Sybex pmp study guide pdf

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Sybex Inc. Phone: www. Develop Project Plan. Obtain Plan Approval. As a result, a lot of time and effort goes into the Planning process of any project. All other processes in the Plan- ning process group have to be completed before working on the Project Plan Development process. This is where you will lay out the schedule for your project tasks, determine their start and finish dates, and finalize activity sequences and durations. In fact, it is one of the tools and techniques of this process.

Although there are no exam questions regarding the order that processes are performed in, it might help to understand that Schedule Development cannot be performed until all of the following core processes of project Plan- ning are completed: Scope Planning, Scope Definition, Resource Planning, Activity Definition, Activity Sequencing, Activity Duration Estimating, Risk Management Planning, and Cost Estimating.

Both of these processes then feed the final Planning process, Project Plan Development. Scheduling Inputs Schedule Development has 10 inputs, 7 of which are outputs from previous Planning processes. Your project schedule will reflect the information you know at this point in time.

Three of the inputs to this process are new: calendars, leads and lags, and activity attributes. A short description of each is given next. Calendars Calendars are divided into two types: project calendars and resource calen- dars.

Project calendars concern all the resources involved in the project, while resource calendars look at particular resources or groups of resources and their availability. Leads and Lags Leads and lags are related to Activity Sequencing. Remember that Activity Sequencing puts tasks in logical order and determines if there are dependencies that exist among the activities.

We discussed this in Chapter 5 if you need a quick review. Leads and lags come in when there are delays between dependent and independent activities. Lags require the dependent activity to have time added either to the start date or to the finish date of the activity. Leads, con- versely, require time to be subtracted from the start date or the finish date of the dependent activity.

Lead time is not used as often as lag time. In order to paint, we first need to scrape the peeling paint and then prime. Therefore, the priming activity requires lag time, so we need to add time to the end of this activity to allow for the drying time needed before we can start painting. Lead time works just the opposite. Suppose, for this example, we could start priming before the scraping is finished.

Priming in this example has lead time sub- tracted from the beginning of the activity so that this activity begins prior to the finish of the previous activity. Activity Attributes Activity attributes are the characteristics of the activity. These might include a description of where the activity will take place, who will perform the activity, and whether the activity is a summary-level activity—level two or three on the WBS perhaps—or a detailed activity with particular specifications.

Understanding the Tools and Techniques of Schedule Development The two primary outputs of Schedule Development are the project schedule and the schedule management plan.

You can employ several tools and tech- niques in order to produce these outputs. The tools and techniques you choose will depend on the complexity of the project. There are six tools and techniques used in Schedule Development.

A lot of information is packed into some of these tools and techniques, and you will want to dedicate study time to each of them for the exam. The first tool and technique, called mathematical analysis, includes several techniques, each of which are thoroughly covered on the exam. Critical Path Method Critical Path Method CPM calculates the earliest start date, earliest finish date, latest start date, and latest finish date for each activity.

The critical path CP on any project is the longest full path. Any project activity with a float time that equals zero is considered a critical path task. We will walk through an example to explain how all these dates and float times are calcu- lated after a short description of float time. There are two types of slack: total slack and free slack. Total slack is the amount of time you can delay the start of a task without delaying the ending of the project.

Free slack is the amount of time you can delay the start of a task without delaying the start of a successor task. You are the project manager for a new software project. The company you are working for is venturing into the movie rental business over the Web. You need to devise a software system that tracks all the information related to rent- als and also supplies the management team with reports that will help them make good business decisions.

The list of activities comes from the work package level of the WBS and the activity list compiled during the Activity Definition process. The durations for each activity are listed in the column by that title and were derived during the Activity Dura- tion Estimating process.

The duration times are listed in days. The Depen- dency column lists the activities that require a previous activity to finish before the current activity can start. Project Deliverables is the first activity and, obviously, where the project starts. This activity begins on April 1.

Project Deliverables has a day duration. So now take April 1 and add 12 days to this to come up with an early finish date of April Watch out, because you need to count day one, or April 1, as a full work day.

The simplest way to do this calculation is to take the early start date, add the duration, and subtract one. Therefore, the early finish date for the first activity is April By the way, we are ignoring weekends and holidays for this example. Activity 2 depends on activity 1, so it cannot start until activity 1 has finished. Its earliest start date is April Add the duration to this date minus one to come up with the finish date.

Continue to calculate the remaining early start and early finish dates in the same manner. This calculation is called a forward pass.

To calculate the late start and late finish dates, you begin with the last activity. The late finish for activity 9 is July Since the duration is only 1 day, July 10 is also the late start date.

Subtract the duration of activity 8 3 days from July 9 and add one to get the late start date of July 7. This calculation is called a backward pass, as you might have guessed. Continue calculating the late start and late finish through activity 4.

Activity 3 adds a new twist. Activity 7 cannot begin until activity 3 and activity 6 are completed. No other activity depends on the completion of activity 3. June 28 less 8 days plus one gives us a late start date of June Activity 3 depends on activity 2, so activity 2 must be completed prior to beginning activity 3. Calculate these dates just like you did for activities 9 through 4. Activity 1 still remains.

Activity 4 cannot start until activity 1 is com- pleted. Subtract the duration of activity 1 and add one to come up with a late start date of April 1. Alternatively, the forward pass and backward pass can be calculated by saying the first task starts on day zero and then adding the duration to this.

Add 12 days to day zero and you come up with an early finish date of April If the float time equals zero, the activity is on the critical path. To determine the CP duration of the project, add up the duration of every activity with zero float. A critical path task is any task that cannot be changed without impacting the project end date.

By definition, these are all tasks with zero float. TABLE 7. Shown in Figure 7. Duration is printed in the top-right corner of each node. Add up the duration of each path to determine which one is the critical path.

In the fig- ure, path equals 34 days. Path equals days; therefore this path is the critical path. For example, our software project in the CPM example might require unit testing of individual modules before the entire program can be tested, and each module must pass its unit test.

If the unit test fails, GERT allows you to depict a looping condition so that you can come back through unit testing and then progress to the next activity once the unit test is passed. They were working on one of the most com- plex engineering projects in history at the time, the Polaris Missile Program, and needed a way to manage the project and forecast the project schedule with a high degree of reliability.

PERT was developed to do just that. Expected value is calculated using three time estimates for activity duration instead of one and then finding the weighted average of the three time estimates. If we take this one step further and determine the standard deviation of each activity, we can assign a confidence factor to our project estimates. The three time estimates used to calculate expected value are the optimis- tic estimate, the pessimistic estimate, and the most likely estimate.

You get these esti- mates by asking the lead programmer, or key team member, to estimate the optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely duration for the activity based on their past experience.

Other historical information could be used to deter- mine these estimates as well. We calculated the range of dates for the The Generally speak- ing, two standard deviations, or The higher the standard deviation is for an activity, the higher the risk. Since standard deviation measures the difference between the pessimistic and the optimistic times, a greater spread between the two, which results in a higher number, indicates a greater risk.

Conversely, a low standard deviation means less risk. You should add only the tasks that are on the critical path. When we add all the remaining tasks, the total expected value duration is Your next logical conclusion might be to add the Standard Deviation col- umn to get the standard deviation for the project. Unfortunately, you cannot add up the standard deviations because you will come out with a number that is much too high. It is likely that a few tasks will run over, but not every one of them.

This is the standard deviation squared—or for those of you with math pho- bias out there, the standard deviation multiplied by itself. Once you have calculated standard deviation squared for each activity, add up the squares for a total of Take the square root of This is the standard deviation you will use to determine your range of pro- jected completion dates.

PERT is used for very large, highly complex projects. PERT is also a useful technique to determine project duration when your activity durations are uncer- tain. Also know how to calculate the range of project duration dates based on the expected value and standard deviation calculation.

You should, however, memorize the PERT formula and know how it works. Compression is simply shortening the project schedule to accomplish all the activities sooner than estimated.

Developing the Project Schedule Schedule compression might happen when the project end date has been predetermined and after performing the CPM or PERT techniques, you dis- cover that the project is going to take longer than the original promised date.

In our CPM example, we calculated the end date to be July What if the project was undertaken and a July 2 date was promised? Crashing is a compression technique that looks at cost and schedule trade- offs.

One of the things you might do to crash the schedule is add resources, from either inside or outside the organization, to the critical path tasks. You might also limit or reduce the project requirements. You might also try changing the sequence of tasks. It will often increase the costs of the project as well.

The idea with crashing is to try to gain the greatest amount of schedule compression with the least amount of cost. We talked about fast tracking in Chapter 1. Fast tracking is starting two tasks at the same time that were previously scheduled to start sequentially. Fast tracking can increase project risk and might cause the project team to have to rework tasks. As an example, fast tracking is often performed in object-oriented programming. The programmers might begin writing code on several modules at once, out of sequential order, and prior to the com- pletion of the design phase.

Simulation Monte Carlo Analysis is a simulation technique that produces a range of val- ues for each activity with multiple duration possibilities.

Probability dura- tions are then chosen for each activity, and the simulation starts. Monte Carlo will run the possible activity durations and schedule projections many, many times to come up with the schedule projections and their probability, critical path duration estimates, and float time. For the exam, remember that Monte Carlo is a simulation technique that shows the probability of all the possible project completion dates.

Remember that you identified resources and acquired staff during the Resource Planning and Staff Acquisition processes, which we discussed in Chapter 5. Skill sets, previous experience, availability, and personal interests were documented during these processes, and staff was assigned to the project. Staff members were not assigned directly to tasks at that point, just to the project itself. Organizational development described roles and respon- sibilities as they related to scope definition and produced the staffing man- agement plan, which describes how to bring resources on and off the project.

Now during Schedule Development, resources are assigned to specific activities. Other times, they might not be assigned enough work to keep them busy during the time period. This problem is easy to fix. You can assign under-allocated resources to multiple tasks to keep them busy. Having over-allocated resources is a little more difficult problem to resolve. Resource leveling attempts to smooth out the resource assignments to get tasks completed without overloading the individual while trying to keep the project on schedule.

There are several ways the project manager can do this. You might delay the start of a task to match the availability of a key team member. Or you might adjust the resource assignments so that more tasks are given to team members who are under allocated. Perhaps you can split some tasks so that the team member with the pertinent knowledge or skill performs the critical part of the task and the noncritical part of the task is given to a less skilled team member. All of these methods are forms of resource leveling.

Generally speaking, resource leveling of over-allocated team members will extend the project end date. Reallocating those team members with slack time to critical path tasks to keep them on schedule is another option. Sunny Surgeons, Inc.

Kate Newman is a project manager for Sunny Surgeons, Inc. Sunny Sur- geons is a software company that produces software for handheld display devices for the medical profession. The software allows surgeons to keep notes regarding patients, upcoming surgeries, and ideas about new medi- cines and techniques to research. There has been some recent turnover in the programming department. For- tunately, Stephen, the senior programmer who led the development effort on the original version of the patient tracker, still works for Sunny.

His expertise with handheld technologies as well as his knowledge of the desktop software product make him an invaluable resource for this project. Kate discovered a problem during the development of the project schedule. Stephen is over allocated for three key activities.

Kate decides to see what his take is on the situation before deciding what to do. He also suggests to Kate that Karen Wong, a junior programmer on his team, worked on the last project with him and might be able to handle the noncritical path task on her own with a little direction from Stephen. Kate thinks better of the idea of over allocating her key project resource even if he does think he can do the entire thing single-handed.

She decides to try some resource leveling to see what that turns up. However, this scenario lengthens the project by a total of 8 days. She can also sell the resource-leveled schedule as a low-risk option as opposed to assigning Stephen to all the activities and keeping the project end date the same.

Over allocating resources can cause burnout and stress-related illnesses, which will ultimately have a negative impact on the project schedule. Project man- agement software will automate the mathematical calculations and per- form resource leveling functions for you. Suffice it to say that project manage- ment software ranges from the very simple to the very complex. Many project managers that I know have had great success with Microsoft Project software and use it exclusively.

It contains a robust set of features and reporting tools that will serve most projects well. Your finally tuned skills and experience will tell you if relationship issues between team members might cause bigger problems than what the resource leveling function indicates. Constraints and stakeholder expectations are dif- ficult for a software package to factor in.

Rely on your expertise when in doubt. Project management software is a wonderful tool, but it is not a substitute for sound project management practices or experience. Producing the Schedule Development Outputs The Schedule Development process has four outputs: project schedule, supporting detail, schedule management plan, and resource requirements updates.

The two primary outputs from this process that will carry for- ward throughout the rest of the project are the project schedule and the schedule management plan. Project Schedule The purpose of the Schedule Development process is to determine the start and finish dates for your project activities. One of the primary outputs of this process is the project schedule, which details this information as well as the resource assignments.

The project schedule should be approved and signed off by stakeholders and functional managers. This assures you that they have read the schedule, understand the dates and resource commitments, and will likely cooperate. The schedule cannot be finalized until you receive approval and commitment for the resource assignments outlined in the schedule. Approval and finaliza- tion of the schedule should be completed prior to the end of the Project Plan Development process.

Once the schedule is approved, it will become your baseline for the remain- der of the project. Project progress and task completion will be monitored and tracked against this original plan to determine if the project is on course as planned.

Network diagrams, like the ones we talked about in Chapter 5, will work as schedule diagrams when you add the start and finish dates to each activity. These diagrams usually show the activ- ity dependencies and critical path. Figure 7. These activities do not relate to the activities in the tables or other figures shown so far. Mile- stones mark the completion of major deliverables or some other key event in the project. Other examples might be completion of a proto- type, system testing, contract approval, and so on.

Milestone charts might show the key events and their start or completion dates in a bar chart form similar to a Gantt chart. Or they can be written in a simple table format with milestones listed in the rows and expected sched- ule dates in one column and actual completion dates in another. As the mile- stones are met, the actual date column is filled in. This information can be included with the project status reports. They combine the net- work diagrams with the bar chart format to display schedule information.

Supporting Detail The minimum amount of information in the supporting detail output is the project constraints and assumptions. Always err on the side of too much documentation, rather than not enough. You will have to be the judge of what other information to include here as it will depend on the nature of the project.

There is an example resource his- togram in Chapter 5 if you need to review. Resource histograms typically dis- play hours needed on one axis and period of time months, weeks, days, years on the other. You might also include alternative schedules or schedule reserves in this section. Schedule Management Plan The schedule management plan should be published and distributed along with your other project Planning documents. As a result of scheduling activities and leveling resources, you may have to make adjustments to the resource requirements document.

Rarely is anything cast in cement. You will continue to revisit processes throughout the project to refine and adjust. Eventually, processes do get put to bed. In practice, Activity Definition, Activity Sequencing, Activity Duration Esti- mating, and Schedule Development are easily completed at the same time with the aid of good project management software.

Gantt charts, critical path, PERT charts, resource allocation, activity dependencies, what-if analysis, and various reports are easily produced after plugging in your scheduling informa- tion to most project management software tools.

Regardless of your methods, be certain to obtain sign-off of the project schedule and provide your stake- holders and project sponsor with regular updates.

And keep your schedule handy—there will likely be changes and modifications as you go. Establishing the Cost Budget Baseline O ur next step is to determine the cost budget baseline.

The budget will be used as a plan for allocating costs and resources to project activities. The Schedule Development and Cost Estimating processes must be completed prior to working on Cost Budgeting as their outputs become the inputs to this process. Planning Project Resources Chapter 8.

Developing the Project Team Chapter 9. Conducting Procurements and Sharing Information Chapter Measuring and Controlling Project Performance Chapter Controlling Work Results Chapter Closing the Project and Applying Professional Responsibility.

Appendix A. Answers to Review Questions Appendix B. Process Inputs and Outputs Appendix C. About the Additional Study Tools. Please contact the content providers to delete files if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.

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