4.3 Learn key project scheduling terminology - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->Project scheduling has its own unique terminology.</v> There's a lexicon of project management terms, and words, and definitions that is unique to project management, is unique to our discipline, and some of the important terminology when it comes to the networks, I wanna talk about, because we're gonna see these again and again, certainly, I will be referring to them, but in your own organizations, you're gonna see them, as well. You might see them in some of the software packages, if you've ever made use of some of those, you're gonna see a certain amount of terminology keeps recurring. Now, this is not intended to be a completely broad-based coverage of everything in the terminology, because there's a lot of project management terminology. What I would say is though, for the important types of terms for creating a network, these are some of the ones that we wanna pay attention to. The first term is this idea of serial relationships. Now, serial relationships, for those of you who maybe took an electronics course in college or high school, and you remember what they talked about there, how some things we link them, like resistors might be linked in series, and all that was meant by that was one, and then another, and then another, and then another. So these happen in a series, one, then next, then next, then next. It's no different here. For project activity networks, when I talk about a serial relationship between two activities, what I'm saying is, they have to be completed sequentially. First, this one, then, this one. I have to do this before I can do that. So any activities where we refer to serial relationships, that's the idea we're trying to impart. Alternatively, the other major form of network logic suggests parallel relationships. In this situation, activities can be completed simultaneously. Let me give you an example. Suppose that we were part of a team that was doing a large scale project for one of our classes in our undergraduate program, so there are five of us, and we decide to break up the work among ourselves. And one of you is scheduling this overall, but so I'm one of the people, and there's three others, so there's four of us doing the work, one scheduler. So you determined that, "Okay, I want you two "to write out the paper, "and type it out, and do all the stuff for that." And so before we can do that, of course, we think of those serial relationships, we have to go and do our research. Then maybe we put together note cards, then maybe we do a outline, then a first draft, then a second draft, and you see how those have to flow sequentially. One leads into the next. But at the same time, the scheduler is saying, "But you two, "I want you to start developing the presentation." So we have to go to PowerPoint. Once we have the outline from that first group, we can start developing all the slides. Now, we don't depend on them to finish their first draft and second draft while we're developing the slides, we can be doing that at the same time. That's an example of two paths. Them doing the paper, us doing the presentation that are operating in parallel. So these activities can be performed more or less simultaneously to each other. Which again, once we know what the outline is and I have enough information to start the PowerPoint presentation, I can then be doing this, while these folks are still doing the first and second drafts. Okay? That's two examples. Serial relationships versus parallel relationships. Those two define the vast majority of network logic between the two of them. Another term that we're gonna talk about in these lessons is merge activities. Now, merge activities, think about that as a merge on a on ramp for a major interstate. If it says merge left, the information I've just computed in my brain is, I'm gonna have to move out of my right-hand lane into the left, it says merge to the left, so two lanes are gonna become one. It's no different here, a merge activity is an activity in which two or more predecessors, so remember, we're flowing here from left to right, so I have two or more predecessors, all have to flow into one. So this one, let's call it D, we'll say this is A, B, and C, and so D here is gonna be the result of all three being first accomplished. A, and B, and C all have to complete before activity D can start. That's a merge activity. Another term similar to that, but of course, with the exact opposite meaning is the idea of a burst activity. In a burst activity, we have an activity that once it is completed, signals the start of two or more subsequent or successor activities. So the merge activity, two or more predecessors, burst activities is an activity, two or more successors to it.