When building your activity network, the following items are considered [[Best Practice]]...
PLEASE ADD TO, OR AMEND THIS LIST...
- All tasks / activities have [[predecessor]] and [[successor]]
- All tasks / activities have at least one [[Finish-to-Start]] successor
- Resources are assigned to tasks / activities and not summary activities
- Milestones do not have resources / budget (a milestone does not have scope)
- Thou shall not have negative lag on a task / activity. Most people are pretty soft on that, but general opinion is that negative lag predicts the future with certainty and that is poor logic
- GoldyLocks was right - tasks are not too long or too short, they have to be "just right" in duration. You have to decide what that means and set sensible / justifiable durations. ( Quantiies & Norms will help you achieve the correct duration and the addition of available personnel to complete the task will help finalise the duration)
- Too much positive lag on a task probably indicates missing tasks
- Constraint types: You want them to be As Soon As Possible as much as you can. [[Start-No-Earlier-Than]], [[Finish-As-Late-As-Possible]], and [[Finish-No-Earlier-Than]] are tolerable. Items like [[Must-Finish-On]], [[Must-Start-On]], [[Finish-No-Later-Than]], [[Start-No-Later-Than]] are pretty much not a good thing.
- Constraints in the programme should not limit, or affect, the [[CPM]] analysis of the network
- Check your logic
- Avoid the open ends in the programe
- Every activity gets a [[baseline]]