Skills and Knowledge Activity

1. Outline the time management tools and techniques that you would need to
use.

Time management is a skill that can elude many managers. As a manager you’re
responsible for your own time and how those you supervise spend theirs. Finding
time to accomplish everything that needs to be done sometimes may seem
impossible.
But some simple shifts in thinking can help you get a handle on your time and use it
more productively. Practicing the following techniques can help you begin mastering
the elusive skill of time management.
Five Smart Tips for Time Management
1. Organize Your To-Do List
Get your to-dos on paper. Keep a notepad or note-taking application handy to jot
down everything you have to do as each occurs to you. Then, organize your to-dos by
type and use a different paper or digital folder for each such as “follow up on” or
“people to contact” or “to read”. Finally, schedule it. Put each item on your calendar.
Commit the right amount of time on a specific day to each task and you’ll actually be
able to check them off. Just make sure you’re not making lists instead of tackling
other responsibilities.
2. Attack One Type of Action at a Time
Flitting from making phone calls, to writing proposals, to answering emails is less
than productive. Each type of action requires your brain to switch gears, stop, then
start again on the new task. Try completing the same types of tasks before moving to
the next. Make your phone calls, then answer emails, then write proposals. You’ll
likely save time and increase your productivity.

2. How will you apply these tools and techniques? What outcomes do you
expect?

The outcomes are worth the time and effort it takes to learn a few basic tips and
techniques.
Less stress, more calm and control, greater motivation, enhanced energy and a real
sense of satisfaction, not to mention admiration from colleagues (or envy?!) are all
possible.
When you work, what are you trying to achieve?
Is it job satisfaction? Promotion? Are you there to make a difference, or is it about
the money?
Three crucial yardsticks can be used to define successful time management in the
workplace:
 Productivity – how much you do
 Performance – how well you do what matters
 Perception – how you and others feel about what you do
Whatever your reasons for doing what you do, better time management at work
means you continually strive to improve your effectiveness (what you do) and your
efficiency (how you do it), both of which are important to how you manage your
career.

3. Discuss any limitations of the tools and techniques you have mentioned.
 Provides focus on the task:
The time management skills initially provides relief from stress and later helps you in
focusing your target and performance in the task. A focused person becomes
successful in less time as compared to those who do more struggle for getting their
target in life. The people always desire to have successful and enjoyable life and that
can be obtained by keeping a focused view about everything and every step.

Mismanagement:
Organized results to less rework and mistakes but excess organizing craze leaves a
person in blunder. The items, details, and instructions are if forgotten then leads to
extra work and a blame of mismanagement. A person has to do a task more times if
he forgets something. It will lead to fatigue and it happens because of predictive
behavior.

4. Outline how you would use estimation techniques to determine task duration
and resource effort.

Estimating the duration of a future activity is a balance between setting an objective

to motivate team performance and allowing adequate time for the scope of work in
the activity to be achieved. The process of duration estimating requires:
• Dealing with each activity in turn
• Considering the work involved, the ideal crew size and the team’s experience
• Estimating optimum duration for activity1
As a starting point, each activity needs to be concisely and precisely defined. This
implies the activity is a discrete element of work, its description is unique and
unambiguous and the work is capable of proceeding to completion without
interruption. Ideally a single person should be responsible for managing the
performance of the work so you can involve people who will be responsible actually
for ‘doing’ the work in the estimating process.

When estimating durations you need to be realistic! For 90% of projects use days; for
most of the rest use weeks. Estimating in hours for projects longer than a few days is
dangerous – you have no idea when the work will actually occur (you will be lucky if
it’s done on the planned day!), but will have created false expectations as to the
accuracy of the estimating and scheduling process. The recommended options for
determining the duration
of each activity (in order of preference) are:
• Option 1 – Ask the person who knows and preferably will be doing the work. This
creates a commitment
to achieve the estimate but will be affected by the person’s innate biases
• Option 2 – Use recorded information from previous similar projects
This aligns with people’s expectations (particularly management) but needs expertise
to make appropriate adjustments to the data.
• Option 3 – Calculate the duration from production rate data (but beware… see
‘rate based estimating below)

5. Explain the procedures for identifying critical path.

 A critical path method (CPM) is a network of events, each one of them linked to the
following activities. Each activity is represented as a node on the network, and
connecting lines are drawn to represent the time schedule to complete that activity.
A critical path method schedule must be completed using the following steps:
1. Identify the activities
2. Determine the sequence of the activities
3. Connect or create a network of the activities
4. Enter the completion time for every activity listed ni step 1
5. Identify the critical path or the longest possible path to complete all activities
6. One important and valuable component is the CPM update progress, allowing to
track closely the performance and time used to complete the activities

6. Describe the procedures for managing baselines, establishment and variance.

A baseline as the name suggests is a line that is being used as a base for future
measurement. It is a reference. In Project Management, the term baseline refers to
an accepted and approved project plan. Usually known as project baseline, it is a
must for a project manager that wish to monitor and evaluate the success of the
project. Without it there is no possibility to compare the current status of the project
with the initial estimated one.

Once established what the baseline is, the next important step is to store it for future
use. If it is not stored, then it cannot be used to compare against it and it is
meaningless. For a project there can be saved multiple baselines depending on the
project size and how often the project plan changes.
To obtain the best efficiency a project manager should best use a project
management software to create the detailed project plan. After it gets approved the
manager should save it as a baseline project plan. During the project execution,
comparisons can be done between the initial baseline estimates and the current
status to compute variances. This comparison can be done either manually or
automatically by software tools. Of course the second approach is preferred.

7. What are the phases within the life cycle of your project? What is include
within each phase?

Planning Phase
The next phase, the planning phase, is where the project solution is further
developed in as much detail as possible and the steps necessary to meet the
project’s objective are planned. In this step, the team identifies all of the work to be
done. The project’s tasks and resource requirements are identified, along with the
strategy for producing them. This is also referred to as “scope management.” A
project plan is created outlining the activities, tasks, dependencies, and timeframes.
The project manager coordinates the preparation of a project budget by providing
cost estimates for the labor, equipment, and materials costs. The budget is used to
monitor and control cost expenditures during project implementation.
Once the project team has identified the work, prepared the schedule, and
estimated the costs, the three fundamental components of the planning process are
 complete. This is an excellent time to identify and try to deal with anything that
might pose a threat to the successful completion of the project. This is called risk
management. In risk management, “high-threat” potential problems are identified
along with the action that is to be taken on each high-threat potential problem,
either to reduce the probability that the problem will occur or to reduce the impact
on the project if it does occur. This is also a good time to identify all project
stakeholders and establish a communication plan describing the information needed
and the delivery method to be used to keep the stakeholders informed.
Finally, you will want to document a quality plan, providing quality targets,
assurance, and control measures, along with an acceptance plan, listing the criteria
to be met to gain customer acceptance. At this point, the project would have been
planned in detail and is ready to be executed.

8. What is a work breakdown structure? How can this be applied to your project
schedule?

The work breakdown structure has a number of benefits in addition to defining and
organizing the project work. A project budget can be allocated to the top levels of
the work breakdown structure, and department budgets can be quickly calculated
based on the each project's work breakdown structure. By allocating time and cost
estimates to specific sections of the work breakdown structure, a project schedule
and budget can be quickly developed. As the project executes, specific sections of
the work breakdown structure can be tracked to identify project cost performance
and identify issues and problem areas in the project organization. For more
information about Time allocation, see the 100% Rule.

Project work breakdown structures can also be used to identify potential risks in a
given project. If a work breakdown structure has a branch that is not well defined
then it represents a scope definition risk. These risks should be tracked in a project
log and reviewed as the project executes. By integrating the work breakdown
structure with an organizational breakdown structure, the project manager can also
identify communication points and formulate a communication plan across the
project organization.

When a project is falling behind, referring the work breakdown structure will quickly
identify the major deliverables impacted by a failing work package or late sub-
deliverable. The work breakdown structure can also be color coded to represent sub-
deliverable status. Assigning colors of red for late, yellow for at risk, green for on-
target, and blue for completed deliverables is an effective way to produce a heat-
map of project progress and draw management's attention to key areas of the work
breakdown structure.

Major Activity
1. What dose a work breakdown structure involve?

The project team creates the project work breakdown structure by identifying the
major functional deliverables and subdividing those deliverables into smaller systems
and sub-deliverables. These sub-deliverables are further decomposed until a single
person can be assigned. At this level, the specific work packages required to produce
the sub- deliverable are identified and grouped together. The work package
represents the list of tasks or "to-dos" to produce the specific unit of work. If you've
seen detailed project schedules, then you'll recognize the tasks under the work
package as the "stuff" people need to complete by a specific time and within a
specific level of effort.

From a cost perspective, these work packages are usually grouped and assigned to a
specific department to produce the work. These departments, or cost accounts, are
defined in an organizational breakdown structure and are allocated a budget to
produce the specific deliverables. By integrating the cost accounts from the
organizational breakdown structure and the project's work breakdown structure, the
entire organization can track financial progress in addition to project performance.

2. In order to achieve project deliverables, how can you estimate the duration
and effort, sequence and dependencies of tasks?

Time management is another key aspect of managing a project. As such, it is

considered to be a core knowledge area, and is closely knit to scope and cost areas.
The main purpose of this knowledge area, as it name suggests, is to build processes
and outputs into the project that assist the manager and team to complete the
project in a timely manner. During the planning process, outputs are created to
illustrate how project tasks will be sequenced and allocated. The controlling and
monitoring processis concerned with tracking and reporting on the progress of
work, as well as adjusting time outputs to address shifts and changes in the project
plan. Finally, the closing process includes an audit of time targets. Project managers
reflect on what contributed to time estimates being accurate, too liberal, or
conservative. This reflective process helps them to build better time plans for future
projects.
The seven processes in the Project Time Management knowledge [1] area are:
1. Plan Schedule Management (Planning process)
2. Define Activities (Planning process)
3. Sequence Activities (Planning process)
4. Estimate Activity Resources (Planning process)
5. Estimate Activity Durations (Planning process)
6. Develop Schedule (Planning process)
7. Control Schedule (Monitoring and Controlling process)

3. How can project scheduling tools and techniques be used to identify schedule
impact?
 Project Managers can use a range of tools and techniques to develop, monitor and
control project schedules. Increasingly, many of these can be applied digitally (using
programs such as Excel, Microsoft Project and so on).

GANTT Chart
This is a horizontal bar chart plotted over time (e.g. days, weeks or months). Each
activity is shown as a bar (its length based on a time estimate). Depending on task
dependencies and resource availability, these bars may be sequential, or run in
parallel. Each bar is plotted to start at the earlier possible start date. The plan laid
out when the GANTT Chart was created can be compared with actual times taken
(plotted below the planned time bars in the chart).

Schedule Network Analysis

The schedule network is a graphical display (from left to right across a page) of all
logical interrelationships between elements of work — in chronological order, from
initial planning through to project closure. As a project progresses, regular analysis of
this network diagram is a check to ensure the project is proceeding ‘on track’.

4. What is a schedule baseline and how can it be communicated with

stakeholders?

A project is considered successful if it manages to fulfill the two following criteria:

 It sticks to a timeline that respects the needs of the project and the capabilities of
the technical partners and vendors.
 It uses all the business assets and allocates resources efficiently
To balance out these two demands, the management and the production teams
meet to create a project schedule or timeline. This timeline is a practical one. It takes
into consideration the interests of all those involved, along with the implementation
partners.
But the schedule is non-negotiable. Once it is prepared and approved by all parties,
no further changes can be made to it.
In an ideal case scenario, the project and its activities progress according to the pace
set up the schedule baseline without any interruptions or delays.

Project Reports
Project reports are probably the most common way to communicate with
stakeholders, but they aren’t the only tool you have available to you. They are,
however, what many project managers consider to be the default.
Project reports have a lot of good things about them and they are excellent for
sharing a mix of hard statistics and narrative about what is happening on the project.
They also make it easy to flag problems by using a Red/Amber/Green status alert.
Good for: Creating a project history, sharing detail.
Watch out for: Project reports are one-way communication so it’s best not to use
them to ask people to take on tasks or for decisions. You never know if your
stakeholders have actually read them!

5. What techniques can be used to measure, record and report the progress of
activities in relation to the agreed schedule?

Percent Complete
 The most common – in my experience – way of measuring progress is using your
project schedule to track and record percent complete.
The finished project represents 100%. When the project starts your counter is at 0%.
You should be making steady progress through the project and be seeing that
number increase week on week as more and more tasks are started, progressed and
completed.
Your project management software will update and consolidate the figures for you.
You only need to track progress at a lower level – the task level. Make sure that you
are updating your task progress regularly and you’ll see the overall project percent
complete adjust.
You might also see the overall project figure adjust itself downwards and this can
happen if you add in a whole lot more tasks that haven’t yet started.
If your project is 50% complete you’d expect, logically, to be 50% through the
elapsed time on the project but this doesn’t always follow. That makes it a bit
unreliable to use percent complete as the only way to track progress.
You might, for example, have a lot of tasks that completed early on and now you’re
working on some longer activities so you aren’t seeing the same speed of completion
as you did earlier. You can manually adjust this by changing and adding in tasks, if
you think it is worthwhile.

6. How can you identify baseline variance?

In the project management world, variance is a measurable change from a

known standard or baseline. In other words, variance is the difference between what
is expected and what is actually accomplished. This is a different definition of
variance compared to statistics where variance is defined as the squared deviation
from the mean! You need to understand what kind of variance is referred to since
there is a huge difference between these two concepts of variance.
In project management, variance baseline is established by identifying the cost,
schedule and scope. Scope defines all the work which needs to be done. The project
management team creates a work-breakdown structure (WBS) which is a hierarchical
view of all tasks to be accomplished. The cost and schedule is then identified
according to the work-breakdown structure (WBS). The cost for each goal
or task is estimated sometimes by using an average daily, hourly, monthly or yearly
rate. The fixed costs are identified for each goal or task. In addition, the project
management workers estimate how long in days or hours a goal or task is to be
accomplished, Then they create a time-phased budget to quantify the performance
cost.
After identifying the scope, schedule and cost, the project managers create a plan to
manage variances from the triple constraints of scope, schedule and cost. A positive
variance means the project is going on ahead of schedule or is under the cost. A
negative variance means the project is late or over the cost.
Variance tracking is key to project management and needs a logical approach. The
project mangers identify the variance thresholds and develop a plan in case it
happens.

7. How can you analyze and forecast the impact of change on the schedule?

Time Impact Analysis Procedure

 A time impact analysis requires the following steps:
1. The delay should be described as simply as possible with the fewest number of
activities reflecting the project delay.
2. Select the schedule to impact. The schedule should be latest updated schedule of
the project.
3. Add the impact activities and make the necessary adjustments to project schedule.
4. Recompute the CPM and note a change in the project completion date.
5. Determine the amount of project delay.
6. Determine the actual dates of the delay using the original schedule

8. Describe the methods that can be used to review progress throughout the
project life cycle. How can you implement agreed schedule changes?

The project management life cycle phase, execution, begins when team members
actually begin working on the tasks assigned them by the project manager. During
this phase, if a product is being created, then the product is put together. During the
project execution phase, the following tasks are completed:
 Time management - the project manager checks to ensure that the project is being
completed on schedule.
 Cost management - the PM ensures that all expenses are accounted for and
necessary
 Quality management - is the quality of the product or process to the specifications of
the stakeholders?
 Change management - should something change in the stakeholder's specifications
or schedule the project manager may need to change the plans for the project
accordingly.
 Issue management - during the execution phase, issues should be carefully tracked
so that the project manager and other team members are aware of any problems
that come up during execution.

9. How can you develop responses to potential or actual schedule changes?

How can these be implemented to maintain project objectives?

1) New project schedule network diagrams may be developed to display approved

remaining durations and modifications to the work plan. In some cases, project
schedule delays can be so severe that development of a new target schedule with
forecasted start and finish dates is needed to provide realistic data for directing the
work, and for measuring performance and progress.
2) An updated project schedule will be generated from the updated schedule data to
reflect the schedule changes and manage the project.
3) Schedule compression or fast-tracking may generate new risks that should be
documented in the risk register.
The importance of the project schedule cannot be under-estimated, its management
plan is one of the key documents for any project manager. He or she will need to be
vigilant in observing the communication of the latest version of the project schedule
to ensure the executing phase runs as smoothly as possible.
10. In order to determine the effectiveness of time management activities, how
can you review schedule performance records?

Recording and reporting on progress this way has several advantages:

 Recording achievements at the time they occur increases the likelihood that the data
are accurate.
 The agreed-upon submission schedule reduces the chances that I’ll surprise people
with unexpected requests for progress data.
 Having people continuously review their proposed schedules and record their
accomplishments heightens their awareness of goals and increases the chances that
they’ll meet their commitments.
 The purpose of project control is to encourage people to perform according to your
plan, not just to collect data. The more aware the team members are of their work in
relation to the overall schedule, the greater the likelihood that they’ll hit the
schedule. If they don’t know or care about the target date, they’re unlikely to hit it.

11. Give examples of possible time management issues? Suggest potential

improvements.

Of all the challenges we hear managers facing these days, the aspect of being able to
manage their own time is very often top of the list. It’s not because we have less
time; it’s that the demands on us these days are so great, we have difficulty in
identifying the best use of our time, and often submit to the ‘busy’ rather than the
‘effective’.
Of course, the best way to determine where your time is going is to record what’s
happening each day. If you find some of these problems are affecting your day-to-
day management of your time, think of what could be done to overcome them. Here
are some suggestions:
* Work Piling Up – You need to set priorities, and determine the difference between
urgent and important. How many times have you gone home from work and realised
you’ve been really busy, but not actually accomplished very much? That shows
you’ve been working on the urgent at the expense of the important. Set yourself
realistic deadlines and see if you can keep to them. And delegate more often!
* Trying to do too much – As stated before, you must set priorities. If it’s impossible
to get everything done, ask which deadlines could be changed. Learn to say no,
because if you take on more work, everything else will suffer, especially your stress
levels.