Study sheet: Project Planning and Scheduling

📋 Course Outline

1. Project Management Processes
2. Project Scope and Constraints
3. Work Breakdown Structure
4. Resources and Cost Estimates
5. Networks and Activity Scheduling
6. Critical Path Method
7. Plan Evaluation and Tradeoffs
8. Evaluating and Cutting Project Costs
9. Monitoring Execution and Project Variances
10. Revising the Work Breakdown Structure
11. Responding to Execution Problems
12. Project Closure and Lessons Learned
13. Management Plan Project Requirements

📖 1. Project Management Processes

📝 Essential Points

• The PMBOK processes are:

  • project initiation
  • project planning
  • project execution
  • project control
  • project closure

• Project planning includes:

  • setting project deliverables
  • defining project activities
  • defining resources
  • obtaining estimates
  • scheduling the project
  • evaluating the plan

💡 Memory Hook

Initiation → Planning → Execution → Control → Closure

📖 2. Project Scope and Constraints

★ Must-know

📌 The project triangle balances scope, time, and cost or budget, so changing one constraint can affect the others.

Further detail

• The Summer Palace project example specifies a high-quality palace in Martinique with a Jacuzzi and dressing room, a one-month completion time, and a maximum budget of 100.000€.

💡 Memory Hook

Scope defines what is delivered, time when, and cost for how much

📖 3. Work Breakdown Structure

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Work Breakdown Structure : a hierarchical outline that decomposes a project into products, deliverables, and manageable work packages, and provides a framework for tracking cost and work performance

★ Must-know

📌 A WBS should follow the MECE criterion: tasks must be mutually exclusive, with no duplication or overlap, and collectively exhaustive, including all necessary work.

📌 A work package is sufficiently decomposed when it is clear enough to estimate, assign, and schedule.

Further detail

• The course uses a maximum of two subdivisions of the project for simple WBS presentations, while the final palace WBS contains levels 1, 2, and 3 with an X.Y.Z coding scheme.

• The palace WBS includes:

  • foundations
  • walls
  • a Jacuzzi
  • a roof
  • decoration
  • a back wall
  • a front wall
  • a left wall
  • a right wall

💡 Memory Hook

MECE: Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive

📖 4. Resources and Cost Estimates

★ Must-know

• 🔄 Resource planning proceeds by: determining the execution mode of each activity, defining the required resources, identifying potential suppliers

Further detail

📌 Experts, subcontractors, or suppliers provide estimates of work content, activity duration, and cost, unless the project team provides those estimates itself.

• Selected supplier estimates are:
  • Yoshi: foundations and concrete slabs, 10 days and 15.000€
  • Donkey Kong: roofing, 5 days and 15.000€
  • Peach: decoration, 3 days and 15.000€

📌 Mario offers excellent-quality Jacuzzi installation for 8 days and 15.000€, whereas Wario offers mediocre quality for 10 days and 10.000€.

📖 5. Networks and Activity Scheduling

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Project Network : represents the precedence relationships among activities by connecting precedence-related activities with arrows

📝 Essential Points

📌 An activity with several predecessors can start only after all of its predecessors have been completed.

• Parallel scheduling can shorten project duration, but it is infeasible when the same resource must perform two activities simultaneously.

💡 Memory Hook

A project network shows precedence, whereas a schedule shows timing

📖 6. Critical Path Method

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Critical Path : the longest path through the project network and the shortest time in which the project can be completed

★ Must-know

📌 Any delay in an activity on the critical path delays the entire project.

• 🔄 CPM proceeds by (Heizer, Render and Munson, 2017): defining the project and preparing the WBS, developing relationships among activities, drawing the network, assigning time or cost estimates, computing the longest path, using the network to plan, schedule, monitor, and control the project

Further detail

• For the sanitation-facility example, activity C can start in week 5 because it requires completion of activity B, which lasts 5 months in the listed example.

• For the Milwaukee air-pollution-control example, the critical path is A → C → E → G → H and the project duration is 15 weeks.

💡 Memory Hook

Delay on the critical path → delay to the entire project

📖 7. Plan Evaluation and Tradeoffs

★ Must-know

• Evaluating a project plan requires checking schedule feasibility and evaluating schedule performance against the project deliverables.

• The initial palace plan finishes in 34 days but exceeds the 100.000€ budget by reaching a cumulative cost of 105.000€.

📌 Using lower-cost suppliers can reduce the budget, but it may also reduce quality or change the project plan’s feasibility.

Further detail

• Replacing Mario with Wario for Jacuzzi installation reduces the cost from 15.000€ to 10.000€ but increases the duration from 8 days to 10 days and lowers quality from excellent to mediocre.

💡 Memory Hook

Meeting the deadline can require higher cost or lower quality

📖 8. Evaluating and Cutting Project Costs

★ Must-know

📌 Choosing cheaper suppliers can reduce the planned project cost, but it may also involve lower quality and greater execution risk.

📌 A project plan must be evaluated against its budget, deadline, and required quality before execution is authorized.

Further detail

• The initial revised project plan used Waluigi for masonry at 5,000€ per wall and Wario for plumbing at 10,000€, producing a planned cumulative cost of 80,000€ for the listed activities.

💡 Memory Hook

Cheap suppliers reduce planned cost but can increase quality and execution risks.

📖 9. Monitoring Execution and Project Variances

★ Must-know

• Project control monitors execution by comparing real time and true cost with the planned estimates and by identifying deviations that threaten the project objectives.

• The resulting project performance missed the budget, exceeded the deadline, and used low-quality materials.

Further detail

• Waluigi’s masonry was planned at 5,000€ per wall but required 12,000€ per wall in reality, while the work still took 2 days per wall.

• Wario’s plumbing was planned to take 10 days but required 20 days in reality, while its true cost remained 10,000€.

💡 Memory Hook

Unforeseen difficulty → higher costs, delays, and failure to meet deliverables.

📖 10. Revising the Work Breakdown Structure

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Work Breakdown Structure : decomposes project work into smaller deliverables, work packages, and activities that can be planned and scheduled

★ Must-know

• Revising the WBS can split Yoshi’s single foundation activity into separate activities for the palace slab and the Jacuzzi slab.

• A revised schedule can sequence the palace slab, masonry, Jacuzzi slab, plumbing, roofing, and decoration so that the project remains within its constraints.

Further detail

• The revised plan assigned Yoshi 6 days and 10,000€ for the palace slab and 4 days and 5,000€ for the Jacuzzi slab.

💡 Memory Hook

Split the activity, estimate each part, then reschedule the work.

📖 11. Responding to Execution Problems

★ Must-know

📌 When an execution problem occurs, the project team can either revise the project execution or revise the project plan.

📌 A change during execution must be assessed for its effects on budget, deadline, quality, and project deliverables before it is accepted.

Further detail

• When pink paint was unavailable, the team chose a rush order that extended decoration from 3 to 5 days while keeping the real cost at 15,000€.

💡 Memory Hook

Revise execution when the work changes; revise the plan when the project constraints change.

📖 12. Project Closure and Lessons Learned

★ Must-know

• 🔄 The project management cycle consists of:
  1. planning
  2. executing
  3. controlling
  4. revising

📌 If an early stage of project management is poorly performed, subsequent stages are likely to fail; for example, an incorrect WBS prevents optimal scheduling.

• Students should be able to: explain project-management dynamics, describe project deliverables, create a WBS, draw a project network, assess schedule feasibility, evaluate schedule performance against project deliverables

Further detail

• Project closure ends the contract after the project deliverables have been completed and accepted.

💡 Memory Hook

Plan → execute → control → revise.

📖 13. Management Plan Project Requirements

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Management Plan : a project document that defines the project context, scope, organization, budget, schedule, risks, stakeholders, success conditions, and ways of working together

★ Must-know

• The suggested management-plan chapters are:

  • context and objectives
  • project scope
  • project organization
  • provisional budget and financing
  • provisional schedule
  • initial risks
  • stakeholder analysis
  • conditions for success
  • team working methods

• The project team should define the project and its reasons, identify deliverables, scope, and stakeholders, build the WBS, create an initial schedule and network, allocate responsibilities, and prepare a first budget.

Further detail

📌 The project document must include the project charter and a bibliography arranged alphabetically according to APA style.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Project Triangle Constraints

Dimension	Question	Palace example
Scope	What will be delivered?	High-quality palace with a Jacuzzi and dressing room
Time	When must it be completed?	One month
Cost	What is the budget?	Maximum 100.000€

Supplier Tradeoffs

Supplier	Quality	Time and cost
Mario	Excellent	8 days; 15.000€
Wario	Mediocre	10 days; 10.000€
Luigi	Excellent	2 days per wall; 10.000€ per wall
Waluigi	Mediocre	2 days per wall; 5.000€ per wall