Assignment
Description
Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400-600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.
Now that you have completed your stakeholder analysis and developed the stakeholder register, project charter, SOW (scope document), and your WBS, it is time to start building your project schedule baseline. According to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Fifth Edition, a schedule baseline is "the approved version of a schedule model that can be changed only through formal change control procedures and is used as a basis for comparison to actual results" (2013). The output of this effort is your project schedule which, according to the PMBOK® Guide, is "an output of a schedule model that presents linked activities with planned - dates, durations, milestones, and resources" (2013). The project schedule should include start and finish dates for all activities. Remember, if an activity is not in the schedule, it will not be done. Establishing the schedule will allow you to estimate activity cost, and thus help you develop a budget. Therefore, a schedule helps you establish a time and a cost baseline for your project.
• Discuss how you would go about assigning or completing the schedule elements, such as dates, durations, milestones, predecessors, and resources.
• How would you go about completing resource assignments, both human and material? How would you determine to buy (acquire) or make your resources?
• Discuss the importance of building slack in your project schedule.
• Once your schedule is fully developed, what information would any of your stakeholders learn from it?
• Looking back at the agile versus waterfall methodologies, how does this traditional schedule development differ from agile schedule development?
Responses to Other Students: Respond to at least 2 of your fellow classmates with at least a 100-word reply about their Primary Task Response regarding items you found to be compelling and enlightening. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following:
• Slack is the difference between a task's early start and late start. It tells team members how much time flexibility they have on each task, and it facilitates task juggling.
• Project cost management is the processes required to ensure that the project is completed within the approved budget.
• Estimating schedule activity resources involves determining what resources (persons, equipment, or material) and what quantities of each resource will be used and when each resource will be available to perform project activities.
• Activity duration estimation is estimating the number of work periods that will be needed to complete individual activities. It is also estimating the amount of work effort to complete activities.
• Schedule development involves analyzing activity sequences, activity durations, and resource requirements to create the project schedule. It is an iterative process that determines planned start and finish dates for project activities.
For assistance with your assignment, please use your text, Web resources, and all course materials.
Reference
Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition. Project Management Institute, Inc. 2013.