What are the three steps for activities sequencing during the project schedule?
1) How to prepare the project activity list?
2) What is the project network diagram?
3) How to develop the project AON diagram?
Do you want to know the answers?
Keep watching
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My name is Americo Cunha Learn fast, solve problems, make good decisions
Let's work on the first step How to prepare the project activity list?
The Work Breakdown Structure shows the main project components.
It has the project on the top of the hierarchy, followed by the main project phases or primary
components expressed as major deliverables.
The major deliverables are then broken down into smaller deliverables, a.k.a. sub-deliverables.
Then, they are further broken down into sub-deliverables again until reach suitable units for management,
at this level, the deliverables are called lowest level sub-deliverables.
The WBS components are identified by numbers from the top, the project, to the lowest level
deliverables as shown 1 for the project, then 1.1 for major deliverables, then 1.1.1.
1.1.2, and so on for the sub-deliverables.
The project activities are determined based on work required to complete and deliver lowest
level sub-deliverables of the WBS, also called work packages.
The work packages describe the information, such as resources, budget, and estimates,
for each lowest level sub-deliverable.
The activity list of the project is actually a list of all work packages of the project.
You should put one activity or work package per line of the activity list
Then, you need to describe the main information about each task such as:
- WBS ID, - give an ID for each task,
- give a name for each task with an action verb plus complement
- input the estimated duration for the task, - and identify which tasks should be done
before what is called predecessors.
It is important to understand that the tasks names are different from the deliverables
titles.
The deliverable title must be a noun or compound noun, while the task name must have an action
verb.
Now, let's see the second step.
What is the project network diagram?
Based on the activities list, we can develop an illustration with the sequence of works
of the project.
There is a work sequence because some activities can just be executed after previous activities
are completed – what we call predecessors.
Some activities do not require previous work, and they do not have predecessors.
Therefore, the project network shows the sequence in which the tasks are executed according
to the predecessor task required.
A very common project precedence diagram shows the tasks on nodes of the network.
This type of diagram is called Activity-On-Node diagram or AON diagram.
The completion of the predecessor of an activity determines when the activity execution can
start.
This is shown in the AON network using an arrow connecting the predecessor to the activity.
For instance, the information in this diagram shows that
• the activity 1 does not have predecessors • the activity 2 has one predecessor, the
activity 1 • the activity 7 has two predecessors, the
activities 3 and 6
The third and last step, how to prepare the AON diagram?
The best way of learning how to develop an AON is through examples.
Let's check example 1
• First, as motioned before, you should contact the project team and discuss with
the person in charge for a task, what task or tasks must be completed before he starts
his tasks.
Include the ID of task or tasks required in the predecessor column,
• After filling out the predecessors for all tasks, it is time to draw the AON diagram.
• In this example, we can see that task 2 has task 1 as the predecessor, the same
for task 3 and 4.
Task 5 has task 2 as the predecessor.
Task 6 has two predecessors, task 2 and 3.
• After filling out the activities list completely, start drawing the diagram putting
the task without predecessor first on the left end side.
In this case, let's draw a node and put task 1 inside.
• Then, draw the nodes that have task 1 as the predecessor, in this case, tasks 2,
3, and 4.
• Include the next activity's nodes connecting them to their predecessors until all tasks
are represented in the AON diagram.
Example 2
Similar to example 1, fill out all predecessors of all tasks in the activities list.
In this example, we have two tasks without predecessors, tasks 1 and 4, they should be
represented first.
Then, include the remaining tasks, first the tasks that have task 1 or 4 as the predecessor.
Continue developing the diagram connecting each task to its predecessor until the last
task.
Because the project does not have a clear starting point, it is good to create a milestone
as starting node to facilitate the time computation.
We will learn time computation in a next lesson.
Here we created the node X and included as the predecessor of the tasks 1 and 4.
It will not affect the project schedule because milestones have duration zero.
Al so, it is good to have one task or one milestone as the end node for the project.
This will facilitate to monitor when the project is finished.
In this example, we included the node "Z" as the indication that the project is concluded.
I hope you have enjoyed, now...are you able to explain to your colleagues how to prepare
a project activity list?
And What about the project network diagram?
And Can you develop the project AON diagram?
Please let me know your answer in the comment are bellow.
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