Forum Discussion
Project Activity Inquisition
Hello there,
I am in my final year(university) and I major in Project Management, but, I have not really had a project manager's experience neither do I have project managers at my reach to ask questions and this bothers me a lot. I have taken a step in learning MS Project, and I am enjoying it. I want to know, in the process of scheduling for a project, as a new project manager, how will I know the activities to be listed and their respective duration? Will I have to go to each department to request this? I will appreciate a detailed answer. Thanks:)
- Abraham_VA --
This is a really good question, and I hope some of the others in this group will offer you their advice as well. When you perform the task planning process, you are correct that you need to determine which tasks need to be done and the estimated Duration of each of them. I would recommend that you do deliverable-based planning for your task planning process. This means that you should first determine which deliverables need to be completed in the project. You should be able to find those deliverables in the contract or a Statement of Work document of some kind. You will then need to list each of those deliverables as tasks in your project.
Next, you will need to determine which tasks need to be performed to create each deliverable. If you do not have the background knowledge to come up with this task list, you would need to reach out to a subject matter expert in that particular area, who could then tell you the tasks that need to be done and how long each task would take. Then add those tasks as subtasks of the respective deliverable section. At the end of each deliverable section, add a milestone task to denote when the deliverable will be completed.
After adding tasks and Duration values, you will also need to do dependency planning. This means that you will need to link each subtask and milestone task with dependencies to show Microsoft Project the order in which tasks will be performed. Most tasks will have a Finish-to-Start dependency relationship, which means the tasks will be worked consecutively. However, some tasks may need to start at the same time, requiring a Start-to-Start dependency, while some tasks may need to finish at the same time, requiring a Finish-to-Finish dependency. At the conclusion of the dependency planning process, you will need to make sure that every subtask and milestone task has at least one Predecessor and at least one Successor, so that your project will show a clear Critical Path to the schedule.
Since you are a college student with an interest in project management, I would encourage you to look for a part-time job or even an internship where you could gain experience as a project team member, and learn from an experienced project manager. Hope this helps.Hi Dale_HowardMVP,
Wow!!! I really appreciate your detailed response. You've also exposed me to new terms like "Statement of Work Document" and "Deliverable-based planning". This has really been a burden and I can say to a great extent, I'm at ease. I will start looking for internship where I can gain better experience. I'll also appreciate if you can refer me to any as well. Thanks
Best Regards.
- Abraham_VA,
As usual Dale gave an excellent overview with great details. I'll throw in my 2 cents.
When developing a plan for a new project consulting the stake holders (i.e. the people who will actually have to perform the tasks) is very important. Relying on a "management guesstimate" is a really bad idea. One thing I found very helpful when doing proposals was to use historical data from previous projects that were similar or even scale that data if complexity is greater or lesser than what is being proposed.
John- "Historical data from previous projects"...hmm great point. Thanks John.
