Planning and Scheduling with Project Gantt—Exercises

Required Data

Creating Activities

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with the data that must be in place before you can perform the exercises below. The exercise refers to the example activities in the following table.

  1. Create two subprojects as shown in the table.
  2. Specify the number of work days as shown in the table.

Sub Project 1                                                

Activity ID. Total Work Days
10010 20
10020 10
10030 5
10040 0

Sub Project 2

Activity ID. Total Work Days
10050 4
10060 2

General exercise for Building a Project Plan

Main Exercise

Purpose: The purpose of these exercises is to plan and schedule projects using project Gantt.

Windows:
Project Navigator/Gantt
Project Navigator/Activity
Gantt
Project Navigator/Planning

Viewing Gantt Chart

  1. Open the Project Navigator window.
  2. Query for your project and select the project level in the project navigator.
  3. Click the Gantt tab, right click within the tab and then click Zoom In or Zoom Out as per requirement.
  4. Right click again and then click Properties. Verify that the timescale unit and interval of time to be shown on the Gantt chart is as required.

Note: In order to view the non-working days in the Gantt, the project calendar must be generated.

  1. Note that the activities 10010, 10020 and 10030 are represented as bars whereas the activity 10040 is represented as a diamond because this is a milestone activity, i.e. number of work days is equal to zero. 
  2. The activity bars span the duration of the activity. i.e.: they start from the Early Start Date and end at the Early Finish Date. Right click the activity bar and click Activity Info which opens the Activity window to verify the activity dates.
  3. Also note that there is a summary bar for the length of the subproject. Right click on the subproject bar and click Collapse Group or Expand Group as per requirement to hide or display the activities in a particular subproject.
  4. Select the subproject level in the project navigator and note that only the subproject summary bar and activities belonging to that subproject are displayed.
  5. Click on the activity bar and move the project to the left or right to create a shift in the Early Start Date and Early Finish Date of the activity.
  6. Position your cursor at the start or end of the activity bar and drag the bar to extend the Early Start Date or Early Finish Date of the activity respectively.
  7. Save your changes.
  8. Right click on the activity bar and click Activity Info to open the Activity window where you can verify that the Duration Days, Early Finish Date and Early Start Date have changed accordingly.

Note: The following steps are done on the second Gantt window, which is used to compare a number of projects.

  1. Open the Gantt window and query for a couple of projects.
  2. Right click on this window and then click Zoom In or Zoom Out as per requirement.
  3. Right click again and then click Properties. Verify that the timescale unit and interval of time to be shown on the Gantt chart is as required.
  4. Right click on the summary bar for the project and click Expand Group and Collapse Group as per requirement to hide or display the subprojects and activities in a particular project. You can also right click on the summary bar for a subproject and choose to hide or display the activities belonging to that subproject.
  5. You can also right click on the project bar or the activity bar and click Project Info or Activity Info respectively to view the further details.

Creating Dependencies

  1. Using the project from the exercise above, right click on the Gantt tab of the Project Info window and then click Properties.
  2. Select the Show Dependencies check box or ensure that it is selected. This function is used to show or hide the dependencies on the Gantt chart.
  3. Right click on the Gantt tab again and click Create Dependencies Mode so that you can draw dependencies between activities directly in the Gantt chart.
  4. Drag the pointer from one (predecessor) activity to another (successor) activity to create a finish-start dependency. Create a dependency between activity 10010 and 10020. Repeat to create dependencies between 10020 and 10030, 10020 and 10040, 10030 and 10040.
  5. Save your changes to see the dependencies created.
  6. Right click on the dependency line between activity 10020 and 10030 and click Dependency Details. In the Dependency Details dialog box, note that by default the Dependency Type is Finish to Start. Use the List to change this value to Start to Start and add a Lag value of 1. (This will mean that activity 10030 can only start after a period of 1 day after activity 10020 has started).
  7. Navigate back to the Planning tab of the Project Navigator window and observe that the activity records have been retrieved to the Predecessor and Successor sub tabs based on the planning you did on the Gantt tab.
  8. To delete a dependency right click on the dependency on the Gantt chart, click Dependency Details and then click Delete.

Note: The following steps are done on Planning tab of an activity to create or update activities which will then reflect on the Gantt chart:

  1. To add the activity 10050 as the predecessor for the activity 10060 click New on the Predecessor tab of activity 10060.
  2. Click on the List of Values in the Predecessor Activity Seq field to select another activity in the same project that can be linked to. i.e.: the activity sequence for activity 10060 in this case.
  3. Ensure that the Dependency Type and Lag are as required. You can also choose to select or clear the Primary Dependency check box depending on whether you want the particular dependency to be the primary dependency between a predecessor and successor activity.
  4. You can also delete a dependency on this tab by selecting the dependency record and clicking Delete.

Scheduling Project Plan

  1. Using the project from the exercise above, select the project level in the navigator.
  2. Right click on the Gantt tab of the Project Navigator window and then click Properties.
  3. In the Gantt tab, right-click and click Schedule Project. Alternatively, you can select the Refresh Client & Schedule Project function to first refresh the Gantt client with the latest activity information before performing the scheduling calculation. This second alternative should be used if activity information has been changed in another window after the Gantt window has been populated.
  4. Observe how the project plan has been updated as a result of scheduling. Also observe that the Late Start and Late Finish dates of the activities are updated accordingly after scheduling.
  5. Save your changes to commit the results of the scheduling calculation.
  6. Select the Show Critical Activities check box or ensure that it is selected.
  7. Note that the critical activities,10010,10020 and 10040 are red bars indicating that the total float on these activities is less that or equal to zero.
  8. Right click on a critical activity in the Gantt tab and click Activity Info. On the Planning tab of the Activity window, click on the Constraints sub tab and observe that the value of the total float of the activity is equal to zero.
  9. On the Constraints tab for the activity 10070, select the constraint type Start not earlier than and add a constraint date.
  10. Save your changes.
  11. Reschedule the project and observe the result you get on the Gantt tab.. 
  12. Navigate to the Project window and observe that the Planned Start and Planned Finish Date of the project have been updated accordingly.