On a scale of (perfectly ok) 1 - 10 (Never) - How bad is it to change activity ID's on large projects...I am reviewing a large project and the contractor has changed 500 of the 2200 activity IDs. I is a job that they are strugling with creating a schedule for and there are constant and many changes. They are changing the ID's to follow their revised WBS. I personally would never embed codes in ID's for this reason, its fine if you re-do the same type of work, but not for quick new unique schedule developments. The reason why I feel it is "9" is because you cannot compare to baselines or prior months (easily). Before I tell them they have to put 500 activity ID's back I thought I would ask the community their opinion - what your opinion? (ps, it has negative float, thus a re-baseline is unlikely - which might be the only way it could be allowed.)
On a scale of (perfectly ok) 1 - 10 (Never) - How bad is it to change activity ID's on large projects...
Forum Sponsor
Top Posters
Josephus Enot
1 posts
Julian Pegg
1 posts
Peter Nagy
2 posts
Raymund de Laza
17 posts
Syed_Asad
0 posts
Tony Greyvenstein
0 posts
Ahmed Al-Jubouri
13 posts
Umar Alvi
3 posts
Sibusiso Mahlalela
0 posts
Michael Samanyayi
3 posts
10 you loose all compairions and all accountability this is a technique that sometimes people use on projects so that a direct compairson can not be made.
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it. Plus it is cool to hear words not used here in Chicago...such as rubbish. As for the changing of jobs, I heard that same advice from another scheduler that same day...
Stand by while I get up on the highest horse I can find........
Forty years at computerised project management tells me that the only requirement for an Activity ID is that it does not change during the life of a project. Embedding “intelligence” in the numbering system is an obsolete mid-twentieth century way of overcoming the lack of coding structures in our primitive PM systems. And as for WBS – most WBS obsessives are saddled with a mid-twentieth century accounts system that has imposed a financial coding system on the Project Controls department that is about as much use for projects as a list of the GL codes.
The machinations of your contractor give an excellent clue to the American rubbish of an accounts system they are only now discovering doesn’t really support WBS as a separate code at all – just an extension to the activity ID. My advice – change jobs.
My score is 11.