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Planning Planet Planning Norms

2 replies [Last post]
Sun, 2006-07-23 10:01
Charleston-Joseph...
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Hello to all,

A lot of topics and discussion going on around our plannet. Diverse opinion and ideas were thrown. Can we make a sense on some basic fundamental essential planning norms.

A case in point is open ended activities. As any planner knows that got embroiled in 5,000 activities or more, big chances the planner got lost in the intricacy of the logic/links and relationship of activities. Whatever reason, alibi, laziness or excuses the particular planner may have such plans shall not be the norm of planning planet.

In the golden days of manual PERT/CPM or CPM, the rule is to have only 1 i-node as start and 1 j-node as finish. This is the only way to run forward pass and backward pass to arrive at float and total float.

Is it possible for us to have a norm of: only one activity will have no predecessor and only one activity will have no succesors. In this way, we may arrive at zero open ended activities.

Cheers,

Charlie
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Replies

Mon, 2006-07-24 03:13
#1
Nigel Winkley
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Charlie

Whenever possible I try and have only one start and one finish. This is not always possible as you say due to (my) time constraints, merging programmes together etc.

When I run the schedule I always try and remove some of the open ends. Having imparted this knowledge to other planners and suggested that they tie up the project, the danger is that they will add everything to the start project milestone and again to the end project milestone.

Some activities are not really linkable in a logical way - meetings for one. But linking everything to the start or finish is not a good idea.

In principle I agree with what you say, in practice, hmmm. Rain check.

Cheers

Nige
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Mon, 2006-07-24 03:11
#2
Clive Randall
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Charlie
Not sure about the golden days of doing it with a pencil
As to only having one activity what will
I do with the other 4999. All my constraints key dates etc etc etc.
Looks good on paper Charlie but why bother why not search the programme for all the activities which either have no Pre or Suc and give them one surely thats what a good planner should do or is that what you are saying.
Clive
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