NUMBER OF ACTIVITIES

Hi vlad,



How quickly can you get me a demo copy, I am on a linear project with possibly 150 000 activities.



Regards



Philip

Yes, it can.

We use it in building construction projects using floors metrics and in pipelines using km’s.

X-axis - km, Y-axis - time, different activity types are reflected as the lines of different colors and/or thickness in the diagram. These lines (curves) show where and when each type of work shall be done (or had been done).

Send me a letter to [email protected] with your E-mail address and I will send back the screen shot of Linear Diagram as we call Line of Balance.

Regards,

Vladimir

Hi Vlad,



Tell me if your Spider project can do line of balance, or distance vs time

And what, do tell Charlie, is N?



And, if we are working in UK, can we multiply USD by .5704 so we can work in GBP?



With regard to K, does a bad relationship with the Client result in a larger or smaller number of activities?

Hello,



This time I agree with Alex and Vladimir.



More on Vladimir since he did more than 40,000 activities with matching simulations (as Vladimir stated in his previous post) using Spider for some structures during the Moscow games.



The number of activities is directly proportional to the amount of the construction project (in USD) (IMHO and hypothesis) multiplied by a factor of K (a constant depends on the planners attitude, extent of relationship with the client) divided by N.



Cheers,



Charlie

And what’s the next Activity?





Thank You.

Vladimir



100% agreed, fit the purposes is most important.



Cheers



Alex

No, the number of activities does not depend on the project structure. It depends on the schedule purpose. If you need performance simulation that shows impacts of resources to be used, supply and financing delays, etc. you will need the same network model. But you can use different WBS, OBS, RBS.

I think the last respondent who spoke sense was Clive. The number of activities you can handle and update, is dependant on how you structure your project. There has always been this question of how many activities a planner can handle, and the argument revolves around this issue. People independently have different ideas, and it varies between 700 and 500 000, but GF who proposes himself as the major planner seems to think in the order of 1000. There is a lot of factors which contribute, such as the duration of the project, cost etc.



The level of experience will dictate what any planner can handle. Therefore the argument becomes relatively ignonanimice. The point is if you drive a VW Polo, or a SAAB, or SABURA, what is the perfomance. If you doubt yourself and lsck the experience, you will never be able to complete a project on time, which is what we are employed for in the first place.

Thanks Bernard,



I was confused by Edgars reference to me in his last post. Scrolling down, I can see he meant your quotation.



its been a long day....



All is clear now.



Gary.

Perhaps my quote added some confusion? Edgar, it’s from Douglas Adam’s superb work: The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything



Bernard Ertl

eTaskMaker Project Planning Software

Edgar,



I am really struggling to understand your point. Perhaps it’s time to call a halt to this!



Gary

What do you mean Mr. France?...that we’re only Human & not Machines? And they’ve been working on that for "seven & a half million years"?...



And maybe the reason why planning is endless...because of the Number of Activities...?



And what can we do as plain Human? Rely on Machines?



Well, I got some kind of religion too...





have a nice day to everyone...

Hi Raja,



If you can protect your employer and yourselves with 20 activities then manage your programme using the 20 activities. If you are just being forced to use it, i don’t think that would be beneficial for you and your organization. Again I say, this is about the programme should respond to the organizational needs. Number is just secondary. Of course i’m not discounting politics(covering your as#) in the work place. This is still part of organizational needs.



If only we can always do it that way(20,42,50 activities) ..... how i wish.



Cheers,

Se

Hi Mr Leon,

U never know where the basis come from, If u dont go for CLIENTS Management meeting, U know somthing, last time I nearly got fired because asking for the basis of 20 activities, where it come from? Now i did understand, They didnt care about how u got the basis, critical path, manpwer, once u already dicide the commence date they will stated in minutes of meeting, and thats the date we have to commit with the Goverment. The only basis i know its related with dollar and cents they will try to achieve as per their target.

But in my brain still have so many question... Puzzle if i keep thinking of my 35000 activities is no relation at all with this 20 activities. Thats all...my nightmares history

Dear all



The following is my attempt interpret the query



What Se mentioned in terms of critical path, risk analysis, delay claims ... IMHO they are project management activities. Yes of course it is a matter where the contractor has to manage his project. That is a detail level program (usually refer to L3 or L4 schedule)



What Gary I think is refers to is a L1 or L2 schedule where the client is manage multi projects at a portfolio and programme level. Of course they will still need to have a details breakdown schedule for project management elsewhere. However, to manage a portfolio, they will need a wider view more than a deeper view in order to manage a portfolio



Therefore there is no correct answer to how many activities is enough for a schedule. IMHO it is more important to see whether the schedule is fit the purposes and achieve the outcomes.



As I stated in my previous post, in order to manage a project you need to cover all the different aspects of projects or program or portfolio and if some of the aspect is already manage outside the schedule, then there is no point to replicate the management effort and incorporate these details into the every schedule.



An example is procurement, if the detail of all the equipment is already managed in a Master Procurement Plan elsewhere, there is no point to load all equipment, plant and resource into your schedule and try to replicate the complete picture. However, if there is no such schedule existed then if the PM wanted, you can put all the equipment in your schedule like date ordered, manufactured shipped, arrived, arrived on site...



If you see a schedule without these detail of procurement then should you said it is insufficient number of activities or not??



HTH



Alex

Hi Gary,



I tried to go back to the previous postings(#88) because i feel i may have missed some views then i chanced upon one of your comments i.e.



"This inevitably leads to a different type of planning – one where hugely detailed programmes are not required. Many of the postings in PP are about clients approving programmes, claims, who owns the float, etc. These are appropriate for the more traditional ways of working, but are simply irrelevant for the more recent ways of working."



Could you elaborate on the term traditional and recent ways of working?



I’m just wondering how would a client work or manage a 50 or 42 activity project. How can he manage claims, how can he show critical path which is very important if the client wants to make sure that the project would finish for his business requirements. Let’s say the project is in delay, how can he know if the catch up plan is viable,doable,realistic...



Let’s face it, many clients does not really want to go into details because most clients view projects on a high level, business, operation aspect. While contractors view it on a contractual, profit view, lean scheduling, savings etc. etc. etc.



As i said in my last post, it all depends on on how you want the programme to respond to your organizational needs.



Personally, if i would work again for a client side, i would strongly suggest to manage the programme with sufficient details for me to protect the interest of my employer.



Cheers,

Se

Well said Bernard,



Paul Silver

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?"



"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is."

Bernard Ertl

eTaskMaker Project Planning Software

Edgar,



There is no correct answer. How many activities go into a schedule that is of a good quality depends on the individual circumstances of the project. As I said in post #88 in this thread “For me, a programme of 50 activities might be absolutely the correct level of detail. Similarly, 40,000 activities might also the correct level. There is no right and wrong, but there are nearly always different circumstances.”



I am not saying 50 or 40,000 or indeed any number of activities is right or wrong.



Sorry I cannot answer your question more definitively, but I don’t think there is an answer that will be right for all circumstances.



Gary

I understand Stacy that he got a cool place too...but the chairman of the PEO still did not answer if how many number of activities really represents a Quality Schedule...?

Hi Gary,



If only projects can be managed with 50 activities, then we don’t need these expensive project management softwares. But unfortunately it’s not the case most of the time specially for a contractor on a huge let’s say for $2Billion project.



Yes I agree with you that some clients prefer a high level program but that is for the client’s use. But not all clients does this. For a contractor , who is very much interested on how many bags of cement he needs to bring to the site on a certain period in order that his warehouse will not overflow with materials, in this case a detailed schedule is very important. Another example is how can you know how many resources you need on a certain period if you don’t detail your schedule with real activities and resources. Some people call this lean scheduling. In my experience, it’s easier to prepare a claim if the schedule is "properly" detailed. Even for the client side, they need a deatiled programme to protect themselves from unnecessary claims payment.



In summary, for me this issue of making a detailed programme or not boils down to how you want the programme respond to your needs.



Cheers,



Se

Edgar,



Are you saying that 50 activities cannot be managed, or are not worthy of being managed?



If so, I think you might be missing the point. Try not to think of the 50 activities each being small. The situation could be that those 50 activities represent a huge volume of work. Imagine those each of those 50 activities representing, say, a building each in a clients portfolio of projects. Each building is only represented a single line because that is all the client wants - they only want to see when each building will be constructed or refurbished, so they can see the impact on their business and how they will have to move the staff around to suit.



The client is not interested in the detailed construction programmes - they simply want to see how the construction will fit their business plan.



I think that you can then see how a 50 activity programme does need to be managed!



Remember, detailed programmes of thousands of activities are not always the answer!



Gary

Management of what? 50 - number of activities? You call it management?

Edgar, they are both cool places. The topic was started at pmkb before Vladimir’s post, so I mentioned it.



Gary, I’m not on the PMI Practice Standard Team. As far as I know, PMI is not publishing details of the development process. I started a discussion to find out what people think should be done.



Stacy

Participate in the Project Management Knowledge Base!

continue...

the detail schedule it is.. the more risk u can see, somtimes support, base plate, underground piping hydrotest,and etc. is most overlook items which frequently forgoten even 10-15 years experience engineer... its seem like fresh graduate engineer. So with the detail schedule following priority system / Area is the best to identify activities is ready or not... I do prefer Thousand activities for construction. ...I can say 50 activities is for Management....

Hi Stacy,



I am a little lost!



The link you provided takes us to a forum where people are complaining that not much is happening on the PMI Practice Standard of Scheduling, quoting it to be disappointing and that there are a few key individuals that are developing the document.



Clicking further, I found the Project Charter for the Practice Standard of Scheduling, which is dated March 2003. This is obviously quite an old document, but there is very little else on the website that says anything at all about where this is currently at.



Perhaps you can enlighten us on exactly what is happening with this? What progress has been made?



Wouldn’t making a copy of it available to planners via PP or the PEO be a useful step? - that way a lot of people can comment on it.



Gary

What do you mean Raja? They are looking for a Quality Schedule...what is that?



Can anyone define a Quality Schedule? (please?)

Hi,

No matter what type and how many activities, as long u can interprete the schedule logically can be understand, as per job method,following BQ...i can say its acceptable, its the same as design drawing as long u can gave the image and the scale correctly, its no problem.

Why not do it here pkmb (superman)? this place is cool...

Let’s do the next step and define what is the schedule quality (maybe in other thread).



Isn’t that what the PMI Practice Standard for Scheduling is trying to achieve? Follow the link if you are interested in discussing elements/essentials for schedule quality.



Stacy

Participate in the Project Management Knowledge Base!

Are P3 developers not reasonable enough to create a program that can hold a 100,000 activities or even more???





have a good time everyone.....

Hi everyone,



I totally agree with you Gary,the number of activities is not a sufficient indication of a good detailed and structured schedule...

Recently, I got to review a schedule of more than 5 thousand activities for a tower building...I found out that it was built up with a copy & paste of 1 typical floor, repeated in all 30 floors of the building...It was a catastrophic schedule and I prefered having 50 well done activities instead of these 5,000...

Also, I find ridiculous to see in offer advertisement for Planning jobs, to seek for Planners who can manage more than "x" thousands of activities and level "y" of schedules...These numbers of activities and levels should not be considered as a unit of measuring proffesionalism and competency of Planners...The situation gets more funny when Planners are competing with each others in finding out who did the longer schedule or to which extent the WBS was broken down; may be we’ll put the winner in Guiness Book...If Software gives you the opportunity to have thousands of activties, this does not mean that it enforces you to increase your number of activities...

Usually, Contractors submit a preliminary schedule after a short period from the start of the Project...This schedule will be reviewed and get the consent from the Engineer/the Client...It is only after getting enough information (i.e. E/M), new inputs, different conditions, new strategy, etc. that the Contractor is asked to develop and detail more the consented schedule, therefore increasing number of activities...It is up to Engineer/Client to specify the areas or disciplines to be more elaborated as it is not always to the benefit of the Contractor to detail more and add his activities...



Regards,

J.S. Daniel

Vladimir,



I agree with most of what you say.



My company has been working with some very experienced clients over the last 10 – 15 years – mainly property developers who do often answer the sort of questions you suggest. They often do want to know what will happen if another crane is utilised, or more labour. However, I do agree that in most circumstances they don’t try to answer these types of questions themselves. They ask them of the project manager, the construction manager, or the main contractor and even sometimes the sub-contractors.



I would also agree with you that the clients schedule is usually used for contract administration and project financing management. However, client schedules are often used for much more – for overall control of and progress reporting for a number of related projects for example. Some clients are very capable of programming!



Sometimes, we also have to think beyond the normal client / contractor relationship – for some aspects of the construction industry in the UK (where most of my experience is) those traditional relationships are long gone and much more integrated contractual relationships are in use. I wouldn’t say this is commonplace, but it does reflect the general trend in UK construction to meet the desire by all involved to work much more as an integrated team.



This inevitably leads to a different type of planning – one where hugely detailed programmes are not required. Many of the postings in PP are about clients approving programmes, claims, who owns the float, etc. These are appropriate for the more traditional ways of working, but are simply irrelevant for the more recent ways of working. This is why I feel it is sometimes necessary to comments on postings that are so forthright, such as Charlie’s “Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation”. Whilst it might be correct given a particular set of circumstances, it is clearly wrong given other arrangements.



For me, a programme of 50 activities might be absolutely the correct level of detail. Similarly, 40,000 activities might also the correct. There is no right and wrong, but there are nearly always different circumstances.



I totally accept your point that the repetitive use of strings of activities makes the production of programmes not too time consuming. It is a way of working that most planners have probably used many times, me included!



Regards.



Gary.

Charlie,



There you go making presumptions in your posting that are ill-informed and wrong.



You say that I have not done this kind of planning detail because of the nature of my work. What qualifies you to say this? You simply don’t know what I type of planning I have done.



Please do not cast doubts on anybodies planning experience, including mine, unless you are very sure of your facts.



For the record, I have produced programmes of 40,000 activities. Despite the fact that you obviously believe I have not worked for a contractor, I have.



There are many different ways of planning – each is dependant upon the particular circumstances. A programme of 50 activities can be just as valid as one with 40,000.



Regards,



Gary.

Gary, you wrote that "The quantity of activities in a programme is not the only judge of its quality". I agree - it is not enough. Let’s do the next step and define what is the schedule quality (maybe in other thread).

I think that the good schedule shall help to answer any what if question ... And thus it shall contain as many activities as necessary for project performance simulation. As Charlie noted in his post these questions are different for the client and for the contractor and this defines the requirements to the model.

The client will not ask questions like what if I will buy additional 100 m2 of frames or add the worker to some construction crew, or will use one crane instead of another. And besides contractor schedule is used for setting each shift tasks.

Client schedule is ussually used for contract administration and project financing management. It will have less details but will help to answer the questions like what money are needed at any moment and how to organize project works in accordance with the financial limitations.

From my own practice - approximately 5000 activities schedule describes the construction of one 12 floors building for the contractor. And creating this schedule is not too complicated and time consuming if to use the library of the typical project fragnets, project databases and predefined crews for resource assignments. A lot of activities in this schedule are repetitive.

Regards,

Vladimir

Hi Gary,



Please consider the basis of my opinion, the project description.



You have not done this kind of planning details because of the nature of your work.



But I did because I work in the contractor side.



If you were not there, then, you don’t know.



Ask Vladimir, he did more than 40,000 activities with matching simulations.



Cheers,



Charlie

To whom it may concern:



I understand that the subject being tackled here is the total NUMBER OF ACTIVITIES. I just want to know if there is any ideal quantity that applies to certain projects (i.e. Buildings, Oil & Gas, Heavy Civils, Railways, Power Plants, Design & Procurement, etc.)?



If the answer will depend on each individual Contract, would that mean Contract Deliverables? What I’m trying to find out (if you’ll allow me) is the most accurate number of activities to be used in your planning considering quality & simplicity of its output.



In Planning, will you consider Quantity as parallel to Quality? As you go through the smallest possible detail, would that mean you’ll get the most accurate output?



And what is the ideal time needed for the preparation of an ideal Plan? And what are the ideal resources needed to prepare it as well?



Well, sometimes in reality, I believe that all you need to do is Planning through the speed of human thought.



just an honest and humble opinion (HAHO), HO, HO, HO...



i’m looking for Santa Claus as well, I would like to nominate him as one of the Planning Immortals...if anybody sees him, you already knew what to do....



cheers,...(ahh..just to eliminate hang-overs)

Charlie,



I am truly staggered by your comments in post #69…



“Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation”.



And



“For 50 activities, it will be a planning catastrophe. Planning with below 5,000 activities is playing or horsing around. Planning with more than 20,000 activities is reasonable”.



Whilst I fully accept that some situations need to have an enormous number of activities on their schedules / programmes, it must be wrong to say that planning with less than 5000 activities is playing or horsing around. Consider the person who develops the overall first schedule/programme on a project. They are trying to establish the overall timeframe and constraints for the project and often this needs to be done very quickly. Under these circumstances, which some might consider to be the most important or influential stage in developing a programme, it would be near impossible to develop 5,000 activities. In fact, this amount would render the purpose of the programme to be lost – that is, to rapidly communicate the overall timescale and stages of a project.



Often planners do produce 50 activity programmes. They do so deliberately and carefully, for that is exactly what is required.



Please try to be a little more considered in your postings! The quantity of activities in a programme is not the only judge of its quality.



Gary.

edgar,



Sorry bro for the misinterpretation, yup that’s what I mean you can only show 3 bars, 1 for current & 2 for targets

Multi target



In P3e you can display unto 1 current and 3 baseline schedule and attach 50 different baseline for comparison



Cheers



Alex

Thank You.

We recommend to set at least four targets:

1) Project Team Target - very tight, optimistic.

2) Project Management Team Target that includes calculated contingency reserve.

3) Management Target that includes both contingency and management reserves.

4. Contract Target that includes profit or any other additional reserves.

Spider Projet can show at the same lines of the Gantt Chart:

1) critial schedule - backward schedule from the Project Management Team target dates,

2) current schedule and

3) any other schedule that is chosen to compare with. One option - baseline schedule, but you can also compare with the project schedule that existed in any time in the past (week ago, month ago, etc.) or any other target schedule.

So at any time you can see at the same lines only three schedules and not more.

You can also see trends of any project parameters like cost, finish date, success probabilities for all targets you defined, etc. at the diagrams below the Gantt Chart.

Regards,

Vladimir

Rolyn, You can create as many targets as you like, but you can only compare two (2) plans at the same time. I don’t know if Spider can do more...?

To Clive Randall:

Excuse me for the late reply, I was abroad where had limited access to the Internet.

You are absolutely right. In most long projects it does not make sense to plan in details what will be done on the coming years. And yes, pipeline construction projects usually have necessary documentation before construction phase is started.

In the long projects we use rolling wave approach and not only because we don’t have enough information about future works but also for making the model less complex. Even if it is easy to simulate future works it is not practical. For an example in the construction of high buildings we simulated the influence of schedule deviations in the current floor to the schedules of higher floors construction. Usually after 4 or 5 floors the influence of these deviations becomes vary low. So we plan in details the construction of the nearest 5 floors and other floors exist in the model as corresponding activities linked with the detailed schedule. The size of the model is growing with time but the number of activities that are planned in details remains near the same. To the end of the project you will have the largest model.

In pipeline construction you need to plan which resources will be needed at any time because these resources are heavy and expensive and shall be moved to the construction site. It makes sense to simulate the whole construction in details as soon as the necessary information is available.

Regards,

Vladimir

hi,



Why try to complicate things??? you can only have two targets... don’t mix recovery plan with your current update it will be a mess

Hi Raja & Bill,



Is it possible to show four (4) bars in a row in your 15K-activity plan?



1st bar - current (updated)



2nd bar - target (updated)



3rd bar - plain target



4th bar - recovery schedule



in any planning tool please??? (not drafting tool)



p.s. I have to ask this in the other section but it was locked by another bar....

Hi guys,



do less, work smart....do more, much more smart er.

Dead right Bill - K.I.S.S.





REGARDS



DAR

Planning need detailed activities to get hold of the overall situation.



In building works, the plan can have a simple fragnet of ten activities per floor.



This fragnet can easily generate thousand of activities the moment it will be distributed into zone-by-zone, area-by-area, level-by-level approach in work breakdown structure.



You can imagine this if you will start planning for more than 15 numbers of mopre than 15-storey high towers clustered in an 8 level basement, with bored piling foundation including dewatering, hybrid or composite structures of steel and concrete, with first class architectural interior finishes and exterior finishes (interior: marble tiles, capentry works, etc. and exterior: stone cladding and aluminium cladding).



For 50 activities, it will be a planning catastrophe. Planning with below 5,000 activities is playing or horsing around. Planning with more than 20,00 activities is reasonable.



Regards,