NUMBER OF ACTIVITIES

Hi Allan,

Are you working for client/owner or for a construction company? Certainly I would agree with you that clients prefer a not so detailed plans but if you’re working for a contractor, there’s really a huge difference on how I prepare a programme. As what I’ve stated in my earlier posts, planning depends on what you expect will be the questions to you. The number of activities is not really an issue but it depends on the capability of the planner to make huge amount of data simpler to be understood.

Cheers,
Sigfred

As a guideline, a good program/schedule should include the following:

> The programme should reflect the full scope of work.
> Contractual Milestones, Key Dates and interfaces with other contracts
> Statutory permits and licensing.
> Submissions and approval process (Shop Drwgs, Materials, Etc.)
> Procurement, manufacture and delivery of Materials, especially long lead items.(including owner supplied materials)
> Any special items of complexity
> Test and adjust

Of course a good schedule should be resource loaded. These should include your basis and assumptions and as a minimum it should include quantities and production rates for major commodities and the resources required to achieved those rates.

Now going back to the number of activities issue, as long as you have covered the above as a minimum, then you have a good program. In project management, different levels of people focus on different levels of goals or sub-goals. As a Planner or should I say a good Planner should focus on major goals and give a chance and let others worry about the sub-goals. It’s simply impossible to be succesful if you try and apply micro-managing and micro-scheduling in your project. Let everyone do their share, be creative and innovative and keep them focus on the major goals.

Cheers,
Daniel

"Of course a good schedule should be resource loaded."

This is what makes schedules large.
If you need to advise what resources are necessary at any point in time, what can be achieved with the limited resources you have, your schedule will not be small.
I repeat - the number of activities in your schedule do not depend on your wishes, it depends on the project complexity and the tasks you need to solve.

One question to discussion participants - do you level resources in your schedules?

Vladimir,

Yes I do level. Some of the reasons are:

1. To finalize the execution program.
2. I used the resource leveling report to use it as basis to prepare the manpower schedule, equipment and procurement schedule.
3. To make resource "what if" scenarios.

I think this is one thing that differentiate scheduling/strategic planners with scheduling/strategic/resource planners.

Some people tend to think that resource planning is microplanning. I don’t think so. This is where the added value comes in for planners.

Hi Vladimir/Sigfredo,

It is dependant on the project, but wherever possible I prefer resource levelling. The one problem is that when you do resource levelling you must only use true logic, and this is not always possible when you work with higher level schedules ie level 3-1. My personal preference always is to work at level 4, but this is not always possible, like in the instance where you are the managing contractor and have to rely on level 4 schedules by the contractors and sub-contrractors, in which case I always insist on resource levelling on their part.

Regards,

Philip

Sigfred and Philip,
I think that leveling is a key to this discussion. You cannot decide what number of activities is needed if it is necessary to simulate resource work. If your goal is to create project schedule that takes into account resource, financing and supply restrictions then the number of schedule activities is dictated by technologies you need to simulate and it is not a subject for discussions.
Vladimir

Sigfredo,

I currently work as a consultant, mostly in claims and disputes. I have worked in both client and contractor sides of the fence, and agree with what you say about level of detail.

Vladimir,

I also level resources, but not on every project. It depends on a few things. Firstly on the software. I think P3 is the only credible software for dealing with resources, and I am happy to use it for levelling. I have tried the same with Powerproject/ Teamplan and find it to have some horrendous glitches, and will not use it to level resources. It does have other great strengths and is superior to P3 graphically.

For highly time critical projects like process plant turnaround, I will go to great detail with resources, and level accordingly. For smaller projects that are not too complex (where it is appropriate) I will often not apply resources.

Through working in project management and disputes I have witnessed many companies (large and small) approach to planning. Although several of us on this forum use resource functions, I have very rarely seen other planners use this technique. Do you think this is representative in your experience?

What are your experiences of different types of software for working with resources?

I realise that this is now drifting away from the thread title of ’Number of Activities’. I’m not sure if this should now become a new thread....or is it just accepted as an evolution of the existing one?

Allan,
I agree that resource levelling is not wide spread. It is much easier to create high level schedules and suggest site managers to make it real. Resource loaded schedules are in use in the companies where top management knows what to demand from the project planners and project management software.
I don’t agree with your statement that P3 is the only credible software for dealing with resources. Open Plan has more capabilities and our Spider Project is much more powerful and functional. But P3e and MS Project are not reliable and sometimes produce funny results (especially MS Project).
I think that real project management (and any kind of management) is resource management. And project management software is properly used when it simulates project performance and is able to answer any of what if question. Besides it shall try to optimize resource usage. And what I don’t like in P3, Open Plan and other PM software that is used by most project planners in this forum - these packages don’t even try to optimize resource constrained schedules. They chose easy solution - to suggest their users to choose any levelling criteria and that’s all. Spider Project tries to use computer power to calculate better schedules and usually its resource constrained schedules are much shorter than produced by other planning software. Another problem that is ignored by P3 - taking into consideration financial and supply constraints (cost and material levelling is not supported).

In few words - resource constrained schedules are rare and usually they show the maturity of the project management in the organization especially when it used on the portfolio level.

You are right that this discussion may belong to a separate thread.

Vladimir

HI VLAD<
KEEP YOUR COOOL

Thank you, Philip.
I’ll try.
Vladimir

Thanks Vladimir,

I havent used Spider Project or Open Plan, so I would not argue with your conclusions on this. I have never even heard of Spider Project...who is the developer?

Cheers,
Allan

Spider Project is Russian software. You can try its Demo downloading from http://www.spiderproject.ru/enter.php?ver=prof&lang=eng
I can describe some additional features of Open Plan and Spider Project useful for true project performance simulation but I don’t think that it is proper in this thread.
Regards,
Vladimir

Thank you for the link, I will follow it up. I am interested in what you have to say on performance simulation, but agree a new thread is now appropriate.

Cheers,

Allan

Vladimir,

Sorry for the late response, as i dont have time to read the forum everyday, especially if you are managing 40,000 activities in your hands. (just kidding Vladimir) Leveling is essential when you are working with a contractor. This is a necessary exercise both for the commercial side and the practical side of construction, of course nobody wants big bumps and sudden drops. An ideal schedule should be smooth and efficient. Efficient use of resources should be a must excercise in planning.

Regards,
Daniel

A comment re number of activities:

I am surprised that no one (Vladimir?) mentioned nuclear power plant refueling outages. In the U.S., a typical outage will take between 25 and 40 days. And the schedule will typically include 15,000 - 25,000 activities. Needless to say, "one week duration limits" do not apply -- their durations are estimated in units of quarter hours, i.e., a two hour activity will be entered as 8 quarter hours. And every eight-hour shift is a reporting period.

New automobile projects (5 years) will be planned with over 30,000 activities, and new military aircraft with over 100,000 activities. But the quality of scheduling in the U.S., is nowhere better than in the nuclear power industry, probably due to the fact that every day offline costs the plant between $500,000 and $1,500,000. This is quite an incentive to have the best possible schedule.

Interestingly, on pharmaceutical projects, despite the cost of lost patent protection being estimated at over $1,000,000 per day, project planning is very immature. There will be perhaps only 5,000 activities in a five-year project, often with no resource loading.

In large software implementations (e.g., ERP systems) at corporate, government, or university sites, one might have as few as 400 activities for a two-year, $10,000,000 implementation. (Indeed, it is possible that nothing gets planned at all!)

In general, in the above discussion, I agree completely with the comments of Vladimir (Hi, Vladimir!) and Sigfredo -- the number of activities a project needs to allow for maximization of the project investment is the number it needs; no more, no less. I would only like to add to Sigfredo’s four basic questions:

5. Has the schedule’s detail been sufficient to allow optimization of project value through intelligent schedule compression techniques?

6. When a variance occurs, is there sufficient detail to allow quick recognition, measurement, and ability to see, measure and understand potential mitigation measures?

Hi Stephen!
Glad to meet you here.
I agree with all you wrote, thank you for support.
I think that it may be of interest to discuss in details (not in this thread) schedule optimization criteria. You mentioned the cost of the delay. Usually we implement this approach - schedule is optimized taking into account cost of the day of finish delay.
Vladimir

Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation.

In building works, the plan can have a simple fragnet of ten activities per floor.

This fragnet can easily generate thousand of activities the moment it will be distributed into zone-by-zone, area-by-area, level-by-level approach in work breakdown structure.

You can imagine this if you will start planning for more than 15 numbers of mopre than 15-storey high towers clustered in an 8 level basement, with bored piling foundation including dewatering, hybrid or composite structures of steel and concrete, with first class architectural interior finishes and exterior finishes (interior: marble tiles, capentry works, etc. and exterior: stone cladding and aluminium cladding).

For 50 activities, it will be a planning catastrophe. Planning with below 5,000 activities is playing or horsing around. Planning with more than 20,00 activities is reasonable.

Regards,

Dead right Bill - K.I.S.S.


REGARDS

DAR

Hi guys,

do less, work smart....do more, much more smart er.

Hi Raja & Bill,

Is it possible to show four (4) bars in a row in your 15K-activity plan?

1st bar - current (updated)

2nd bar - target (updated)

3rd bar - plain target

4th bar - recovery schedule

in any planning tool please??? (not drafting tool)

p.s. I have to ask this in the other section but it was locked by another bar....

hi,

Why try to complicate things??? you can only have two targets... don’t mix recovery plan with your current update it will be a mess

To Clive Randall:
Excuse me for the late reply, I was abroad where had limited access to the Internet.
You are absolutely right. In most long projects it does not make sense to plan in details what will be done on the coming years. And yes, pipeline construction projects usually have necessary documentation before construction phase is started.
In the long projects we use rolling wave approach and not only because we don’t have enough information about future works but also for making the model less complex. Even if it is easy to simulate future works it is not practical. For an example in the construction of high buildings we simulated the influence of schedule deviations in the current floor to the schedules of higher floors construction. Usually after 4 or 5 floors the influence of these deviations becomes vary low. So we plan in details the construction of the nearest 5 floors and other floors exist in the model as corresponding activities linked with the detailed schedule. The size of the model is growing with time but the number of activities that are planned in details remains near the same. To the end of the project you will have the largest model.
In pipeline construction you need to plan which resources will be needed at any time because these resources are heavy and expensive and shall be moved to the construction site. It makes sense to simulate the whole construction in details as soon as the necessary information is available.
Regards,
Vladimir

Rolyn, You can create as many targets as you like, but you can only compare two (2) plans at the same time. I don’t know if Spider can do more...?

We recommend to set at least four targets:
1) Project Team Target - very tight, optimistic.
2) Project Management Team Target that includes calculated contingency reserve.
3) Management Target that includes both contingency and management reserves.
4. Contract Target that includes profit or any other additional reserves.
Spider Projet can show at the same lines of the Gantt Chart:
1) critial schedule - backward schedule from the Project Management Team target dates,
2) current schedule and
3) any other schedule that is chosen to compare with. One option - baseline schedule, but you can also compare with the project schedule that existed in any time in the past (week ago, month ago, etc.) or any other target schedule.
So at any time you can see at the same lines only three schedules and not more.
You can also see trends of any project parameters like cost, finish date, success probabilities for all targets you defined, etc. at the diagrams below the Gantt Chart.
Regards,
Vladimir

Thank You.

Multi target

In P3e you can display unto 1 current and 3 baseline schedule and attach 50 different baseline for comparison

Cheers

Alex

edgar,

Sorry bro for the misinterpretation, yup that’s what I mean you can only show 3 bars, 1 for current & 2 for targets

Charlie,

I am truly staggered by your comments in post #69…

“Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation”.

And

“For 50 activities, it will be a planning catastrophe. Planning with below 5,000 activities is playing or horsing around. Planning with more than 20,000 activities is reasonable”.

Whilst I fully accept that some situations need to have an enormous number of activities on their schedules / programmes, it must be wrong to say that planning with less than 5000 activities is playing or horsing around. Consider the person who develops the overall first schedule/programme on a project. They are trying to establish the overall timeframe and constraints for the project and often this needs to be done very quickly. Under these circumstances, which some might consider to be the most important or influential stage in developing a programme, it would be near impossible to develop 5,000 activities. In fact, this amount would render the purpose of the programme to be lost – that is, to rapidly communicate the overall timescale and stages of a project.

Often planners do produce 50 activity programmes. They do so deliberately and carefully, for that is exactly what is required.

Please try to be a little more considered in your postings! The quantity of activities in a programme is not the only judge of its quality.

Gary.

To whom it may concern:

I understand that the subject being tackled here is the total NUMBER OF ACTIVITIES. I just want to know if there is any ideal quantity that applies to certain projects (i.e. Buildings, Oil & Gas, Heavy Civils, Railways, Power Plants, Design & Procurement, etc.)?

If the answer will depend on each individual Contract, would that mean Contract Deliverables? What I’m trying to find out (if you’ll allow me) is the most accurate number of activities to be used in your planning considering quality & simplicity of its output.

In Planning, will you consider Quantity as parallel to Quality? As you go through the smallest possible detail, would that mean you’ll get the most accurate output?

And what is the ideal time needed for the preparation of an ideal Plan? And what are the ideal resources needed to prepare it as well?

Well, sometimes in reality, I believe that all you need to do is Planning through the speed of human thought.

just an honest and humble opinion (HAHO), HO, HO, HO...

i’m looking for Santa Claus as well, I would like to nominate him as one of the Planning Immortals...if anybody sees him, you already knew what to do....

cheers,...(ahh..just to eliminate hang-overs)

Hi Gary,

Please consider the basis of my opinion, the project description.

You have not done this kind of planning details because of the nature of your work.

But I did because I work in the contractor side.

If you were not there, then, you don’t know.

Ask Vladimir, he did more than 40,000 activities with matching simulations.

Cheers,

Charlie

Gary, you wrote that "The quantity of activities in a programme is not the only judge of its quality". I agree - it is not enough. Let’s do the next step and define what is the schedule quality (maybe in other thread).
I think that the good schedule shall help to answer any what if question ... And thus it shall contain as many activities as necessary for project performance simulation. As Charlie noted in his post these questions are different for the client and for the contractor and this defines the requirements to the model.
The client will not ask questions like what if I will buy additional 100 m2 of frames or add the worker to some construction crew, or will use one crane instead of another. And besides contractor schedule is used for setting each shift tasks.
Client schedule is ussually used for contract administration and project financing management. It will have less details but will help to answer the questions like what money are needed at any moment and how to organize project works in accordance with the financial limitations.
From my own practice - approximately 5000 activities schedule describes the construction of one 12 floors building for the contractor. And creating this schedule is not too complicated and time consuming if to use the library of the typical project fragnets, project databases and predefined crews for resource assignments. A lot of activities in this schedule are repetitive.
Regards,
Vladimir

Charlie,

There you go making presumptions in your posting that are ill-informed and wrong.

You say that I have not done this kind of planning detail because of the nature of my work. What qualifies you to say this? You simply don’t know what I type of planning I have done.

Please do not cast doubts on anybodies planning experience, including mine, unless you are very sure of your facts.

For the record, I have produced programmes of 40,000 activities. Despite the fact that you obviously believe I have not worked for a contractor, I have.

There are many different ways of planning – each is dependant upon the particular circumstances. A programme of 50 activities can be just as valid as one with 40,000.

Regards,

Gary.

Vladimir,

I agree with most of what you say.

My company has been working with some very experienced clients over the last 10 – 15 years – mainly property developers who do often answer the sort of questions you suggest. They often do want to know what will happen if another crane is utilised, or more labour. However, I do agree that in most circumstances they don’t try to answer these types of questions themselves. They ask them of the project manager, the construction manager, or the main contractor and even sometimes the sub-contractors.

I would also agree with you that the clients schedule is usually used for contract administration and project financing management. However, client schedules are often used for much more – for overall control of and progress reporting for a number of related projects for example. Some clients are very capable of programming!

Sometimes, we also have to think beyond the normal client / contractor relationship – for some aspects of the construction industry in the UK (where most of my experience is) those traditional relationships are long gone and much more integrated contractual relationships are in use. I wouldn’t say this is commonplace, but it does reflect the general trend in UK construction to meet the desire by all involved to work much more as an integrated team.

This inevitably leads to a different type of planning – one where hugely detailed programmes are not required. Many of the postings in PP are about clients approving programmes, claims, who owns the float, etc. These are appropriate for the more traditional ways of working, but are simply irrelevant for the more recent ways of working. This is why I feel it is sometimes necessary to comments on postings that are so forthright, such as Charlie’s “Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation”. Whilst it might be correct given a particular set of circumstances, it is clearly wrong given other arrangements.

For me, a programme of 50 activities might be absolutely the correct level of detail. Similarly, 40,000 activities might also the correct. There is no right and wrong, but there are nearly always different circumstances.

I totally accept your point that the repetitive use of strings of activities makes the production of programmes not too time consuming. It is a way of working that most planners have probably used many times, me included!

Regards.

Gary.

Hi everyone,

I totally agree with you Gary,the number of activities is not a sufficient indication of a good detailed and structured schedule...
Recently, I got to review a schedule of more than 5 thousand activities for a tower building...I found out that it was built up with a copy & paste of 1 typical floor, repeated in all 30 floors of the building...It was a catastrophic schedule and I prefered having 50 well done activities instead of these 5,000...
Also, I find ridiculous to see in offer advertisement for Planning jobs, to seek for Planners who can manage more than "x" thousands of activities and level "y" of schedules...These numbers of activities and levels should not be considered as a unit of measuring proffesionalism and competency of Planners...The situation gets more funny when Planners are competing with each others in finding out who did the longer schedule or to which extent the WBS was broken down; may be we’ll put the winner in Guiness Book...If Software gives you the opportunity to have thousands of activties, this does not mean that it enforces you to increase your number of activities...
Usually, Contractors submit a preliminary schedule after a short period from the start of the Project...This schedule will be reviewed and get the consent from the Engineer/the Client...It is only after getting enough information (i.e. E/M), new inputs, different conditions, new strategy, etc. that the Contractor is asked to develop and detail more the consented schedule, therefore increasing number of activities...It is up to Engineer/Client to specify the areas or disciplines to be more elaborated as it is not always to the benefit of the Contractor to detail more and add his activities...

Regards,
J.S. Daniel

Are P3 developers not reasonable enough to create a program that can hold a 100,000 activities or even more???


have a good time everyone.....

Let’s do the next step and define what is the schedule quality (maybe in other thread).

Isn’t that what the PMI Practice Standard for Scheduling is trying to achieve? Follow the link if you are interested in discussing elements/essentials for schedule quality.

Stacy
Participate in the Project Management Knowledge Base!

Why not do it here pkmb (superman)? this place is cool...

Hi,
No matter what type and how many activities, as long u can interprete the schedule logically can be understand, as per job method,following BQ...i can say its acceptable, its the same as design drawing as long u can gave the image and the scale correctly, its no problem.

What do you mean Raja? They are looking for a Quality Schedule...what is that?

Can anyone define a Quality Schedule? (please?)

Hi Stacy,

I am a little lost!

The link you provided takes us to a forum where people are complaining that not much is happening on the PMI Practice Standard of Scheduling, quoting it to be disappointing and that there are a few key individuals that are developing the document.

Clicking further, I found the Project Charter for the Practice Standard of Scheduling, which is dated March 2003. This is obviously quite an old document, but there is very little else on the website that says anything at all about where this is currently at.

Perhaps you can enlighten us on exactly what is happening with this? What progress has been made?

Wouldn’t making a copy of it available to planners via PP or the PEO be a useful step? - that way a lot of people can comment on it.

Gary

continue...
the detail schedule it is.. the more risk u can see, somtimes support, base plate, underground piping hydrotest,and etc. is most overlook items which frequently forgoten even 10-15 years experience engineer... its seem like fresh graduate engineer. So with the detail schedule following priority system / Area is the best to identify activities is ready or not... I do prefer Thousand activities for construction. ...I can say 50 activities is for Management....

Edgar, they are both cool places. The topic was started at pmkb before Vladimir’s post, so I mentioned it.

Gary, I’m not on the PMI Practice Standard Team. As far as I know, PMI is not publishing details of the development process. I started a discussion to find out what people think should be done.

Stacy
Participate in the Project Management Knowledge Base!

Management of what? 50 - number of activities? You call it management?

Edgar,

Are you saying that 50 activities cannot be managed, or are not worthy of being managed?

If so, I think you might be missing the point. Try not to think of the 50 activities each being small. The situation could be that those 50 activities represent a huge volume of work. Imagine those each of those 50 activities representing, say, a building each in a clients portfolio of projects. Each building is only represented a single line because that is all the client wants - they only want to see when each building will be constructed or refurbished, so they can see the impact on their business and how they will have to move the staff around to suit.

The client is not interested in the detailed construction programmes - they simply want to see how the construction will fit their business plan.

I think that you can then see how a 50 activity programme does need to be managed!

Remember, detailed programmes of thousands of activities are not always the answer!

Gary

Hi Gary,

If only projects can be managed with 50 activities, then we don’t need these expensive project management softwares. But unfortunately it’s not the case most of the time specially for a contractor on a huge let’s say for $2Billion project.

Yes I agree with you that some clients prefer a high level program but that is for the client’s use. But not all clients does this. For a contractor , who is very much interested on how many bags of cement he needs to bring to the site on a certain period in order that his warehouse will not overflow with materials, in this case a detailed schedule is very important. Another example is how can you know how many resources you need on a certain period if you don’t detail your schedule with real activities and resources. Some people call this lean scheduling. In my experience, it’s easier to prepare a claim if the schedule is "properly" detailed. Even for the client side, they need a deatiled programme to protect themselves from unnecessary claims payment.

In summary, for me this issue of making a detailed programme or not boils down to how you want the programme respond to your needs.

Cheers,

Se

I understand Stacy that he got a cool place too...but the chairman of the PEO still did not answer if how many number of activities really represents a Quality Schedule...?

Edgar,

There is no correct answer. How many activities go into a schedule that is of a good quality depends on the individual circumstances of the project. As I said in post #88 in this thread “For me, a programme of 50 activities might be absolutely the correct level of detail. Similarly, 40,000 activities might also the correct level. There is no right and wrong, but there are nearly always different circumstances.”

I am not saying 50 or 40,000 or indeed any number of activities is right or wrong.

Sorry I cannot answer your question more definitively, but I don’t think there is an answer that will be right for all circumstances.

Gary

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?"

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is."

Bernard Ertl
eTaskMaker Project Planning Software

Well said Bernard,

Paul Silver

Hi Gary,

I tried to go back to the previous postings(#88) because i feel i may have missed some views then i chanced upon one of your comments i.e.

"This inevitably leads to a different type of planning – one where hugely detailed programmes are not required. Many of the postings in PP are about clients approving programmes, claims, who owns the float, etc. These are appropriate for the more traditional ways of working, but are simply irrelevant for the more recent ways of working."

Could you elaborate on the term traditional and recent ways of working?

I’m just wondering how would a client work or manage a 50 or 42 activity project. How can he manage claims, how can he show critical path which is very important if the client wants to make sure that the project would finish for his business requirements. Let’s say the project is in delay, how can he know if the catch up plan is viable,doable,realistic...

Let’s face it, many clients does not really want to go into details because most clients view projects on a high level, business, operation aspect. While contractors view it on a contractual, profit view, lean scheduling, savings etc. etc. etc.

As i said in my last post, it all depends on on how you want the programme to respond to your organizational needs.

Personally, if i would work again for a client side, i would strongly suggest to manage the programme with sufficient details for me to protect the interest of my employer.

Cheers,
Se