Project Scheduling Rules, a free ebook

This free 45-page eBook is a collection of 19 essential rules, based on PMI and DoD standards and codes, which I find very important and useful. I tried to explain the reason behind each one and the way you can apply them in your schedules.

You can find more information and the download link here: http://en.khorramirad.info

TOC:

Rule 01: Document the Scheduling Methodology
Rule 02: The Schedule Should Have a Complete Scope
Rule 03: Be Careful with Level-of-Effort Activities
Rule 04: Activities Should Have Unique Names
Rule 05: Activity Names should have a verb
Rule 06: Each Activity Should Have at Least One Predecessor and One…
Rule 07: Activities should not be Dangling
Rule 08: Most Relationships should be FS
Rule 09: Try not to Use SF Relationship
Rule 10: You should not Use Large Lags
Rule 11: Use Lags as Less as Possible
Rule 12: Be Careful with Leads
Rule 13: Be Careful with Negative Floats
Rule 14: Activities should not Have Large Floats
Rule 15: Do not Split Activities
Rule 16: Do not Use a Lot of Date Constraints
Rule 17: Make Milestones for Date Constraints
Rule 18: Activities should not have Large Durations
Rule 19: Use Only One Duration Unit

Planning, Scheduling & Programming Discussion

Samba Siva Rao 👤 Member for 15 years 11 months

Sat, 2012-06-23 08:32 · Permalink

Hi Devaux,

I have seen your post here and I must say that it's perfectly right on what you have said.

Can you please explain me in detail,

Rule 20: Know the Value/Cost of Time on the Project, Is this Value of a Project?

Rule 22: Know the Doubled Resource Estimated Duration (DRED) or the Crash Duration of all CP activities and use them to optimize the schedule, How we will calculate this?

Thanks,

Samba

Nader K. Rad 👤 Member for 19 years 5 months

Sun, 2012-02-26 08:44 · Permalink

Dear Stephen;

Thanks for the comment. I would be happy to know that you’ve downloaded the ebook; donations are not as important as connecting to other professionals and having their feedback. It would also be great if you introduce it to your clients and students.

I thought about the start and finish milestones and finally, decided not to issue it as a rule and just explained it in another related rule.
I’ve used “be careful” instead of “you should”, where rules have some level of tolerance. If you have a better sentence, please let me know; I’m not fluent in English :)
rule 07 is stronger than rule 06 and covers it. I’ve presented them in two different rules just because rule 06 is unavoidable, but rule 07 has a little tolerance. They are also in two different levels of professionalism.
about the splitting, I’m afraid that we are using “splitting” in two different meanings. Are you talking about decomposing the activity into two or more separate activities? What I mean by splitting is to keep having “one” activity, and add a pause and resume period to it (PMI and DoD use the word in the same way).
I tried hard, to limit these rules to abstract rules of planning and did not cover any concrete planning rules or rules directly related to control/maintenance/tracking area. However, I would start collecting and presenting rules for those areas later.

Thanks again

Yours

- Nader Khorrami Rad, PMP

jun sarvida 👤 Member for 14 years 5 months

Sun, 2012-02-19 12:03 · Permalink

Thank You Engr. Nader

Stephen Devaux 👤 Member for 21 years 2 months

Thu, 2012-02-16 16:25 · Permalink

One more: in general, I feel it's good practice to start the schedule with a single milestone or activity (source) and finish it similarly (sink). I'm not sure it rises to the level of a Rule: maybe a guideline?

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

James Williams 👤 Member for 17 years 4 months

Thu, 2012-02-16 16:20 · Permalink

Hi,

This is a good starting list, thanks for sharing it.

Regards.

Stephen Devaux 👤 Member for 21 years 2 months

Thu, 2012-02-16 16:21 · Permalink

Hi, Nader. Good job, I think! I appreciate the effort, as last week I had been asked by a client to put together a similar checklist! I especially like Rules 04, 05, 10, and 19.

Without downloading the ebook (which I won't do because I don't think I should without making a donation), it's hard to know exactly what you mean by some of these (for example, 01, 02, 03, 12, 13, and 18.): what does "Be Careful with" mean, exactly?

I'd change Rule 06 to: "Each Activity's start Should Have at Least One Predecessor and Each Activity's Finish Should Have at Least One Successor." This would also obviate the need for Rule 07 (Dangling Activities).

I absolutely disagree with Rule 15 -- splitting of activities should never be done unthinkingly, but it can be VERY important to split activities that have an FF or SF predecessor, especially if they also have an SS or SF successor. Not doing this can lead to the Reverse Critical Path Anomaly, and delay the project for no reason other than the software's algorithm. Perhaps you could change Rule 15 to "Do not Split Activities Unthinkingly"?

I would add a couple more rules:

Rule 20: Know the Value/Cost of Time on the Project.

Rule 21: Strongly discourage doing out-of-sequence work. First, the schedule must be changed.

Rule 22: Know the Doubled Resource Estimated Duration (DRED) or the Crash Duration of all CP activities and use them to optimize the schedule.

Rule 23: Know the Critical Path Drag (if you don't know what this is, read this current Defense AT&L article) of all activities, their Drag Costs (see Rule 20) and their True Costs (True Cost = Resource Cost plus Drag Cost).

But overall, I feel you did a very nice job. If you like, I'd be happy to mention your ebook download site to clients and students. (But, like me, they probably won't donate anything!)

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

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