Enjoy this video of my free online PMP Exam Preparation training course and prepare to sit and pass the PMP certification exam from PMI. This PMP training video covers the Schedule Management Knowledge Area in PMBOK6 and the Define Activities process.
so if if you’ve laid the ground rules and everybody knows how you’re going to be working and which software you’re going to use and so on or Excel if that works for you then you can start creating your schedule and the first thing that we do here is we define the activities that will be on my scheduled activities that will be on my project and that happens from the WBS so we’re going to be using the composition that you see here in tools and techniques this is where work packages will be broken down into activities that’s all there is here and the outputs will be the list of your activities their details about these activities milestones that are relevant to us and maybe if we realize that we made a mistake then we can make some changes I will detail these a little bit so don’t panic here you see the term rolling wave planning showing again and it’s an iterative planning technique in which to work to be accomplished in the near term but that’s the wave that is hitting you is planned in detail while work further and the future is planned at the high level those are the ripples in the water that you see in the ocean right so as every wave gets closer we detail it alright let me see here if I have any more details or if I should open my scribble pad all right so before I start scribbling things I also want to show you here how it works this is decomposition let me get rid of the drawings over here you see this that’s a WBS you see this one that’s a WBS these are WBS packages alright and then underneath them below every one of these you will see several activities right there so these are the activities so you’re taking a WBS and you have decompose it into its activity and you won’t see it a name but test project manager and just creating a new test project and I’m going to show you what we do for defining the activities it says it’s forward scheduled this is the software tool called open frog and so it’s just going to create a new similar to MS Project tool for me oh I need to use the mouse okay so now it gave me this tool if you remember I used it yesterday and I’m going to put hole on disk should we do the move let’s say office move this is the office move project and underneath that I’m going to do the construction part right and then if we did WBS so let’s think about the pieces that go into an office move project there’s construction and then there’s the IT part and then there’s the furniture and then there’s the actual move that needs to happen and then there’s administrative stuff you know security safety things like that and then we can throw in several activities so what I created were potential WBS is if you’re wondering why I left spaces is because I just want to put activities in there so for construction I’m just going to say I’m just gonna keep it very very simple and I’m not a although I built a house in Massachusetts I didn’t really do it to it I managed to project I’m not gonna clean that I have lots of experience I’m just gonna throw a couple of things if we were moving someplace I’m just gonna say prep walls and floor and then I’m going to say install cubicles okay so I’m just gonna do this and some would have to happen before the others so eventually you’ll have to put the connection between them and you know IT so I’m just gonna say set up networking and connect all devices and in furniture I’m going to say order not order I’m going to say prepare I don’t know we’re moving our furniture maybe right so if moving our furniture I’m going to say wrap and pack and then unwrap and guess for the move I’m going to say load stuff unload stuff how about that but we also need to find a mover and administrative something here and then something there I don’t know what’s there I can’t really think this fast so I’m just going to put a few things I’m gonna take the whole of this just showing you how simple it can be and then push them out so now the office project is the parent and these are children and then I push these out so I can make each larger piece at WBS obviously you can have a lot more than two activities when I’m just keeping it simple like that and so the WBS view that we talked about before you can shrink these and then go to the WVS view and here you have the office move project this has components like construction IT furniture move and administrative so it’s easy to do a project like this and now when you want to go and schedule it you don’t connect you can’t really connect these pieces together but what you can’t connect the activity is in them right now I’m not going to spend time figuring out which one is first which one is next but every one of these activities needs to be identified there could be even more that happens here in the construction for example prepare entry you know so that could be another one there that needs to be done but the identification of these activities is really not my responsibility these things here they’re not really my responsibility as the PM it is a responsibility of each respective team that is responsible for this alright whoever’s responsible with the construction is probably going to be outsourced in the WBS we could also determine that this one work package that’s going to be outsourced they will tell us I’m not gonna kill myself trying to figure out what construction work needs to happen they will give me a proposal for the work I’ll go to the site I’ll check it with them and if it makes sense fine if it doesn’t I’m gonna ask questions I’ll take maintenance with me they’ll help me with this remember the Charter maintenance is going to be one of my key stakeholders in there because they would know a lot more than me about this but I’m the one who’s driving it maintenance doesn’t know how to drive a project I Drive the project okay it’s like somebody that knows the way and you know how to drive you have a permit to drive so I’m the one who has a permit to drive this project they’re the ones who are technical I will tap into their expertise and we will develop these activities that you know development of the activity is what we call decomposition also and we define these activities now besides the activities there are milestones okay so I wanted let me get back to the mouse okay so I’m going to insert an activity here all right which is under and putting it under connect all devices I want to do IT testing complete okay and what this is going to stand for is a milestone I want you to take a look at the right on the right hand side you see these are all if i zoom in you see these are all bar charts okay there are bars that we can connect and you can connect these activities and put a duration for them so if these are going to take five days seven days I want you to and you zoom out again now that I put some durations you can see that they are bars on the right you can see all of these down here are potentially going to become bars so once in blue but I T testing complete this is not an activity and it’s not something that takes time instead this is something that is a notification mainly for management but connect all devices sort of networking you know maybe I need seven days for this I need three days for that but I testing complete more like notification so it’s zero dates and these are called milestones and I want you before I get the enter button I want you to look to the right side where we had the blue bar and I hit enter and what happened it changed to a diamond okay a diamond represents a milestone even in human life a diamond could be an engagement thing you know it’s a milestone in our life but on a project that diamond is the milestone and it represents no duration but it is more for notification most of the time your managers don’t want all the fine details all they want is the milestones they do start the construction did you finish the testing have you found the mover so even here I’m going to add one on the move arranged mover so for arranging mover management just wants to know that you did that it’s just a zero duration item it’s a notification so we identify all the activities we identify the milestones and we also identify details about them see wrap and pack furniture right for you to wrap and pack the furniture you will need tools correct you cannot really do this if you don’t have tools you cannot do it if you don’t have resources so the expectation is that for every one of these activities we need to figure out if we need any kind of resources especially this one we will need boxes and tape and I don’t know what and for networking they may need you know some I don’t know it’s been a long time since IT but to prep the wall install cubicles prepare the pantry there’ll be some tools a ladder a brush for the walls to paint it and so on you need things and those tools those tools are the ones that we identify here we identify activities we identify the attributes the attributes are the tools okay these are the things activity description resource requirements okay so in the resource requirement that may mean tools it may mean equipment it may mean people specialty experience software whatever it is but every activity will have attributes means descriptive items about every activity it will have an ID you know I don’t use IDs in mine it but it couldn’t have an ID that is tied to the WBS it will have a name for sure I want to show you here even though I will put construction I can put construction in the WBS but when I go into the activities I use a verb no so you could do this do that so in admin it should not really say something here because I just have to generic it should be more like do something here and do something they’re usually activities have that style of writing load stuff unload stuff draft unwrap IT testing complete because it’s a milestone it’s okay but the other ones there was set up networking connect all devices WBS can just be a basket just it’s IT work for example furniture related work moving related work so hopefully these things make sense hopefully I’m adding a bit of practicality to the exam prep course so this is what we do we identify activities we identify the details about them and required resources so that when we get to the point where we actually have to work on it we are ready to do it you know saying that I want to paint the wall they talk without buying the brush or arranging for the painters it’s not going to happen you have to have everything else so along with the activities that were seen before activity list you’ll see we have the attributes we have the milestone list the important notification items for management and for milestones you have minor milestones and you have major milestones major milestones are really for management minor milestones are for us so you can have different levels of milestones I have no way of marking it as minor or major on the on the tool but some things are for us some things are for management we let them know that something significant is complete like the site is right you know we can do the move things like that now a lot of times you’ll notice that when you are defining activities you realize that some things are missed and so you add them just like when I was using this software I figured you know maybe for the construction maybe they need that permit right so issue permit so then at that point I will make a change or we will agree on the terms with the contractor who will do this will not maybe we realize that we never really discussed that plumbing in the pantry but you know maybe it doesn’t have the connections or maybe we realize that we never talked about the electrical outlets are they going to be laid out in the new office so then you add those in there and that usually would end up being a change request so this is why you see on the screen you see that change request is also one of the outputs take things back into perspective you see it here the outputs on the bottom left activity list the attributes and milestone list and the change request that’s what you can expect when you define the activities
