Assignment Prompt & Instructions
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– ## Assignmentweek7.docx
– ## PMP_Project_Management_Professional_Exam_Study_Gui…_—-_Pg_209–213.pdf
**## Assignmentweek7.docx**
The purpose of this case study assignment is to guide you through the process of constructing a Logical Framework (LogFrame) and a Quality Template. These documents are essential for successfully managing a project.
Read the "Kitchen Heaven Project Case Study" in Chapter 4 in
_PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide_, found in the topic Resources. Complete the following in the "Logical Framework Template" (from Part 1 of the case study assignment) and the "Quality Template," found in the Class Resources:
**_Part 1: Logical Framework Template (Columns B-D)_**
In this section of the assignment, you will complete the Success Measures and Verification for each component (Columns B-D) of the "Logical Framework Template" based on the information provided. Specific requirements are as follows:
1. The Goal should include a minimum of two success measures and their associated verification methods.
2. The Purpose should have at least two success measures and related verification methods.
3. Each Outcome should encompass a minimum of two success measures with their corresponding verification methods.
4. You should have a minimum total of 10 success measures and corresponding verification methods: two for Goal + two for Purpose + six for Outcomes (two for each of your three Outcomes).
**_Part 2: Quality Template_**
Identify three groups or individuals for each Goal, Purpose, and Outcome success measure who need to be informed. Fill in Columns A-F, lifting information from your logical framework approach
where appropriate.
_**Part 3: Justification**_
Provide a written defense, ranging from 250 to 500 words, explaining how each success measure and its associated validation methods align with and support the project's objectives.
**_General Requirements_**
APA style is not required, but solid academic writing is expected.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.
**## PMP_Project_Management_Professional_Exam_Study_Gui…_—-_Pg_209–213.pdf**
Chapter
4
Creating the Project
Schedule
The PMP® exaM conTenT froM The
Planning PerforMance doMain covered
in This chaPTer includes The following:
✓ Task 4: develop the project schedule based on the
approved project deliverables and milestones, scope, and
resource management plans in order to manage timely
completion of the project.
✓ Knowledge and skills:
■ Time management planning, including scheduling tools and
techniques
■ Workflow diagramming techniques
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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The Planning process group has more processes than any
other process group. As a result, a lot of time and effort goes
into the Planning processes of any project. On some projects,
you might spend almost as much time planning the project as you do executing and
controlling it. This isn’t a bad thing. The better planning you do up front, the more likely
you’ll have a successful project. Speaking of planning, together the Planning, Executing,
and Monitoring and Controlling process groups account for almost 70 percent of the PMP®
exam questions, so plan on spending about the same percentage of your study time on these
areas.
This is another fun‐filled, action‐packed chapter. We’ll start off by defining the
schedule management plan and then move on to the activities that become the work of
the project. The WBS will come in handy here, so keep it close. Then we’ll sequence the
activities in their proper order, estimate the resources we’ll need to complete the work,
and estimate how long each activity will take. Last but not least, we’ll develop the project
schedule.
Everything you’ve done up to this point and the processes we’ll discuss in this chapter
will help you create an accurate project schedule. You’ll use these documents (along with
several other documents you’ve created along the way) throughout the Executing and
Monitoring and Controlling processes to help measure the progress of the project. Let’s get
going.
The process names, inputs, tools and techniques, outputs, and
descriptions of the project management process groups and related
materials and figures in this chapter are based on content from A Guide to
the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition
(PMI, 2013).
Creating the Schedule
Management Plan
The Plan Schedule Management process describes how the project schedule will be
developed, executed, and controlled as well as how changes will be incorporated into the
project schedule. According to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition, the primary benefit of this process is that it helps guide
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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.
Creating the Schedule Management Plan 153
and direct how the project schedule will be managed. The only output of this process is
the schedule management plan. Let’s first look at the inputs and the tools and techniques
of this process and spend most of our time examining the schedule management
plan itself.
The inputs of this process include the project management plan, project charter,
enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets. The project
management plan includes the scope baseline, which in turn is made up of the project
scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary. The project schedule will be derived from the
WBS (which includes deliverables and work package levels), so the scope baseline is key to
defining the processes you’ll use to develop the schedule management plan.
Enterprise environmental factors include the culture of the organization and availability
of resources as well as the project management software and work authorization system
the organization uses to assign and track work components. The organizational process
assets that are important to this process are templates, change control processes, historical
information, policies and guidelines for schedule control, control tools for managing
schedules, and risk control processes and procedures.
We have seen all of the tools and techniques before. They are expert judgment,
analytical techniques, and meetings.
The key to this process, as I stated earlier, is the schedule management plan, which
is an element of the project management plan. It is the only output of this process, and
it serves to describe how the project schedule will be developed, monitored, controlled,
and changed. According to the PMBOK® Guide, several elements make up the schedule
management plan. Be certain to review all of them. I have highlighted the most important
elements here:
Schedule Model Development This refers to the methodologies and tools you’ll use to
develop the schedule (for example, Oracle Primavera or Microsoft Project), along with the
data they contain.
Accuracy Levels This element describes the rounding you’ll use when deriving activity
duration estimates. For example, you might round to the nearest week, day, or hour
depending on the complexity of the project.
Units of Measure This element also concerns activity duration estimates as well as
schedule activities. This describes what measure you’ll use when developing the schedule,
such as hours, days, weeks, or some other measure.
Control Thresholds Control thresholds refer to the level of variance the schedule can
experience before you take action. Again, depending on the complexity of the project, this
might be a generous amount of time or a very limited amount of time. You can express
thresholds in terms of hours or days (as an example, a slippage of greater than three days
requires action) or, most typically, as a percentage of time.
Performance Measurement Rules This refers to where and what types of measures you’ll
use to verify schedule performance. This could include designating levels on the WBS and/
or determining what type of earned value measurement technique you’ll use.
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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154 Chapter 4 ■ Creating the Project Schedule
Defining Activities
Now you’re off and running toward the development of your project schedule. To develop
the schedule, you first need to define the activities, sequence them in the right order,
estimate resources, and estimate the time it will take to complete the tasks. I’ll cover the
Define Activities process here and the Sequence Activities process next, and I’ll pick up
with the estimating processes in the next chapter.
Define Activities and Sequence Activities are separate processes, each
with its own inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. In practice,
especially for small to medium‐sized projects, you can combine the Create
WBS process we talked about in Chapter 3, “Developing the Project Scope
Statement,” with these processes and complete them all at once.
The Define Activities process is a further breakdown of the work package elements
of the WBS. It documents the specific activities needed to fulfill the deliverables detailed
on the WBS and the project scope statement. Much as with the work package level of the
WBS, activities can be easily assigned, estimated, scheduled, and controlled. The Define
Activities process might be performed by the project manager, or when the WBS is broken
down to the subproject level, this process (and all the activity‐related processes that follow)
might be assigned to a subproject manager.
define activities Process inputs
The following are inputs (including the key elements of each input) to the Define Activities
process:
■ Schedule management plan
■ Scope baseline (including deliverables, constraints, and assumptions)
■ Enterprise environmental factors (project management information systems,
organizational culture, published commercial databases)
■ Organizational process assets (existing guidelines and policies, templates, lessons
learned knowledge base, and historical information)
Tools and Techniques for defining activities
The tools and techniques of the Define Activities process are as follows:
■ Decomposition
■ Rolling wave planning
■ Expert judgment
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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Defining Activities 155
We covered most of these topics in the previous chapter. Decomposition in this process
involves breaking the work packages into smaller, more manageable units of work
called activities. These are not deliverables but the individual units of work that must be
completed to fulfill the work packages and the deliverables listed in the WBS. Activities will
help in later Planning processes to define estimates and create the project schedule. Activity
lists (which are one of the outputs of this process) from prior projects can be used as
templates in this process. Rolling wave planning involves planning near‐term work in more
detail than future‐term work. As we discussed in Chapter 3, this is a form of progressive
elaboration. Expert judgment, in the form of project team members with prior experience
developing project scope statements and WBSs, can help you define activities.
Exam Spotlight
The purpose of the Define Activities process is to decompose the work packages into
schedule activities where the basis for estimating, scheduling, executing, and monitoring
and controlling the work of the project is easily supported and accomplished.
define activities outputs
Define Activities has three outputs:
■ Activity list
■ Activity attributes
■ Milestone list
We’ll look at each of these outputs next.
activity list
One primary output of the Define Activities process is an activity list. The activity list
should contain all the schedule activities that will be performed for the project, with a
scope of work description of each activity and an identifier (such as a code or number)
so that team members understand what the work is and how it is to be completed. The
schedule activities are individual elements of the project schedule, and the activity list
document is part of the project documents. To keep your sanity, and that of your team
members, make certain to enter the activity names onto the schedule the same way they
appear on the activity list.
activity attributes
Activity attributes describe the characteristics of the activities and are an extension of the
activity list. Activity attributes will change over the life of the project as more information
is known. In the early stages of the project, activity attributes might include the activity ID,
the WBS identification code it’s associated with, and the activity name. As you progress
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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**## PMP_Project_Management_Professional_Exam_Study_Gui…_—-_Pg_209–213.pdf**
Chapter
4
Creating the Project
Schedule
The PMP® exaM conTenT froM The
Planning PerforMance doMain covered
in This chaPTer includes The following:
✓ Task 4: develop the project schedule based on the
approved project deliverables and milestones, scope, and
resource management plans in order to manage timely
completion of the project.
✓ Knowledge and skills:
■ Time management planning, including scheduling tools and
techniques
■ Workflow diagramming techniques
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
W
ile
y
&
S
on
s,
In
co
rp
or
at
ed
. A
ll
rig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
The Planning process group has more processes than any
other process group. As a result, a lot of time and effort goes
into the Planning processes of any project. On some projects,
you might spend almost as much time planning the project as you do executing and
controlling it. This isn’t a bad thing. The better planning you do up front, the more likely
you’ll have a successful project. Speaking of planning, together the Planning, Executing,
and Monitoring and Controlling process groups account for almost 70 percent of the PMP®
exam questions, so plan on spending about the same percentage of your study time on these
areas.
This is another fun‐filled, action‐packed chapter. We’ll start off by defining the
schedule management plan and then move on to the activities that become the work of
the project. The WBS will come in handy here, so keep it close. Then we’ll sequence the
activities in their proper order, estimate the resources we’ll need to complete the work,
and estimate how long each activity will take. Last but not least, we’ll develop the project
schedule.
Everything you’ve done up to this point and the processes we’ll discuss in this chapter
will help you create an accurate project schedule. You’ll use these documents (along with
several other documents you’ve created along the way) throughout the Executing and
Monitoring and Controlling processes to help measure the progress of the project. Let’s get
going.
The process names, inputs, tools and techniques, outputs, and
descriptions of the project management process groups and related
materials and figures in this chapter are based on content from A Guide to
the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition
(PMI, 2013).
Creating the Schedule
Management Plan
The Plan Schedule Management process describes how the project schedule will be
developed, executed, and controlled as well as how changes will be incorporated into the
project schedule. According to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition, the primary benefit of this process is that it helps guide
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
W
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or
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. A
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.
Creating the Schedule Management Plan 153
and direct how the project schedule will be managed. The only output of this process is
the schedule management plan. Let’s first look at the inputs and the tools and techniques
of this process and spend most of our time examining the schedule management
plan itself.
The inputs of this process include the project management plan, project charter,
enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets. The project
management plan includes the scope baseline, which in turn is made up of the project
scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary. The project schedule will be derived from the
WBS (which includes deliverables and work package levels), so the scope baseline is key to
defining the processes you’ll use to develop the schedule management plan.
Enterprise environmental factors include the culture of the organization and availability
of resources as well as the project management software and work authorization system
the organization uses to assign and track work components. The organizational process
assets that are important to this process are templates, change control processes, historical
information, policies and guidelines for schedule control, control tools for managing
schedules, and risk control processes and procedures.
We have seen all of the tools and techniques before. They are expert judgment,
analytical techniques, and meetings.
The key to this process, as I stated earlier, is the schedule management plan, which
is an element of the project management plan. It is the only output of this process, and
it serves to describe how the project schedule will be developed, monitored, controlled,
and changed. According to the PMBOK® Guide, several elements make up the schedule
management plan. Be certain to review all of them. I have highlighted the most important
elements here:
Schedule Model Development This refers to the methodologies and tools you’ll use to
develop the schedule (for example, Oracle Primavera or Microsoft Project), along with the
data they contain.
Accuracy Levels This element describes the rounding you’ll use when deriving activity
duration estimates. For example, you might round to the nearest week, day, or hour
depending on the complexity of the project.
Units of Measure This element also concerns activity duration estimates as well as
schedule activities. This describes what measure you’ll use when developing the schedule,
such as hours, days, weeks, or some other measure.
Control Thresholds Control thresholds refer to the level of variance the schedule can
experience before you take action. Again, depending on the complexity of the project, this
might be a generous amount of time or a very limited amount of time. You can express
thresholds in terms of hours or days (as an example, a slippage of greater than three days
requires action) or, most typically, as a percentage of time.
Performance Measurement Rules This refers to where and what types of measures you’ll
use to verify schedule performance. This could include designating levels on the WBS and/
or determining what type of earned value measurement technique you’ll use.
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
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yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
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W
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. A
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s
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.
154 Chapter 4 ■ Creating the Project Schedule
Defining Activities
Now you’re off and running toward the development of your project schedule. To develop
the schedule, you first need to define the activities, sequence them in the right order,
estimate resources, and estimate the time it will take to complete the tasks. I’ll cover the
Define Activities process here and the Sequence Activities process next, and I’ll pick up
with the estimating processes in the next chapter.
Define Activities and Sequence Activities are separate processes, each
with its own inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. In practice,
especially for small to medium‐sized projects, you can combine the Create
WBS process we talked about in Chapter 3, “Developing the Project Scope
Statement,” with these processes and complete them all at once.
The Define Activities process is a further breakdown of the work package elements
of the WBS. It documents the specific activities needed to fulfill the deliverables detailed
on the WBS and the project scope statement. Much as with the work package level of the
WBS, activities can be easily assigned, estimated, scheduled, and controlled. The Define
Activities process might be performed by the project manager, or when the WBS is broken
down to the subproject level, this process (and all the activity‐related processes that follow)
might be assigned to a subproject manager.
define activities Process inputs
The following are inputs (including the key elements of each input) to the Define Activities
process:
■ Schedule management plan
■ Scope baseline (including deliverables, constraints, and assumptions)
■ Enterprise environmental factors (project management information systems,
organizational culture, published commercial databases)
■ Organizational process assets (existing guidelines and policies, templates, lessons
learned knowledge base, and historical information)
Tools and Techniques for defining activities
The tools and techniques of the Define Activities process are as follows:
■ Decomposition
■ Rolling wave planning
■ Expert judgment
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
W
ile
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co
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or
at
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. A
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s
re
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rv
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.
Defining Activities 155
We covered most of these topics in the previous chapter. Decomposition in this process
involves breaking the work packages into smaller, more manageable units of work
called activities. These are not deliverables but the individual units of work that must be
completed to fulfill the work packages and the deliverables listed in the WBS. Activities will
help in later Planning processes to define estimates and create the project schedule. Activity
lists (which are one of the outputs of this process) from prior projects can be used as
templates in this process. Rolling wave planning involves planning near‐term work in more
detail than future‐term work. As we discussed in Chapter 3, this is a form of progressive
elaboration. Expert judgment, in the form of project team members with prior experience
developing project scope statements and WBSs, can help you define activities.
Exam Spotlight
The purpose of the Define Activities process is to decompose the work packages into
schedule activities where the basis for estimating, scheduling, executing, and monitoring
and controlling the work of the project is easily supported and accomplished.
define activities outputs
Define Activities has three outputs:
■ Activity list
■ Activity attributes
■ Milestone list
We’ll look at each of these outputs next.
activity list
One primary output of the Define Activities process is an activity list. The activity list
should contain all the schedule activities that will be performed for the project, with a
scope of work description of each activity and an identifier (such as a code or number)
so that team members understand what the work is and how it is to be completed. The
schedule activities are individual elements of the project schedule, and the activity list
document is part of the project documents. To keep your sanity, and that of your team
members, make certain to enter the activity names onto the schedule the same way they
appear on the activity list.
activity attributes
Activity attributes describe the characteristics of the activities and are an extension of the
activity list. Activity attributes will change over the life of the project as more information
is known. In the early stages of the project, activity attributes might include the activity ID,
the WBS identification code it’s associated with, and the activity name. As you progress
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
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ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
W
ile
y
&
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on
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or
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. A
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.
**## Assignmentweek7.docx**
The purpose of this case study assignment is to guide you through the process of constructing a Logical Framework (LogFrame) and a Quality Template. These documents are essential for successfully managing a project.
Read the "Kitchen Heaven Project Case Study" in Chapter 4 in
_PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide_, found in the topic Resources. Complete the following in the "Logical Framework Template" (from Part 1 of the case study assignment) and the "Quality Template," found in the Class Resources:
**_Part 1: Logical Framework Template (Columns B-D)_**
In this section of the assignment, you will complete the Success Measures and Verification for each component (Columns B-D) of the "Logical Framework Template" based on the information provided. Specific requirements are as follows:
1. The Goal should include a minimum of two success measures and their associated verification methods.
2. The Purpose should have at least two success measures and related verification methods.
3. Each Outcome should encompass a minimum of two success measures with their corresponding verification methods.
4. You should have a minimum total of 10 success measures and corresponding verification methods: two for Goal + two for Purpose + six for Outcomes (two for each of your three Outcomes).
**_Part 2: Quality Template_**
Identify three groups or individuals for each Goal, Purpose, and Outcome success measure who need to be informed. Fill in Columns A-F, lifting information from your logical framework approach
where appropriate.
_**Part 3: Justification**_
Provide a written defense, ranging from 250 to 500 words, explaining how each success measure and its associated validation methods align with and support the project's objectives.
**_General Requirements_**
APA style is not required, but solid academic writing is expected.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.
**## PMP_Project_Management_Professional_Exam_Study_Gui…_—-_Pg_209–213.pdf**
Chapter
4
Creating the Project
Schedule
The PMP® exaM conTenT froM The
Planning PerforMance doMain covered
in This chaPTer includes The following:
✓ Task 4: develop the project schedule based on the
approved project deliverables and milestones, scope, and
resource management plans in order to manage timely
completion of the project.
✓ Knowledge and skills:
■ Time management planning, including scheduling tools and
techniques
■ Workflow diagramming techniques
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
W
ile
y
&
S
on
s,
In
co
rp
or
at
ed
. A
ll
rig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
The Planning process group has more processes than any
other process group. As a result, a lot of time and effort goes
into the Planning processes of any project. On some projects,
you might spend almost as much time planning the project as you do executing and
controlling it. This isn’t a bad thing. The better planning you do up front, the more likely
you’ll have a successful project. Speaking of planning, together the Planning, Executing,
and Monitoring and Controlling process groups account for almost 70 percent of the PMP®
exam questions, so plan on spending about the same percentage of your study time on these
areas.
This is another fun‐filled, action‐packed chapter. We’ll start off by defining the
schedule management plan and then move on to the activities that become the work of
the project. The WBS will come in handy here, so keep it close. Then we’ll sequence the
activities in their proper order, estimate the resources we’ll need to complete the work,
and estimate how long each activity will take. Last but not least, we’ll develop the project
schedule.
Everything you’ve done up to this point and the processes we’ll discuss in this chapter
will help you create an accurate project schedule. You’ll use these documents (along with
several other documents you’ve created along the way) throughout the Executing and
Monitoring and Controlling processes to help measure the progress of the project. Let’s get
going.
The process names, inputs, tools and techniques, outputs, and
descriptions of the project management process groups and related
materials and figures in this chapter are based on content from A Guide to
the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition
(PMI, 2013).
Creating the Schedule
Management Plan
The Plan Schedule Management process describes how the project schedule will be
developed, executed, and controlled as well as how changes will be incorporated into the
project schedule. According to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition, the primary benefit of this process is that it helps guide
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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Creating the Schedule Management Plan 153
and direct how the project schedule will be managed. The only output of this process is
the schedule management plan. Let’s first look at the inputs and the tools and techniques
of this process and spend most of our time examining the schedule management
plan itself.
The inputs of this process include the project management plan, project charter,
enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets. The project
management plan includes the scope baseline, which in turn is made up of the project
scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary. The project schedule will be derived from the
WBS (which includes deliverables and work package levels), so the scope baseline is key to
defining the processes you’ll use to develop the schedule management plan.
Enterprise environmental factors include the culture of the organization and availability
of resources as well as the project management software and work authorization system
the organization uses to assign and track work components. The organizational process
assets that are important to this process are templates, change control processes, historical
information, policies and guidelines for schedule control, control tools for managing
schedules, and risk control processes and procedures.
We have seen all of the tools and techniques before. They are expert judgment,
analytical techniques, and meetings.
The key to this process, as I stated earlier, is the schedule management plan, which
is an element of the project management plan. It is the only output of this process, and
it serves to describe how the project schedule will be developed, monitored, controlled,
and changed. According to the PMBOK® Guide, several elements make up the schedule
management plan. Be certain to review all of them. I have highlighted the most important
elements here:
Schedule Model Development This refers to the methodologies and tools you’ll use to
develop the schedule (for example, Oracle Primavera or Microsoft Project), along with the
data they contain.
Accuracy Levels This element describes the rounding you’ll use when deriving activity
duration estimates. For example, you might round to the nearest week, day, or hour
depending on the complexity of the project.
Units of Measure This element also concerns activity duration estimates as well as
schedule activities. This describes what measure you’ll use when developing the schedule,
such as hours, days, weeks, or some other measure.
Control Thresholds Control thresholds refer to the level of variance the schedule can
experience before you take action. Again, depending on the complexity of the project, this
might be a generous amount of time or a very limited amount of time. You can express
thresholds in terms of hours or days (as an example, a slippage of greater than three days
requires action) or, most typically, as a percentage of time.
Performance Measurement Rules This refers to where and what types of measures you’ll
use to verify schedule performance. This could include designating levels on the WBS and/
or determining what type of earned value measurement technique you’ll use.
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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154 Chapter 4 ■ Creating the Project Schedule
Defining Activities
Now you’re off and running toward the development of your project schedule. To develop
the schedule, you first need to define the activities, sequence them in the right order,
estimate resources, and estimate the time it will take to complete the tasks. I’ll cover the
Define Activities process here and the Sequence Activities process next, and I’ll pick up
with the estimating processes in the next chapter.
Define Activities and Sequence Activities are separate processes, each
with its own inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. In practice,
especially for small to medium‐sized projects, you can combine the Create
WBS process we talked about in Chapter 3, “Developing the Project Scope
Statement,” with these processes and complete them all at once.
The Define Activities process is a further breakdown of the work package elements
of the WBS. It documents the specific activities needed to fulfill the deliverables detailed
on the WBS and the project scope statement. Much as with the work package level of the
WBS, activities can be easily assigned, estimated, scheduled, and controlled. The Define
Activities process might be performed by the project manager, or when the WBS is broken
down to the subproject level, this process (and all the activity‐related processes that follow)
might be assigned to a subproject manager.
define activities Process inputs
The following are inputs (including the key elements of each input) to the Define Activities
process:
■ Schedule management plan
■ Scope baseline (including deliverables, constraints, and assumptions)
■ Enterprise environmental factors (project management information systems,
organizational culture, published commercial databases)
■ Organizational process assets (existing guidelines and policies, templates, lessons
learned knowledge base, and historical information)
Tools and Techniques for defining activities
The tools and techniques of the Define Activities process are as follows:
■ Decomposition
■ Rolling wave planning
■ Expert judgment
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
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ht
©
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J
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Defining Activities 155
We covered most of these topics in the previous chapter. Decomposition in this process
involves breaking the work packages into smaller, more manageable units of work
called activities. These are not deliverables but the individual units of work that must be
completed to fulfill the work packages and the deliverables listed in the WBS. Activities will
help in later Planning processes to define estimates and create the project schedule. Activity
lists (which are one of the outputs of this process) from prior projects can be used as
templates in this process. Rolling wave planning involves planning near‐term work in more
detail than future‐term work. As we discussed in Chapter 3, this is a form of progressive
elaboration. Expert judgment, in the form of project team members with prior experience
developing project scope statements and WBSs, can help you define activities.
Exam Spotlight
The purpose of the Define Activities process is to decompose the work packages into
schedule activities where the basis for estimating, scheduling, executing, and monitoring
and controlling the work of the project is easily supported and accomplished.
define activities outputs
Define Activities has three outputs:
■ Activity list
■ Activity attributes
■ Milestone list
We’ll look at each of these outputs next.
activity list
One primary output of the Define Activities process is an activity list. The activity list
should contain all the schedule activities that will be performed for the project, with a
scope of work description of each activity and an identifier (such as a code or number)
so that team members understand what the work is and how it is to be completed. The
schedule activities are individual elements of the project schedule, and the activity list
document is part of the project documents. To keep your sanity, and that of your team
members, make certain to enter the activity names onto the schedule the same way they
appear on the activity list.
activity attributes
Activity attributes describe the characteristics of the activities and are an extension of the
activity list. Activity attributes will change over the life of the project as more information
is known. In the early stages of the project, activity attributes might include the activity ID,
the WBS identification code it’s associated with, and the activity name. As you progress
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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**## Assignmentweek7.docx**
The purpose of this case study assignment is to guide you through the process of constructing a Logical Framework (LogFrame) and a Quality Template. These documents are essential for successfully managing a project.
Read the "Kitchen Heaven Project Case Study" in Chapter 4 in
_PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide_, found in the topic Resources. Complete the following in the "Logical Framework Template" (from Part 1 of the case study assignment) and the "Quality Template," found in the Class Resources:
**_Part 1: Logical Framework Template (Columns B-D)_**
In this section of the assignment, you will complete the Success Measures and Verification for each component (Columns B-D) of the "Logical Framework Template" based on the information provided. Specific requirements are as follows:
1. The Goal should include a minimum of two success measures and their associated verification methods.
2. The Purpose should have at least two success measures and related verification methods.
3. Each Outcome should encompass a minimum of two success measures with their corresponding verification methods.
4. You should have a minimum total of 10 success measures and corresponding verification methods: two for Goal + two for Purpose + six for Outcomes (two for each of your three Outcomes).
**_Part 2: Quality Template_**
Identify three groups or individuals for each Goal, Purpose, and Outcome success measure who need to be informed. Fill in Columns A-F, lifting information from your logical framework approach
where appropriate.
_**Part 3: Justification**_
Provide a written defense, ranging from 250 to 500 words, explaining how each success measure and its associated validation methods align with and support the project's objectives.
**_General Requirements_**
APA style is not required, but solid academic writing is expected.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.
**## PMP_Project_Management_Professional_Exam_Study_Gui…_—-_Pg_209–213.pdf**
Chapter
4
Creating the Project
Schedule
The PMP® exaM conTenT froM The
Planning PerforMance doMain covered
in This chaPTer includes The following:
✓ Task 4: develop the project schedule based on the
approved project deliverables and milestones, scope, and
resource management plans in order to manage timely
completion of the project.
✓ Knowledge and skills:
■ Time management planning, including scheduling tools and
techniques
■ Workflow diagramming techniques
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
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.
The Planning process group has more processes than any
other process group. As a result, a lot of time and effort goes
into the Planning processes of any project. On some projects,
you might spend almost as much time planning the project as you do executing and
controlling it. This isn’t a bad thing. The better planning you do up front, the more likely
you’ll have a successful project. Speaking of planning, together the Planning, Executing,
and Monitoring and Controlling process groups account for almost 70 percent of the PMP®
exam questions, so plan on spending about the same percentage of your study time on these
areas.
This is another fun‐filled, action‐packed chapter. We’ll start off by defining the
schedule management plan and then move on to the activities that become the work of
the project. The WBS will come in handy here, so keep it close. Then we’ll sequence the
activities in their proper order, estimate the resources we’ll need to complete the work,
and estimate how long each activity will take. Last but not least, we’ll develop the project
schedule.
Everything you’ve done up to this point and the processes we’ll discuss in this chapter
will help you create an accurate project schedule. You’ll use these documents (along with
several other documents you’ve created along the way) throughout the Executing and
Monitoring and Controlling processes to help measure the progress of the project. Let’s get
going.
The process names, inputs, tools and techniques, outputs, and
descriptions of the project management process groups and related
materials and figures in this chapter are based on content from A Guide to
the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition
(PMI, 2013).
Creating the Schedule
Management Plan
The Plan Schedule Management process describes how the project schedule will be
developed, executed, and controlled as well as how changes will be incorporated into the
project schedule. According to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition, the primary benefit of this process is that it helps guide
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
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yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
W
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&
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on
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or
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. A
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s
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.
Creating the Schedule Management Plan 153
and direct how the project schedule will be managed. The only output of this process is
the schedule management plan. Let’s first look at the inputs and the tools and techniques
of this process and spend most of our time examining the schedule management
plan itself.
The inputs of this process include the project management plan, project charter,
enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets. The project
management plan includes the scope baseline, which in turn is made up of the project
scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary. The project schedule will be derived from the
WBS (which includes deliverables and work package levels), so the scope baseline is key to
defining the processes you’ll use to develop the schedule management plan.
Enterprise environmental factors include the culture of the organization and availability
of resources as well as the project management software and work authorization system
the organization uses to assign and track work components. The organizational process
assets that are important to this process are templates, change control processes, historical
information, policies and guidelines for schedule control, control tools for managing
schedules, and risk control processes and procedures.
We have seen all of the tools and techniques before. They are expert judgment,
analytical techniques, and meetings.
The key to this process, as I stated earlier, is the schedule management plan, which
is an element of the project management plan. It is the only output of this process, and
it serves to describe how the project schedule will be developed, monitored, controlled,
and changed. According to the PMBOK® Guide, several elements make up the schedule
management plan. Be certain to review all of them. I have highlighted the most important
elements here:
Schedule Model Development This refers to the methodologies and tools you’ll use to
develop the schedule (for example, Oracle Primavera or Microsoft Project), along with the
data they contain.
Accuracy Levels This element describes the rounding you’ll use when deriving activity
duration estimates. For example, you might round to the nearest week, day, or hour
depending on the complexity of the project.
Units of Measure This element also concerns activity duration estimates as well as
schedule activities. This describes what measure you’ll use when developing the schedule,
such as hours, days, weeks, or some other measure.
Control Thresholds Control thresholds refer to the level of variance the schedule can
experience before you take action. Again, depending on the complexity of the project, this
might be a generous amount of time or a very limited amount of time. You can express
thresholds in terms of hours or days (as an example, a slippage of greater than three days
requires action) or, most typically, as a percentage of time.
Performance Measurement Rules This refers to where and what types of measures you’ll
use to verify schedule performance. This could include designating levels on the WBS and/
or determining what type of earned value measurement technique you’ll use.
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
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W
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&
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In
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. A
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s
re
se
rv
ed
.
154 Chapter 4 ■ Creating the Project Schedule
Defining Activities
Now you’re off and running toward the development of your project schedule. To develop
the schedule, you first need to define the activities, sequence them in the right order,
estimate resources, and estimate the time it will take to complete the tasks. I’ll cover the
Define Activities process here and the Sequence Activities process next, and I’ll pick up
with the estimating processes in the next chapter.
Define Activities and Sequence Activities are separate processes, each
with its own inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. In practice,
especially for small to medium‐sized projects, you can combine the Create
WBS process we talked about in Chapter 3, “Developing the Project Scope
Statement,” with these processes and complete them all at once.
The Define Activities process is a further breakdown of the work package elements
of the WBS. It documents the specific activities needed to fulfill the deliverables detailed
on the WBS and the project scope statement. Much as with the work package level of the
WBS, activities can be easily assigned, estimated, scheduled, and controlled. The Define
Activities process might be performed by the project manager, or when the WBS is broken
down to the subproject level, this process (and all the activity‐related processes that follow)
might be assigned to a subproject manager.
define activities Process inputs
The following are inputs (including the key elements of each input) to the Define Activities
process:
■ Schedule management plan
■ Scope baseline (including deliverables, constraints, and assumptions)
■ Enterprise environmental factors (project management information systems,
organizational culture, published commercial databases)
■ Organizational process assets (existing guidelines and policies, templates, lessons
learned knowledge base, and historical information)
Tools and Techniques for defining activities
The tools and techniques of the Define Activities process are as follows:
■ Decomposition
■ Rolling wave planning
■ Expert judgment
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
W
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or
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. A
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s
re
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rv
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.
Defining Activities 155
We covered most of these topics in the previous chapter. Decomposition in this process
involves breaking the work packages into smaller, more manageable units of work
called activities. These are not deliverables but the individual units of work that must be
completed to fulfill the work packages and the deliverables listed in the WBS. Activities will
help in later Planning processes to define estimates and create the project schedule. Activity
lists (which are one of the outputs of this process) from prior projects can be used as
templates in this process. Rolling wave planning involves planning near‐term work in more
detail than future‐term work. As we discussed in Chapter 3, this is a form of progressive
elaboration. Expert judgment, in the form of project team members with prior experience
developing project scope statements and WBSs, can help you define activities.
Exam Spotlight
The purpose of the Define Activities process is to decompose the work packages into
schedule activities where the basis for estimating, scheduling, executing, and monitoring
and controlling the work of the project is easily supported and accomplished.
define activities outputs
Define Activities has three outputs:
■ Activity list
■ Activity attributes
■ Milestone list
We’ll look at each of these outputs next.
activity list
One primary output of the Define Activities process is an activity list. The activity list
should contain all the schedule activities that will be performed for the project, with a
scope of work description of each activity and an identifier (such as a code or number)
so that team members understand what the work is and how it is to be completed. The
schedule activities are individual elements of the project schedule, and the activity list
document is part of the project documents. To keep your sanity, and that of your team
members, make certain to enter the activity names onto the schedule the same way they
appear on the activity list.
activity attributes
Activity attributes describe the characteristics of the activities and are an extension of the
activity list. Activity attributes will change over the life of the project as more information
is known. In the early stages of the project, activity attributes might include the activity ID,
the WBS identification code it’s associated with, and the activity name. As you progress
Heldman, Kim. PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide : Updated for the 2015 Exam, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gcu/detail.action?docID=4185201.
Created from gcu on 2025-04-29 22:53:50.
C
op
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
5.
J
oh
n
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. A
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.