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Practical Exercise

17 replies [Last post]
Thu, 2005-10-20 16:42
Pete Morgan
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Hello,

I have been hired to develop a Planning & Scheduling Workshop that consists of a practical exercise concerning various aspects of a single problem. I’d like to hear suggestions from the experienced planners/schedulers.

Thank you.
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Replies

Thu, 2005-11-24 08:54
#1
David Bordoli
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Charlie…

I’d like to join Clive in being speechless… so

“ “

But like Clive I also can’t resist saying something….

Referring to your previous post on this subject does P3 do forward and backward passes as well and calculate earliest start and finishes AND latest start and finishes?

WOW

David
;-)
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Mon, 2005-11-21 00:00
#2
Katalin Hovanyi
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Pete,
When I teaching courses I ask my students to organise a party (what we realy do it at the end of the term). You can easily relate the schedule levels, objects, scope, resorces, locations, milestones and all the other schedule related "new" words to this "party" them. And a real experience for the teacher to find out what the others think about a "party".
Good luck
Katalin
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Fri, 2005-11-18 23:20
#3
Clive Randall
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Charlie
I am speechless
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Fri, 2005-11-18 10:50
#4
Charleston-Joseph...
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Hello Pete,

After the development of logic based on the identified activities, it is prefereble to do manual computation in the determination of critical path.

This involve tabulation in the computation of the earliest finish date (called forward pass) and the computation of late start date (called the backward pass).

This exercise will give you the earliest dates (start and finish) and the latest dates (start and finish).

Having known these dates, you will arrive at the free float and total float, then the critical path.


Charlie
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Wed, 2005-11-16 05:12
#5
Stuart Ness
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Interestingly, as part of my Claims Management Seminars, I get the attendees to make a Schedule of activities related to getting out of bed and going to work in the morning.

This can be at a Level 1,2 or 3, and can include milestones (alarm goes off; catch bus or train at specific time) and can include excusable delaying events (traffic jam) or inexcusable ones (sleep in due to late night before!). Float can be represented by waiting on a bus or train, and we can see how the float is consumed if the bus or train is late, thus impacting the critical path.

These exercises are great fun, but they underline the serious point that Gary correctly makes – it is all about logical thought processes of sequential events, and nothing about computers!

Now, where is my ironed shirt?? ;-)

Cheers,

Stuart

www.rosmartin.com
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Sun, 2005-11-13 18:33
#6
Alex Wong
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Dear All,

Planning is what I do everyday in everything. Thats call multi-tasking with a well though plan.

Once you master the skill, you can achieve more out of the date. Turn a 24hrs cycle into a 36hrs cycle (Thats why I can afford time to play very hard while I am working)

Good luck!

Alex
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Sat, 2005-11-12 04:02
#7
Gary France
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Thanks Brennan,

No, never considered being a shutdown planner, but I make darned good coffee!

Gary
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Sat, 2005-11-12 03:56
#8
Brennan Westworth
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hahaha nice example Garry

Have u ever considered becoming a shutdown planner?

:D
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Sat, 2005-11-12 03:43
#9
Gary France
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Pete,

I would start by getting them to recognise that all people do planning all of the time. Don’t go anywhere near a computer!

Get them to draw a network, or linked barchart (by hand) of something very simple and everyday. Personally, I like to use the example of making a cup of coffee - we all instinctively know that the critical path runs through boiling the kettle - we turn the kettle on first and while it is boiling, we get the cup, milk, spoon and sugar ready. Then, by using the analogy of waiting for the kettle to boil, you can introduce the concept of float.

In this way you can get your students to think about the process of planning, not the details of the exercise.

Gary
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Thu, 2005-11-10 20:31
#10
Clive Randall
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Charlie
What can I say
PLANNING DOES NOT HAVE TO INVOLVE P3
READ WHAT BRENAN GWEN ET AL HAVE SAID
If your audience are new teach them the basics
Identify that we all plan
What planning is is the method of pulling the thought process out and putting it on paper in a manner that others can follow.
Dare I say uniformly expressing a plan
Sorry for those who were deafened by my shouting.

Clive
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Wed, 2005-11-09 11:17
#11
Charleston-Joseph...
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Hello Pete,

You can follow the Primavera P3 Tutorial (maybe you need to ask permission from Primavera or you can follow the same line of thinking but different example).

Dont forget to go to the basics in Critical Path Method.

In my University days and teaching years way back 20 years ago, we usually prepared a CPM for a typical student daily life/activities. It will start like this:

Day start 4:00 AM

Act 01. Wake up then prepare for exercise. Dur=30 mins.
Act 02. Prepare Breakfat. Dur=30 mins.
Act 03. Exercise: Calisthenics and Jogging. Dur=2 hours.
Act 04. Shower: Dur=30 mins.
Act 05. Review notes for Examinations. Dur=2 hours
Act 06. Eat Breakdfat. Dur= 30 mins
Act 07. Get dressed and go to University.

and so on and so on

Act 40. Prepare to go to sleep. Dur= 30 mins
Day finish 10:00 PM

From this activities we prepared a CPM and get hold on what was our critical activities as students.

This was a very practical exercise and we did enjoy it considering that it was really very personal to us.

Eventually, the topics goes to construction including On-the job training in PERT/CPM.

I hope this will help.

Cheers,

Charlie


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Sun, 2005-11-06 18:54
#12
Alex Wong
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Dear All,

I was taught Marriage is not a project but getting married is. I think both are projects, only one that only last a day and the other last at least more than a day - for majority of the cases.

:)

Alex
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Thu, 2005-11-03 18:15
#13
Brennan Westworth
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Yeah, I think its good to get people thinking outside the square that activity and logic based planning techniques are only for construction projects.

My greatest accomplishment as a planner was completing my four year diploma in only three years by developing a schedule for my course (subjects with pre-requisites and co-requisites). Knowing my critical path i could make sure those subjects would be offered when i needed them.
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Thu, 2005-11-03 10:55
#14
Guy Hindley
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I often use as an exercise the Planning of a Holiday. Depending how the exercise is built it can cover Customer requirements, wbs, obs, network analysis, resources, etc. This, if well tutored can be very thought provoking and get people to consider all dependences, assumptions, risks,etc which all affect a planning within the real world.

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Thu, 2005-11-03 06:42
#15
Gwen Blair
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Course I went used the simplistic constrcution of a garage
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Thu, 2005-11-03 04:12
#16
Brennan Westworth
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as a first introduction to planning and scheduling I find it good to use an every day exercise such as getting to work in the morning or mowing the lawn, something that everyone can relate to. Start by listing the activivies, estimating the durations, developing the base logic, assigning resources and then fine tuning the schedule to remove resouce overload.
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Thu, 2005-10-20 17:00
#17
Larry Blankenship
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What scheduling tool are you using? If you aren’t tying to any particular tool, I’d suggest something very simple with no more than 20 or 25 tasks and examples of each type of dependency.

If you are using MS Project, I’d strongly recommend picking up Dyanimc Scheduling with MS Project 2003 by Eric Uyttewaal, which has a terrific example of a project included, and is really more about how to manage projects than how to use MS Project.

Larry
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