TOPIC: Process "Sequence Activities"

Hi,

I have seen a number of questions in different practice exams that refer to the "Project Schedule Network Diagram", which is an output from the process "Sequence Activities". The questions assume that task durations have already been assigned within this diagram, but the process "Estimate Activity Durations" does not happen until a little later. I do not see where any task duration information is included in inputs to Sequence Activities, unless it might be implicitly embedded in one of the inputs such as the Activity List or Activity Attributes. Leads and Lags are under Tools & Techniques, but there must first be a duration available before one can apply leads and lags. Can someone tell me under which input does the task duration get into the Project Schedule Network Diagram?

Thanks,

-Bob

Bob,

This is a bit of a cop-out answer, but perhaps it is because the planning process group is iterative? In a typical project, you'll have to cycle through most of those processes multiple times to refine your planning.

Alternately, perhaps the qestions you reference are from the standpoint that activity durations have already been estimated. If this is the case, they typically would be integrated with the network diagram previously integrated.

Bob,
as outlined by Steve, processes are iterative and one output of a process will be an input to another process and may be altered by adding extra details during the process.

As for the network diagram, it is initially done in the process "Sequence Activities" where the main focus is to identify dependencies and activity sequence (SS, FS, FF) and also applying leads and lags and yes at this point the duration are not know yet because resources are not yet assigned to activities.

after that in the "Estimate Activity Duration", the resources assigned to a task are known and now you can define the duration required for each activity.

in the "develop Schedule" process, you revisit your network diagram by adding activity duration. and at this point you can calculate the critical path, find floats, calculate the early start and early finish of the activities.

Hi,

Thanks to you both for the answers. I was trying to trace the logic, because for a process to properly iterate, it must have a valid path for information to be passed. If I can identify it, I have a much better chance of "getting it". So, I wanted to know which of the inputs to Sequence Activities carried the Activity Durations. I traced through it again and found the following logic to hold, using brackets to distinguish <inputs or output> and [Process names]:

<Activity Duration Estimates> are input to [Develop Schedule] which outputs <Schedule Data - this includes both the Activity List and Activity Attributes> as an output. <Activity List and Activity Attributes> are both inputs to [Sequence Activities] so I still don't know which one has the activity durations, but at least the logic is there! Figure 6-17 in the 5th Ed. PMBOK diagrams the Schedule Data Flow, but does not include the path I described.

I posted the following link under a different topic, which attempts to capture all the logic between the 47 processes. The diagram is by Sean Whitaker at this link:
seanwhitaker.com/pmp-study/
under How to Pass the PMP Exam, slide #32.

-Bob

Hi Bob,
i checked the chart you referred to and i felt like

to me, i find Appendix "ANNEX A1: THE STANDARD FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT OF A PROJECT" from the PMBOK Guide is the best and more comprehensive reference for the process interactions and the flow of inputs and outputs.