Time Management is the process of identifying activities that are required to complete the project scope. These activities must be done in a specific order. This sequence activity process is necessary. Some activities will depend on others, so they must wait until the dependent activity finishes. This will ensure that some activities start together and some activities finish together. The sequence of project activities must be established. This is done mainly with Sequence Activities.
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You can find a detailed explanation of the PMP project management course that you are enrolled in if you are considering applying for PMP. Let’s now explore Sequence Activities and what the best practices are for implementing it. Finally, let’s show Sequence Activities with a real-life example.
What is it?
According to the PMP certification course Sequence Activities is the process for identifying and documenting relationships between project activities. The main purpose of sequence activities is to finalize the interrelationship between activities in order to complete the project scope.
Network Diagram is the key outcome of Sequence Activities. The Network Diagram of a Project visualizes the project activities by putting them in boxes and displaying the interrelationship with arrows. Let’s now take a look at the output of Sequence Activities with a sample.
A sample network diagram for the Sequence Activities Process
This is a sample network diagram that was created by sequence activities.
As you can see, the project was launched after completion.
Activity #1 must be initiated first.
Activity #1 is over. Activity #2 and Activity #3 are about to begin.
Activity #4 can only be started after Activity #2 is completed.
Activity #5 is dependent on Activity #2 and Activity 3. Therefore, it will only start after these two activities have been completed.
Activity #6 is the final Activity. It can only be started if Activity #4 and Activity #5 have been completed.
The project will be completed after activity #6 is completed.
This is a sample network diagram to demonstrate how a network diagram works. Real-life projects will have many activities, so the network diagram as well as sequence activities process will be more complicated.
How to create a good network diagram in Sequence Activities?
The critical path of the project can also be seen if the activity durations are added to the Network diagram during the sequence activities process. A network diagram is an input critical to determining the critical path for a project. Activity durations can be placed on these activity boxes to help you see the critical path.
The most popular method to draw network diagrams is Precedence Diagramming Method, also abbreviated as PDM. PDM can also be abbreviated to Activity-On-Node (AON) or PDM. This is because activities are represented in the network diagram as nodes or boxes.
Precedence Diagramming Method boxes are used to represent the activities of the project, while arrows indicate the dependencies between these activities.
In this example, Activity A is connected with Activity B by a forward arrow. This means that Activity B is dependent on Activity A and Activity B cannot start until Activity A is completed. In other words, Activity A is the predecessor to Activity B.
An example of a Sequence Activities Process
Let’s now see how sequence activities can be performed for a sample project. Let’s take as an example project: Billing System Development of a utility service provider. We can define the activities for invoicing screen work package and analyze invoice screen req.
