Activity Definition

The first process in Time Management is activity definition. In executing the process of activity definition, you identify the activities that need to be done to complete the project, and the inputs to do this are: enterprise environmental factors, organizational process assets, the project Scope Statement, the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), a WBS dictionary, and the overall project management plan.

The organizational process assets, which are listed throughout the PMBOK, are processes that already exist within the organization and that can be used to complete the task at hand. In the case of activity definition, there may be formal planning-related policies and guidelines that will help in developing activity definitions. In some cases, these will be informal processes. If there is help available that has been useful in the past to other project managers, it makes sense to use whatever the organization has that can be a guide for doing tasks on new projects.

In order to identify the activities necessary to complete the project, you may need to do a further breakdown of the WBS into a list of activities that are needed to complete each of the work packages. During this breakdown, you might break a work package into smaller and smaller pieces to create manageable activities. For instance, if you have a task that will take longer than 40 hours, you should break it down so that you can control the activities when they occur during the project. Two major mistakes can be made at this point. The first is not having sufficient information to break down the WBS enough to have a schedule that you can control. The second is the exact opposite, where you have so much detail that you drown in the act of micromanaging the project.

During the initial phase of a project, insufficient project scope for future activities might not allow breakdown of the WBS to detailed work packages. If this occurs, then you will have a planning component as the most detailed level of your WBS. (The planning component is a tool found in the activity definition process.) You leave this planning component in place until you can get sufficient information to create detail. So a planning component is simply a high-level task in the breakdown structure and does not offer detail enough to really flesh out a schedule. In some cases, it is like a placeholder for information to be entered later.

There are two planning components. These are controlling the account and the planning package. Control accounts are management control points of specific components at selected levels of the WBS. These components will be higher-level components and are less detailed than the work package level (PMBOK, p. 129). A planning package can be found under the control account but above the work package. The planning package is used to plan work that is known but about which you do not have enough detail yet to do a schedule. Remember that the work package is going to be your lowest level of breakdown.

Rolling wave planning is a form of progressive elaboration (PMBOK 3^rd edition, p. 128). Rolling wave planning is where early activities are detailed and future activities are still at a high level. As an example, a software development project will start off with a detailed plan for Requirements Gathering phase, but other plans, such as testing plans, may not yet have the same amount of detail. Rolling wave simply means that you put in detail as the detail becomes available. It may also be that a particular task is absolutely necessary in order to execute a later task in the project schedule, and so you detail it immediately.

Q.	When using decomposition in activity definition, the final output is:
		A.	Deliverables
		B.	Work packages
		C.	Activities or action steps
		D.	Schedule

The answer is C.

Q.	Updates to the WBS during activity definition are often called:
		A.	Supporting detail
		B.	Refinements
		C.	Updates
		D.	Activities

The answer is B. These refinements tend to occur with riskier projects.

Q.	A form of progressive planning is called:
		A.	Scheduling
		B.	Charting
		C.	Expanded trial
		D.	Rolling wave

The answer is D. As detail becomes known or it is necessary to put in detail in order to progress on the project, you do rolling wave planning.

Q.	The major output from activity definition is:
		A.	The schedule
		B.	The activity list
		C.	WBS
		D.	SOW

The answer is B. The activity list is used for further work on the scheduling aspects of the project. It is the first document to be done in the Project Time Management process.

Q.	Other outputs from activity definition are:
		A.	Activity attributes, milestone lists
		B.	WBS, SOW
		C.	Technical requirements and the WBS
		D.	Activity costs, schedule costs

The answer is A. Activity attributes identify "multiple attributes associated with each schedule activity" (PMBOK, p. 130). Milestone lists record whether or not each milestone is required by the contract (mandatory) or based on project requirements.