Add milk
• Gently stir
• Drink and enjoy (a couple of Tim Tams are often called for)

We have the tasks defined and put in order, but what about relationships and dependencies.

Are there any tasks that cannot commence until another has finished?

Can some tasks be done at the same time?

Are there some tasks where order doesn’t matter?

Will the order of the tasks change the timeframe?

Is there any "idle" time (waiting time)?

In our tea making exercise:

• you cannot pour water until it is boiled
• You need to have tea leaves in pot when adding water
• The second and third activities can be done in any order

 Activity Duration

• This involves estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete individual activities.
• Work periods will depend on length of project. A shorter project may be measured in hours, whereas a longer project may be measured in weeks or months.
• Choose a work period measurement that suits the project duration
• In the tea making example, it may take 3 minutes to boil the jug. The tea may need to brew for 5 minutes

Schedule Development

This involves:

• analysing activity sequences,
• Taking activity duration estimates
• Looking at activity dependencies
• Make decisions on what resources are required for each activity.
• Create the project schedule. This can be in the form of a Gantt chart or a timeline.

Schedule Control

• Time management, or actually any kind of management, is ongoing.
• Managers need to monitor the schedule to ensure that all team members sticks to the timeline.
• Timeline may need to be adjusted to allow for deviations from the schedule
• Managers need to report to stakeholders in regards to schedule

You can create your schedule by hand, with a spreadsheet, or by using a project management tool.

To begin with, we will use a simple spreadsheet!

Class Activity

"THE BIG MOVE"

Scenario: Mysty River Regional Library Services' new home has been completed and the old library needs to be relocated into the new premises. New shelving has been delivered, but the old shelving needs to be dismantled so that it can be reused by the local secondary college and 2 primary schools. It has been agreed, for OHS reasons, that the library will close during the transition. It is anticipated that the process will take 2 weeks, but the library will only be closed for 1 week.  There is a budget that allows for employment of extra staff, volunteers, and outside contractors.

• Using the Bottom up approach, list all of the activities that need to take place to complete the move.

• Sequence these activities

• Estimate duration of each activity

• Look at any dependencies and relationships between activities to develop a schedule

Once we have the list of activities and sequence, they can be put into the schedule. You could start by using Excel, or you could put them straight into a project management tool. For this exercise, we will start with Excel and then put the tasks into one of the project management tools.