PMP Terminologies

PMP Terminologies
Here is the continuation of Time Management knowledge area.
Precedence vs logical relationship
While developing the relationship between the work packages
or the activities, the Project Manager or the Project team members determine
the activities what should come first and what next. This is developed by the
method called the Precedence Diagramming Method or PDM. PDM graphically
represents the activities using boxes.
The boxes which are representing the activities are linked
based on the dependency. This is called logical relationship. There are four
types of dependencies. Finish to Start, Start to finish, Start to Start and
Finish to Finish.

Master schedule vs Milestone schedule
Summary level schedule which highlights the principal
activities and their estimated duration is called Master schedule. This
schedule helps in early communication among stakeholders in particular senior
management. The schedule is also useful for facilitating team brainstorming
during the initial phrases of the project to work out logistics.

Master schedule
A milestone is a significant event in the project usually
marked by the completion of a major deliverable. The milestone schedule is used
for reporting status reports to top level management and external
stakeholders. And also the milestone
schedule allows the project team leader to review and identify all of the
significant and major project related milestones that may come during the
course of a project.

Progressive elaboration vs Rolling
wave planning
At the beginning of the project, near term deliverables are
decomposed into individual components and defined at the greatest level of
detail while the deliverables that comes later will be defined at a higher
level.
For example a project having 4 phases, may be phase 1 and 2
are decomposed in detailed and while the activities are in progress that is
during execution phase, the details of phase 3 and phase 4 deliverables are
defined. This type of project management
approach is particularly useful when the availability of information needed to
plan future work packages in detail is predicated on the successful completion
of previous project phases. This is called Rolling Wave Planning.
Progressive elaboration is used in which the plan for the
particular and designated project is being continuously and constantly
modified, detailed, and improved as newer and more sets of information becomes
available to the project management team.
Progressive elaboration is a form of Rolling Wave Planning.


Project Buffer vs Feeding buffer
A project buffer is inserted at the end of the project
network between the last task and the completion date. Any delays on the
longest chain of dependant tasks will consume some of the buffer but will leave
the completion date unchanged and so protect the project.
Delays on paths of tasks feeding into the longest chain can
impact the project by delaying a subsequent task on the Critical Chain. To
protect against this, feeding buffers are inserted between the last task on a
feeding path and the Critical Chain

Resource Loading vs Resource
Levelling
Resource loading is assigning activities to resource/man
power. In resource loading, each employee is assigned a task or a percentage of
a project. With resource loading, a project manager can predict an employee's
hours for the year and see how tasks can be assigned. This also allows the
project manager to decide whether or not additional employees or contractors
are needed to complete the scheduled projects.

Resource Loading
Resource leveling deals with both time (starting and ending
date) and resources, including manpower and budget. Resource leveling tries to
balance the conflicting interests of projects with the available resources. Resource
levelling generally breaks things down into two categories: time and available
resources. Some projects need to be finished within a certain timeframe. These
projects will use all the available resources (money and manpower) to complete
the project by a certain date.
􀂄Advantages
– Less day day-to to-day manipulation
– Better morale, fewer problems/costs
– Levels costs, simplifies budgeting and funding

Resource levelling
Work Performance Information vs Work
Performance Measurement
Work performance Information is the output of execution like
status of deliverables, schedule progress, cost incurred, implementation of the
corrective/changed requests, risk status, seller’s information in terms of
procurement etc…
Work Performance Information
Work Performance Measurement is the output of Monitoring and
control. They are used to generate graph or metrics like Cost Variance (CV),
Schedule Variance (SV), forecasts like ETC, EAC