NUMBER OF ACTIVITIES

Hi Stephen!

Glad to meet you here.

I agree with all you wrote, thank you for support.

I think that it may be of interest to discuss in details (not in this thread) schedule optimization criteria. You mentioned the cost of the delay. Usually we implement this approach - schedule is optimized taking into account cost of the day of finish delay.

Vladimir

A comment re number of activities:



I am surprised that no one (Vladimir?) mentioned nuclear power plant refueling outages. In the U.S., a typical outage will take between 25 and 40 days. And the schedule will typically include 15,000 - 25,000 activities. Needless to say, "one week duration limits" do not apply -- their durations are estimated in units of quarter hours, i.e., a two hour activity will be entered as 8 quarter hours. And every eight-hour shift is a reporting period.



New automobile projects (5 years) will be planned with over 30,000 activities, and new military aircraft with over 100,000 activities. But the quality of scheduling in the U.S., is nowhere better than in the nuclear power industry, probably due to the fact that every day offline costs the plant between $500,000 and $1,500,000. This is quite an incentive to have the best possible schedule.



Interestingly, on pharmaceutical projects, despite the cost of lost patent protection being estimated at over $1,000,000 per day, project planning is very immature. There will be perhaps only 5,000 activities in a five-year project, often with no resource loading.



In large software implementations (e.g., ERP systems) at corporate, government, or university sites, one might have as few as 400 activities for a two-year, $10,000,000 implementation. (Indeed, it is possible that nothing gets planned at all!)



In general, in the above discussion, I agree completely with the comments of Vladimir (Hi, Vladimir!) and Sigfredo -- the number of activities a project needs to allow for maximization of the project investment is the number it needs; no more, no less. I would only like to add to Sigfredo’s four basic questions:



5. Has the schedule’s detail been sufficient to allow optimization of project value through intelligent schedule compression techniques?



6. When a variance occurs, is there sufficient detail to allow quick recognition, measurement, and ability to see, measure and understand potential mitigation measures?

Vladimir,



Sorry for the late response, as i dont have time to read the forum everyday, especially if you are managing 40,000 activities in your hands. (just kidding Vladimir) Leveling is essential when you are working with a contractor. This is a necessary exercise both for the commercial side and the practical side of construction, of course nobody wants big bumps and sudden drops. An ideal schedule should be smooth and efficient. Efficient use of resources should be a must excercise in planning.



Regards,

Daniel

Thank you for the link, I will follow it up. I am interested in what you have to say on performance simulation, but agree a new thread is now appropriate.



Cheers,



Allan

Spider Project is Russian software. You can try its Demo downloading from http://www.spiderproject.ru/enter.php?ver=prof&lang=eng

I can describe some additional features of Open Plan and Spider Project useful for true project performance simulation but I don’t think that it is proper in this thread.

Regards,

Vladimir

Thanks Vladimir,



I havent used Spider Project or Open Plan, so I would not argue with your conclusions on this. I have never even heard of Spider Project...who is the developer?



Cheers,

Allan

Thank you, Philip.

I’ll try.

Vladimir

HI VLAD<

KEEP YOUR COOOL

Allan,

I agree that resource levelling is not wide spread. It is much easier to create high level schedules and suggest site managers to make it real. Resource loaded schedules are in use in the companies where top management knows what to demand from the project planners and project management software.

I don’t agree with your statement that P3 is the only credible software for dealing with resources. Open Plan has more capabilities and our Spider Project is much more powerful and functional. But P3e and MS Project are not reliable and sometimes produce funny results (especially MS Project).

I think that real project management (and any kind of management) is resource management. And project management software is properly used when it simulates project performance and is able to answer any of what if question. Besides it shall try to optimize resource usage. And what I don’t like in P3, Open Plan and other PM software that is used by most project planners in this forum - these packages don’t even try to optimize resource constrained schedules. They chose easy solution - to suggest their users to choose any levelling criteria and that’s all. Spider Project tries to use computer power to calculate better schedules and usually its resource constrained schedules are much shorter than produced by other planning software. Another problem that is ignored by P3 - taking into consideration financial and supply constraints (cost and material levelling is not supported).



In few words - resource constrained schedules are rare and usually they show the maturity of the project management in the organization especially when it used on the portfolio level.



You are right that this discussion may belong to a separate thread.



Vladimir

Sigfredo,



I currently work as a consultant, mostly in claims and disputes. I have worked in both client and contractor sides of the fence, and agree with what you say about level of detail.



Vladimir,



I also level resources, but not on every project. It depends on a few things. Firstly on the software. I think P3 is the only credible software for dealing with resources, and I am happy to use it for levelling. I have tried the same with Powerproject/ Teamplan and find it to have some horrendous glitches, and will not use it to level resources. It does have other great strengths and is superior to P3 graphically.



For highly time critical projects like process plant turnaround, I will go to great detail with resources, and level accordingly. For smaller projects that are not too complex (where it is appropriate) I will often not apply resources.



Through working in project management and disputes I have witnessed many companies (large and small) approach to planning. Although several of us on this forum use resource functions, I have very rarely seen other planners use this technique. Do you think this is representative in your experience?



What are your experiences of different types of software for working with resources?



I realise that this is now drifting away from the thread title of ’Number of Activities’. I’m not sure if this should now become a new thread....or is it just accepted as an evolution of the existing one?

Sigfred and Philip,

I think that leveling is a key to this discussion. You cannot decide what number of activities is needed if it is necessary to simulate resource work. If your goal is to create project schedule that takes into account resource, financing and supply restrictions then the number of schedule activities is dictated by technologies you need to simulate and it is not a subject for discussions.

Vladimir

Hi Vladimir/Sigfredo,



It is dependant on the project, but wherever possible I prefer resource levelling. The one problem is that when you do resource levelling you must only use true logic, and this is not always possible when you work with higher level schedules ie level 3-1. My personal preference always is to work at level 4, but this is not always possible, like in the instance where you are the managing contractor and have to rely on level 4 schedules by the contractors and sub-contrractors, in which case I always insist on resource levelling on their part.



Regards,



Philip

Vladimir,



Yes I do level. Some of the reasons are:



1. To finalize the execution program.

2. I used the resource leveling report to use it as basis to prepare the manpower schedule, equipment and procurement schedule.

3. To make resource "what if" scenarios.



I think this is one thing that differentiate scheduling/strategic planners with scheduling/strategic/resource planners.



Some people tend to think that resource planning is microplanning. I don’t think so. This is where the added value comes in for planners.

"Of course a good schedule should be resource loaded."



This is what makes schedules large.

If you need to advise what resources are necessary at any point in time, what can be achieved with the limited resources you have, your schedule will not be small.

I repeat - the number of activities in your schedule do not depend on your wishes, it depends on the project complexity and the tasks you need to solve.



One question to discussion participants - do you level resources in your schedules?

As a guideline, a good program/schedule should include the following:



> The programme should reflect the full scope of work.

> Contractual Milestones, Key Dates and interfaces with other contracts

> Statutory permits and licensing.

> Submissions and approval process (Shop Drwgs, Materials, Etc.)

> Procurement, manufacture and delivery of Materials, especially long lead items.(including owner supplied materials)

> Any special items of complexity

> Test and adjust



Of course a good schedule should be resource loaded. These should include your basis and assumptions and as a minimum it should include quantities and production rates for major commodities and the resources required to achieved those rates.



Now going back to the number of activities issue, as long as you have covered the above as a minimum, then you have a good program. In project management, different levels of people focus on different levels of goals or sub-goals. As a Planner or should I say a good Planner should focus on major goals and give a chance and let others worry about the sub-goals. It’s simply impossible to be succesful if you try and apply micro-managing and micro-scheduling in your project. Let everyone do their share, be creative and innovative and keep them focus on the major goals.



Cheers,

Daniel

Hi Allan,



Are you working for client/owner or for a construction company? Certainly I would agree with you that clients prefer a not so detailed plans but if you’re working for a contractor, there’s really a huge difference on how I prepare a programme. As what I’ve stated in my earlier posts, planning depends on what you expect will be the questions to you. The number of activities is not really an issue but it depends on the capability of the planner to make huge amount of data simpler to be understood.



Cheers,

Sigfred

Phillip,



My comment on data input technicians was not scathing. That is unfair. I was merely commenting that vast programmes need someone dedicated to track them full time. That person probably cannot also attend all meetings, interface with the team individuals, and attend site as well. That is not to say that a planning technician to do such data input does not have a place.



I think we can reasonably agree to disagree. I did state that in my original post that there is an element of judgement call in selecting the number of activities.



Tot siens,



Allan

Hi Allan,



I think you are missing the point, and find your scathing remark about engineers and technicians not funny at all.



What I am talking about is lets say for example you have three drawings out of the 6000, that is for one type of electrical sub-station, building works, and there is fifteen of this type of substation, how would you track these with a couple of activities? It is not about the number of drawings, but about the amount of physical work, the amount of resources required, etc. that is required to effect the work represented on the drawings.



I understand the difference between the so-called planning technicians you are talking about, ie the organised and capable planners, and obviously their opposites. Think for yourself.



Regards



Philip

In response to Phillip, I understand we have diferent aproaches to planning. Your approach is clearly that with 6000 drawings there needs to be a corresponding amount of tasks. In fact I have found even in complex fabrications that QA/QC Dept, and CAD unit manage all the drawings. As a planner I manage at a higher level. Issued for Construction Phase 1, may have over 1000 drawngs, but this will only account for perhaps 10 milestones that are linked to follow on construction activities.



I dont understand why distilling many complex drawings into their respective tasks is simplistic. It is just making sense of a huge amount of information into a workable format. Many of my clients would not be happy to pay a planning engineer good money to slavishly list such unnecessary detail.



I see there are perhaps two levels of planning in discussion here. Planning Engineers who interface with key project staff and keep a real world view, and Planning Technicians whose sole job is to input data.

VLADIMIR





I did not rule your philosophy out - I gave you the gap by saying "somewhere in between" which when the time comes and is needed then by all means do what is needed but be careful with the exercise by not making a meal out of it

It seems to me that there are different approaches to project scheduling.



We create project schedule to simulate project performance and that is why we simulate resource work. The schedules we create shall help to answer numerous “what if” questions. In particular the schedule is used for optimizing resource quantities. In particular we advise what numbers of excavators and other machines are needed to finish pipeline construction on time. To be able to answer these questions it is necessary to simulate resource work and technological dependencies that is impossible if the project model is not detailed. In Caspian pipeline construction project we simulated the work of 1145 resource types. It is not easy and cheap to move heavy machines and people to the construction site that is far away. Project performance simulation helps to save money – it is cheaper and easier to create the detailed schedule and to produce reliable estimates than to make real life errors.



I think that making it simple means that resource work is not simulated. And this is another approach that has other purposes.

Hi guys,



I think the latest posts on this issue is now becoming philsophical. KISS is such a subjective statement meaning a 10,000 activities may be too complex for some but simple for others because they know how to make things simple using this number of activities.



In practice as long as I can answer basic questions below I don’t care if it will come out to be 1000 activities or 40,000 activities.



1. Can I maintain it during the span of the project meaning logic must be correctly made. At any time of the project, can I make a projection of the project completion date, section completion date, floor completion date etc. etc.

2. Can I prove from the program cause and effect scenarios for claims purposes?

3. In resource management, can I answer my PM if he asked me upto when can we consume 1 truckload of cement? Can I give a realistic projections of materials to the procurement department? Can I generate cashflow using the program?

4. How many keydates/access dates were achieved and were not achieved and when?



There are many more questions, but my point is as long as the programme is responsive to the needs of the project I don’t care if the programme will have 40,000 activities.

Philip



One has to be pragmatic about things - of course, there must be somewhere in between but in general the modus operandi of K.I.S.S. should be adopted purely for expediency and ease of handling with regard to updating & reporting.



Believe me, that in general we do not have an engineering fraternity that wants to wade through reams of planning reports just to show them how their inputs are affecting projects as a whole - something very simple is all that is required and in any case the planner is the "eyes and crystal ball gazer" who is in constant dialogue with the project team at all levels and who speaks very loudly when anything is seen to be going off the rails.



We are not all working on a job that has 6000 drawings - I take it that they are all different drawings and not compounded by various other views of the same subject that can reduce the number you speak of significantly - other panning engineers may be working on many projects that have 50 to 100 drawings but even then, I still adopt the K.I.S.S approach until it is absolutely necessary to break planning down into greater detail - however, I endeavour to maintain an approach that is always manageable and not an Albatross round the neck

Hi David/Allan,



Maybe one of you guys can explain something. I totally agree with KISS, but how do you plan a job that has 6000 drawings with a 1000 activity schedule? I am an engineer, who does planning, and this simplistic approach that you preach, simply does not always work.



Regards



Philip

At last sense prevails - I totally agree with what Allan & Gary have said & their statements are in line with what I wrote on the subject at an earlier date



WHY MAKE MOUNTAINS OUT OF MOLEHILLS ?



K.I.S.S

Hello all.



I support the spirit of what Gary France is saying.



Planning should be a tool to guide a project, not to slavishly list every last nut and bolt ’activity’. Clearly there is an element of preference here, and it is a judgement call. However I find that in a project of any complexity, anything over 1000 tasks will quickly lose its benefits in what I would call a ’diseconomy of scale’.



There seems to be a certain machismo to stating that you can ’handle’ a project of many thousands of activities. The problem with this is that of becoming a slave to serving an impossibly complex number of tasks, links, changes, and variations. I am an engineer, not a keyboard jockey, and so I think that focus needs to be balanced on the real world. Planning is to control the time and resources on real world events.



An eye has to be kept on what is happening on-site/ off-shore, and in meetings. In aviation airline pilots are meant to be ’ahead of the aircraft’. This means thinking ahead, and keeping a broad situational awareness of all issues. I think planners should have a similar philosophy. Plans can become so vast through mismanagement thay they can in a very fundamental way lose their meaning, and swamp planners, engineers and project managers in unnecessary detail. This is case of being (in project management speak) ’task focussed rather than goal focussed’.



I like the old acronym ’KISS’-Keep It Simple Stupid! Planning can be a most complex exercise, especially once you start to engage in delay analysis, and such techniques. However, utility is the word. Planning isnt just for planners it’s for a team, and should be made as accessible as possible and no more complex than is appropriate.

The key to managing mega projects with many contracts/packages is to have a common coding structure incorporated in your contract and a common scheduling software like P3. This way, each contractor can update their respective programs and merge the files seamlessly into one to get the whole picture. There maybe some manipulation required with interfaces, again the key is to identify those interface and set-up link points or milestones to make the whole process easy.



Regards,

Daniel

Hi Vladimir,



You are quite right. The trick is to sit down and think out the code structures and id structures before you start working on the schedule. Also ensure that you have the right reporting structures in place. To update even 300 activities per week is not a major task, if you have the right progress gathering tools.



Regards,



Philip

Several words about creating large schedules.

1) Schedules are large just because they include many activities. Activity is a portion of work that may be done by some resource team, use certain materials, has reasonable duration that corresponds with the period of schedule analysis. So the number of activities depends on resource usage in your schedule and not on your wishes.

2) Usually large schedules include many similar work packages. We call them typical fragnets or fragments. Schedule development usually starts with the development of the project typical fragnets if they are not ready for use. If your organization performs similar projects then most project fragnets shall be already developed and stored in the corporate fragnet library. Fragnets are usually thoroughly developed (with resource team, material and cost assignments) for some typical work volume (1 km, 100 m3 or something like that). Creating WBS you stop decomposition at the fragnet’s level. Inserting fragnets you adjust fragnet volumes and create project model.

Fragnet library is usually supported by project reference-books or databases like resource productivity on typical assignments, material consumption per volume unit on typical works, unit costs, etc.

So having developed fragnet library you will not spend much time and effort creating one more schedule – only those works that have no prototypes in fragnet library need to be modeled.

Example – any pipeline consists of linear parts, road and river crossings, roads construction, etc. If you got the description of the line research results then creating very large schedules is easy – you just add corresponding fragnets (800m of the line part, then 40m road crossing, then another 1400m, then …). 10000 tasks schedule is created in two days (real life experience!).

3) Actual data usually are entered by those who are responsible for their accuracy. If these data are entered by project planners then there is a need to enter actual data for 100 – 300 activities in a week. It is not easy but it is not impossible.

Hi All



I use a system of four M’s viz Measureable, Meaningful ,Manageable and Modify(able). As an example - if your are building a pipeline, does your detail activity refer to the whole length of the pipe, the individual spools of the pipe, the individual welds/bolt-ups, or the individual bolts/inches of weld. For different receivers of the information, the degree of detail should change, however they should be broken down to the lowest level where all four M’s can still be satisfied. This is further enhanced by the feedback lop for updating, I have yet to find a supervisor who is willing to update schedules down to a very detailled level as this would take up all his time. The overiding M here should be Manageable, what can you do if the actual is not meeting the plan ?

I have worked on projects where the size of the plan is up to 5000 activities and found it to be no more than a checklist of work to be done, and was really not manageable. If that level is required it is usually handled better on a spreadsheet with weighted values to give a summarized result. Planning software should be used to determine the interaction of activities, not to check that they have been completed.



Regards

Peter Hibberd

Having worked with Owner/Project Managers and Contractors, I would like to share my views with you on the subject. I believed there are no parameters on the number of activities on a project. This will vary from project to project depending on the contract and the people who are managing the project. The numbers will also depend if you are with the Owner/Project Manager or the Contractor side. The important thing is identifying the major activities from engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning and setting-up and establishing the control mechanisms of the project. In other words having a good plan and control in place. Generally the more detail the better, however, you need to be practical as possible to make it manageable. Detailing or further breakdown can come later as the project progresses. The important thing is you have identified those activites earlier and made allowance for them in your program.



Regards,

Daniel

I would suggest that we have a look at Qaulity of these schedules as well.



I know if I had to do a scedule with 40 000 activity’s (to an acceptable standard) this would take me a couple of years. I am realy intereseted in finding out how much logic (links) was in these schedule’s.



Assuming that it takes you 1 minute to create / resource load and to do the logic it wil take you 83 days. or 4 months to complete the schedule ???.



At my spead I would estimate one activity to take you 7 minutes. (Allowance for reviews included) this means the schedule would have taken me 21 months to complete.



As we all know normally their is a deadline. But next time my first activity in the schedule will be a 21 month period for schedule development.



So maybe whe should ad the duration it took to develop the schedule as well.

Vladimir, to the extent that different software packages may potentially have different reporting limitations on the ability to disseminate large volumes of information appropriately, I would disagree with you. However, in a general sense I do agree that this discussion should be moved to the more general Planning & Scheduling forum to get a broader perspective. Moving it now...



Bernard Ertl

ATC Professional Shutdown / Turnaround Management System

I think that this discussion does not depend on the software that is used for project scheduling. It is interesting to learn the practices of those who use other packages too.

Here in UAE (booming Dubai) we have up to 2000 activites for every project, so it is better to have no of activites per planner then to show how much total you operate on multi projects with your big companies.



We have average 500 to 1000 activites per project and weekly update around 50 activites. This is for one planner and one day operation. Project duration is 1 or 2 years. First 3-4 months are revisions from 0 to 3 or 4 so planners are full time on projects sites.



So please post your valuable data from this view.

Thanks and regards to all!



Dragan Ilic

besix.com

Dear Gary,



I do agree with your illustration for dealing with 1081 activities per month, however; maybe this was not a good example that I have made since actually this is not a single project. This is a multi-project consisting of 5 projects having their own physical battery limits that are also executing in 10 separate task forces with their own planners. (as I said 5 for detail engineer/on-shore supply and 5 for licenser-basic designer/off-shore supplier) therefore for each party we have almost 140 activities per month (or 32 per week) needs to be observed/updated that in my opinion seems not very unreasonable.



As you have stated there are many activities that are done by sub-contractors or manufacturers. What we are doing is just to monitor the major milestones into our schedule boundary and putting the actual progress for just 1 defined activity for those out sourced activities. The details are provided into sub-contractors report, as you stated and I completely agree.



Details for this huge number of activities (40,000) are not presented to the managers or directors. Instead, they will just receive a rolled up summary reports using higher level of hammocks (as Philip explains)and in case there is an area got critical and needs to be elaborated, it is very easy to prepare a more detailed schedule.(which happened many times)



Updating is also not very time consuming. Each discipline will report his own activities (something around 10-20 activities in each period) and planners will just check for the out of sequences, delay analysis, performance indices and etc. The interfaces between these sub-projects is done by another planner to detect and remove/coordinate inter-plant out of sequences/delay effects.



Cheers

Kamran

Hi Bernard and Vladimir,



I agree with both of you. The point being that the schedule is there to drive the job, hence detail to assist the supervision and roll ups for management.



Regards,



Philip

Gary France wrote:

What surprises me here is not that us planners are able to work at this level of detail, but I worry about the people who receive these plans – the managers, supervisors and the like who then use them. I simply find it difficult to see how anybody can take in that level of detail and use it effectively.

As I mentioned, this is a practical consideration that must be considered. For our part in managing petrochem turnarounds, the detail is disseminated to the field supervisors every shift with tailored (updated) shift schedules. Ie. each supervisor receives a bar chart containing all the scheduled tasks that have been assigned to his responsibility within the next few shifts. Generally, this is no more than a few sheets of 8.5x11 paper and easily manageable.



Management does not look at all the detail. They look at higher level reports and only dig deeper when circumstances dictate the necessity.



Bernard Ertl

ATC Professional Shutdown / Turnaround Management System

Philip,

I think that the difference in dimensions has an obvious explanation. If you want to simulate resource work you will need to have precise project model and a lot of activities.

I don’t support schedule level approach but it is like going from level 3 to level 4.

Do you agree?

Hi Gary,



Thought you could explain the simplistic approach, answer accepted.



Regards



Philip

Industry - construction of buildings

Typical project - 13 store building $8 mln - 2500 activities



Industry - pipeline construction

Project - 750 km pipeline - # of activities = 9000, # of resources - 1145



Industry - ship building

Project Phase - 1st year plan - # of activities = 18000



Industry - telecommunications

Project: construction of telecommunication network - year plan 18000 activities



Industry - software development - 600 - 1000 activities in middle sized project



Industry - Metallurgy - construction of the new plant - 40000 activities



For portfolio management the dimensions are much higher.

Phil,



I thought I had answered that earlier question in my post below, where I talk about the detailed plans being done by the various specialist trades. They create the plans with the resources they require for their specialism.



Best wishes



Gary

Industry: Industrial, Mining, Petrochem, Sports Facilities, etc



Value: $ 200 000 to $B 2



average no of activities: 7000 level 4

1000 level 3



Time span average: 9 Months



Hi Gary,



Still waiting for an answer on an earlier question.



Regards



Philip

Industry - The construction of buildings

Typical value $100 - $500m

Average number of activities 500 – 1000



Gary France

Dear all,



This thread teaches us a number of things. Most importantly, it shows us that there are many ways of achieving the same goal – how to plan a project. It is clear that many of us undertake or planning and scheduling in different ways and at different levels of detail. None are the right way and none are the wrong way. It is just that we do it differently, be that by our own preference, or as Daniel says, the level of detail (no activity longer than one week duration) is sometimes dictated by the contract.



I am fascinated by the level of detail that some people create their plans in – for example, Kamran was involved in a 27 month project and had created a plan with over 40,000 activities. Let’s just think about that for a moment. Assuming an even spread of activities, that’s 1481 activities per month, or 344 per week. Whilst I know this calculation may not be correct because of the duration of activities, I just use it as an illustration. What surprises me here is not that us planners are able to work at this level of detail, but I worry about the people who receive these plans – the managers, supervisors and the like who then use them. I simply find it difficult to see how anybody can take in that level of detail and use it effectively. Bernard gives a good illustration of the problem when he quotes a project with a 6000 task schedule which took 7 hours to update, which they did every day. These poor people – both the schedulers and the recipients of the plan – they would have been on information overload, where simply managing the information took most of their time – how on earth can anybody be effective in this environment?



The differences in the level of detail also appears to be related to the type of project. I get the impression that those 40,000 activity projects are in the petrochem industry. Would I be correct in assuming that it is the norm for the work in this industry to be scheduled out in considerable detail? I had previously stated that the plans I produce are in the range of 500 – 1000 activities. I type of work I most often plan is the construction of buildings where there is a culture that the overall constructor produces an overall plan, and the sub-contractors for each specialist trade then produce their own detailed plans to fit within the constraints of my overall plan. In this way, I then only need to monitor and update 500 – 1000 activities. Perhaps this is the reason for the dramatic differences between the different views expressed in this thread.



Can I suggest something…? As contributors to the Planning Planet forums we don’t often make our views known in the context of the industry we individually work within. Yes, I know the forum show this against our names. How about some very short postings saying what number of activities we typically use, and what industry we work in and a typical project value. I will start it off.



Best wishes.







Gary France

Chairman

Planning Engineers Organisation

Hi Alexandre,



Where I come from it means "Keep it simple Stupid" :-)



Not meant in a bad way, but to prevent stupid ideas from evolving further.



Regards



Philip

Hi Alexandre,



Where I come from it means "Keep it simple Stupid" :-)



Not meant in a bad way, but to prevent stupid ideas from evolving further.



Regards



Philip

To Daniel

KISS = Keep It Straight & Simple

Philip,

I always insist that activity durations shall be restricted to be compatible with the period between project team meetings with one exception - if activity progress can be measured in physical units. You suggested an example of such activity. We usually use activity volumes (physical quantities) in planning and monitoring progress. For some activities work volume cannot be defined and in this case activity duration shall be short enough. Percent complete is not reliable measure of activity performance.

Other considerations for defining activities:

- One set of resources will perform an activity from the beginning to the end,

- Rates are the same for the work that shall be done,

- It belongs to only one work package.

Hi Daniel,



A specific example is a boiler, lets say the platen elements, where you may have four hundred butt welds, and lets say all of them in one smallish area, and with ten welders on the job. It is simple to progress, as each weld is worth ,25 %. What is the point in splitting the activity up, to create a multiple of shorter duration activities? I agree with having enough detail, but simply trying to stick to limited durations, for the sake of it, does not make sense to me.



Regards





Philip