The document provides guidance on planning timelines and estimating durations for projects. It discusses determining project deadlines, developing network diagrams to visualize activity sequences and durations, and analyzing the diagrams to calculate earliest and latest start/finish dates. The document recommends identifying predecessors, estimating durations, and determining required resources as first steps in timeline planning. It also discusses developing Gantt charts and milestone lists to present project schedules.

1. Planning Time:
Determining When and How Much.
Done by:
Gustavo Barbecho
Avila Humberto

2. You want this project done when?
Project assignments always have deadlines. So even though we’re
not sure what our new project is supposed to accomplish, we
want to know when it has to be finished. Unfortunately, when we
find out the desired end date, our immediate reaction is often
one of panic: “But I don’t have enough time!”
The truth is, when we first receive our project assignment, we
usually have no idea how long it’ll take to complete. Initial
reactions tend to be based more on fear and anxiety than on
facts, especially when we’re trying to juggle multiple
responsibilities and the project sounds complex.
To help us develop a more realistic estimate of how long our
project will take, we need an organized approach that clarifies
how we plan to perform our project’s activities, what schedules
are possible, and how we’ll meet deadlines that initially appear
unrealistic.

3. To determine the amount of time we need for any project, determine the following two
pieces of information:
✓ Sequence: The order in which we perform the activities
✓ Duration: How long each individual activity takes.
Defining a network diagram’s elements.
A network diagram is a flowchart that illustrates the order in which perform project
activities. It’s our project’s test laboratory it gives us a chance to try out different strategies
before performing the work. No matter how complex our project is, its network diagram
has the following three elements:
Milestone.
A milestone, sometimes called an event, is a significant occurrence in the life of a project.
Milestones mark the start or end of one or more activities.
Activity.
An activity is a component of work performed during the course of a project. Activities take
time and consume resources; we describe them using action verbs.
Duration.
Duration is the total number of work periods it takes to complete an activity. The amount of
work effort required to complete the activity, people’s availability, and whether people can
work on the activity at the same time all affect the activity’s duration.

4. Determining our project’s end date requires us to choose
the dates that each project activity starts and ends and the
dates that each milestone is reached.
Analyzing a Network Diagram.
Thinking in our project as a trip us and several friends are
planning to take. We certainly don’t want to undertake a
trip this complex without planning it out on a road map.
After all, planning our trip allows us to.
✓ Determine how long the entire trip will take.
✓ Identify potential difficulties along the way.
✓ Consider alternate routes to get to our final destination
more quickly.
It helps us with our project schedule by telling us how to
read and interpret a road map (our network diagram) so
we can determine the likely consequences of our possible
approaches.

5. We an use our network diagram to figure out when to start and
end activities and when we’ll finish the entire project if we
perform the activities in this way.
✓ Critical path: A sequence of activities that takes the longest time
to complete.
✓ Noncritical path: A sequence of activities in which we can delay
activities and still finish our project in the shortest possible time
✓ Slack time (also called float): The maximum amount of time we
can delay an activity and still finish our project in the shortest
possible time
✓ Earliest start date: The earliest date we can start an activity
✓ Earliest finish date: The earliest date we can finish an activity
✓ Latest start date: The latest date we can start an activity and still
finish our project in the shortest possible time
✓ Latest finish date: The latest date we can finish an activity and
still finish our project in the shortest possible time

6. Developing our project’s schedule requires the combination
of activities, resources, and activity-performance sequences
that gives us the greatest chance of meeting our client’s
expectations with the least amount of risk.
Taking the first steps.
 Identify immediate predecessors for all activities.
 Determine the personnel and no personnel resources
required for all
 Estimate durations for all activities.
 Identify all intermediate and final dates that must be met.
 Identify all activities or milestones outside our project that
affect our project’s activities.

7. It provides information for us to consider when we develop
our schedule. After we select our actual dates, choose one of
the following formats in which to present our schedule:
✓ Milestone list: A table that lists milestones and the dates
we plan to reach them
✓ Activity list: A table that lists activities and the dates we
plan to start and end them
✓ Combined milestone/activity list: A table that includes
milestone and activity dates
✓ Gantt chart: A timeline that illustrates when each activity
starts, how long it continues, and when it ends
✓ Combined milestone and Gantt chart: A timeline that
illustrates when activities start, how long they continue, when
they end, and when selected milestones are achieved

8. Establishing whom we need, how much, and when.
Carefully planning for the personnel we need to
perform our project increases our chances of
succeeding by enabling us to:
✓Ensure the most qualified people available are
assigned to each task.
✓ Explain more effectively to team members what we’re
asking them to contribute to the project.
✓ Develop more accurate and realistic schedules.
✓ Ensure that people are on hand when they’re needed.
✓Monitor resource expenditures to identify and address
possible overruns or underruns.

9. Our project’s success rests on our ability to enlist the
help of appropriately qualified people to perform our
project’s work. We begin our project planning by
determining our project’s required results and major
deliverables. We continue our planning by detailing
the intermediate and final deliverables that our
project must generate in a Work Breakdown Structure.
Determining the skills and knowledge that each
activity requires
Confirming that the people assigned to those
activities possess the required skills and knowledge
and that they’re genuinely interested in working on
their assignments

10. To begin deciding the skills and knowledge
that people must have for our project, obtain
a complete list of all our project’s activities.
We identify and describe our project’s
activities and their important characteristics
such as a unique name and identifier code,
duration, predecessors, and successors in
this document.

11. Using a Human Resources Matrix.
Planning our personnel needs begins with identifying whom we need and how much effort they
have to invest. The Human Resources Matrix depicts the people assigned to each project
activity and the work effort each person will contribute to each assignment.
Identifying needed personnel in a Human Resources Matrix
We can use three types of information to identify the people we need to have on our project
team:
✓ Skills and knowledge: The specific skills and knowledge who’ll do the work must have.
✓ Position name or title: The job title or the name of the position who’ll do the work.
✓ Name: The name of the person who’ll do the work
Estimating required work effort.
As we develop our work-effort estimates, do the following: Describe in detail all work related
to performing the activity. Include work directly and indirectly related.
• Examples of work directly related to an activity include writing a report, meeting with clients,
performing a laboratory test, and designing a new logo.
• Examples of indirectly related work include training to perform activity related work and
preparing periodic activity-progress reports.
✓ Consider history. Past history doesn’t guarantee future performance, but it does provide a
guideline for what’s possible.

12. Planning our initial allocations.
The first step in making sure we can handle all our
project commitments is to decide when we’ll work on
each activity. If our initial plan has we working on
more than one activity at the same time, our next
task is to determine the total level of effort we’ll have
to devote each time period to meet our multiple
commitments.
Resolving potential resource overloads.
If we don’t change our time allocations for Activity 1
or 2 and we’re willing to work only a total of 40
person-hours in week 3, we’ll accomplish less than
we planned on one or both of the activities that we
work on that week.

13. PLANNING FOR OTHER RESOURCES
AND
DEVELOPING THE BUDGET
A key part of effective
project Management is ensuring
that nonpersonnel resources are
available throughout the project
when and where they’re needed
and according to specifications
The nonpersonnel resources needed
to perform the activities that
comprise the work package For
example, computers, copiers, and
use of a test laboratory to complete
the three listed work packages.
The required amount of each
resource
Activity Amount of Resource
Required (Hours)
Work
Breakdown
Structure
Code
Description Computer Copier Test lab
1.2.1. Presentation 32 0 0
2.1.4. Report 0 40 0
3.3.1. Device 40 0 32
Making Sense of the
Project Costs and Budgets
In a world of limited funds, we constantly decide how to get
the most return for our investment. Estimating a project’s
costs is important for next reasons:
✓ It enables to weigh anticipated benefits against anticipated
costs to see whether the project makes sense.
✓ It allows to see whether the necessary funds are available
to support the project.
✓ It serves as a guideline
Chapter 7

14. Project Budget Estimate for a Company Paper
Cost Category Cost in Personnel and
Nonpersonnel Resources
Total
Monetary
Cost
Direct labor We: 200 hours ($30 per hour) $8,000
Mary: 100 hours ($25 per hour) $3,500
Total direct labor $11,500
Indirect Costs (60% of
direct costs
$ 6,900
Other direct costs Materials $ 2.000
Travel $500
Subcontract $7,000
Total other direct costs $9,500
Total project costs $27.000

15. A PROJECT BUDGET
Is a detailed, time-phased estimate of all resource costs for
a project, developed in stages — from an initial rough
estimate to a detailed estimate to a completed, approved
project budget. We may revise our approved budget while
our project is in progress
.
DIRECT COSTS
• Salaries for team members
• Materials, supplies and equipment
• Travel to perform work on our
project
• Subcontracts, that provide support
to our project.
INDIRECT COSTS
• Overhead costs: employee
benefits, office space rent,
general supplies, furniture,
fixtures, and equipment.
• General and administrative
costs: salaries of your
contracts department, finance
department, general,
accounting and legal services.
Project
budjet

16. THE PROJECT’S STAGES AND HOW TO REFINING OUR
BUDGET
STAGES DESCRIPTION ORGANIZING AND PREPARING DETERMINING
PROJECT COSTS.
Rough order-of-
magnitude
estimate
Is an initial estimate of
Costs and annual plan. This
estimate sometimes expresses
what someone wants to spend
rather than what the project will
really cost.
The cost often represent an
amount that our project can’t
exceed in order to have an
acceptable return for the
investment
Develop your detailed budget
estimate and get it approved in
the organizing and preparing
stage after specify our project
activities.
Get approval for any required
changes to the budget or other
parts of the approved plan before
you begin the actual project work.
Review approved budget in the
carrying out the work stage —
when we identify the people who
will be working on our project and
when we start to develop formal
agreements for the use of
equipment,
facilities, vendors, and other
resources
For each lowest-level
work package, estimate
the direct costs for
materials,
equipment, travel,
contractual services,
and other nonpersonnel
Resources.
Detailed budget
estimate
Entails an itemization of the
estimated costs for each
project activity.
Determine the indirect
costs associated with
each work package
Completed,
approved project
budget
Detailed project
budget that essential people
approve and agree to support
Be sure to review the
work that has been
done on the budget and
resolve any issues we
may identify.

17.  Chapter 8
Risk and Uncertainty
 Risk is the possibility that we may not
achieve our product, schedule, or
resource targets because something
unexpected occurs or something planned
doesn’t occur. All projects have some
degree of risk because predicting the
future with certainty is impossible.
 Risk can be either negative or positive
Negative risks
Referred to as threats,
potentially have a detrimental
effect on one or more of the
project objectives.
Positive risks
Referred to as opportunities,
potentially have a beneficial
effect on project objectives
Risk management
Is the process of identifying possible risks,
assessing their potential consequences, and then
developing and implementing plans for
minimizing any negative effects, can’t eliminate
risks, but it offers the best chance for
successfully accomplishing.

18. HOW CAN YOU ADDRESS YOUR PROJECT’S RISKS?
1. Identify risks.
Determine which aspects of your plan or project environment may
change.
2. Assess the potential effects of those risks on your project.
Consider what can happen if those aspects don’t work out the way
you nvision.
Develop plans for mitigating the effects of the risks.
Decide how we can protect our project from the risks
consequences
4. Monitor the status of our project’s risks throughout
performance.
Determine whether risks is increasing or decreasing, or new risks
are arising.
5. Inform key audiences of all risks involved with our project.
Explain from the initial concept to the project’s completion

19. LIKELIHOOD OF A RISK
Category ranking: represent
their likelihood. high,
medium, and low, or always,
often, sometimes,
rarely, and never
Ordinal ranking:
First is the most likely to
occur,
Second is the next most
likely, and so on.
Relative likelihood of occurrence:
If there are two possible risks, wecan
express how much more likely one is
to occur than the other. For example,
you can declare that the first risk is
twice as likely to occur as the second.
Probability of occurrence:
we can express as a number
between 0 and 1, with 0.0 signifying
that a situation will never happen,
and 1.0 signifying that it will always
occur. (You may also express
probability as a percentage, with
100 percent meaning the situation
will always occur

20. HOW CAN YOU ADDRESS YOUR PROJECT’S RISKS?
After recognize project’s risk factors, the next step is to identify the
specific risks that may result from each of risk factors and decide
how we want to manage that risk. Describe how each risk factor may
cause to miss our product, schedule, or resource targets. for
example, using a new technology is a risk factor
✓ Product risk: The technology may not produce the desired results.
✓ Schedule risk: Tasks using the new technology may take longer
than anticipate.
✓ Resource risk: Existing facilities and equipment may not be
adequate to support the use of the new technology.
To identify specific potential risks for each risk factor, do the
following:
✓ Review past records of problems encountered in similar situations.
✓ Brainstorm with experts and other people who have related
experiences.
✓ Be specific.
• Nonspecific: Activities may be delayed.
• Specific: Delivery may take three weeks rather than two.
Try to eliminate potential risk factors as soon as possible