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In project management, level of effort (LOE) is a support-type project activity that must be done to support other work activities or the entire project effort. It usually consists of short amounts of work that must be repeated periodically. Examples of such an activity may be project budget accounting, customer liaison, or oiling machinery during manufacturing.
Since an LOE activity is not itself a work item directly associated with accomplishing the final project product, service or result, but rather one that supports such work, its duration is based on the duration of the discrete work activity it is supporting—oiling machinery will start when manufacturing starts and finish when it finishes. As a result, an LOE activity should never be on the critical path of the project schedule, as it never of itself adds time to the project. Rather, manufacturing would be on the critical path, and the oiling activity would become shorter or longer only if manufacturing does. LOE activities should not have variances either, because they cannot be ahead of or behind schedule based on their meaning.
In inserting LOE activities to a critical path method schedule, the LOE is usually scheduled as both a start-to-start (SS) and finish-to-finish successor of the driving activity. In a network logic diagram, these two relationships make it look as though the LOE is hanging from the start and finish of the discrete activity. As a result, an LOE thus diagrammed is sometimes referred to as a "hammock" activity or relationship.
LOE is used to define the amount of work performance within a time and is measured in staff days or staff hours per day/week/month.
LOE estimation is one of the primary tasks of a project manager.
Earned value management (EVM), earned value project management, or earned value performance management (EVPM) is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner.
Project planning is part of project management, which relates to the use of schedules such as Gantt charts to plan and subsequently report progress within the project environment. Project planning can be done manually or by the use of project management software.
Critical chain project management (CCPM) is a method of planning and managing projects that emphasizes the resources required to execute project tasks. It was developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It differs from more traditional methods that derive from critical path and PERT algorithms, which emphasize task order and rigid scheduling. A critical chain project network strives to keep resources levelled, and requires that they be flexible in start times.
The critical path method (CPM), or critical path analysis (CPA), is an algorithm for scheduling a set of project activities. A critical path is determined by identifying the longest stretch of dependent activities and measuring the time required to complete them from start to finish. It is commonly used in conjunction with the program evaluation and review technique (PERT).
Project management software are computer programs that help plan, organize, and manage resources.
The program evaluation and review technique (PERT) is a statistical tool used in project management, which was designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.
A Gantt chart is a bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. It was designed and popularized by Henry Gantt around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities and the current schedule status.
In project management, a schedule is a listing of a project's milestones, activities, and deliverables. Usually dependencies and resources are defined for each task, then start and finish dates are estimated from the resource allocation, budget, task duration, and scheduled events. A schedule is commonly used in the project planning and project portfolio management parts of project management. Elements on a schedule may be closely related to the work breakdown structure (WBS) terminal elements, the Statement of work, or a Contract Data Requirements List.
In project management, float or slack is the amount of time that a task in a project network can be delayed without causing a delay to:
A project network diagram is a graph that displays the order in which a project’s activities are to be completed. Derived from the work breakdown structure, the terminal elements of a project are organized sequentially based on the relationship among them. It is typically drawn from left to right to reflect project chronology.
The precedence diagram method (PDM) is a tool for scheduling activities in a project plan. It is a method of constructing a project schedule network diagram that uses boxes, referred to as nodes, to represent activities and connects them with arrows that show the dependencies. It is also called the activity-on-node (AON) method.
A hammock activity is a schedule or project planning term for a grouping of tasks that "hang" between two end dates it is tied to.
Event chain methodology is a network analysis technique that is focused on identifying and managing events and relationships between them that affect project schedules. It is an uncertainty modeling schedule technique. Event chain methodology is an extension of quantitative project risk analysis with Monte Carlo simulations. It is the next advance beyond critical path method and critical chain project management. Event chain methodology tries to mitigate the effect of motivational and cognitive biases in estimating and scheduling. It improves accuracy of risk assessment and helps to generate more realistic risk adjusted project schedules.
In the United States Department of Defense, the Integrated Master Plan (IMP) and the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) are important program management tools that provide significant assistance in the planning and scheduling of work efforts in large and complex materiel acquisitions. The IMP is an event-driven plan that documents the significant accomplishments necessary to complete the work and ties each accomplishment to a key program event. The IMP is expanded to a time-based IMS to produce a networked and multi-layered schedule showing all detailed tasks required to accomplish the work effort contained in the IMP. The IMS flows directly from the IMP and supplements it with additional levels of detail——both then form the foundations to implement an Earned Value Management System.
A glossary of terms relating to project management and consulting.
The project management triangle is a model of the constraints of project management. While its origins are unclear, it has been used since at least the 1950s. It contends that:
The quality of work is constrained by the project's budget, deadlines and scope (features).
The project manager can trade between constraints.
Changes in one constraint necessitate changes in others to compensate or quality will suffer.
Arrow diagramming method (ADM) is a network diagramming technique in which activities are represented by arrows. ADM is also known as the activity-on-arrow (AOA) method.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to project management:
Critical path drag is a project management metric developed by Stephen Devaux as part of the Total Project Control (TPC) approach to schedule analysis and compression in the critical path method of scheduling. Critical path drag is the amount of time that an activity or constraint on the critical path is adding to the project duration. Alternatively, it is the maximum amount of time that one can shorten the activity before it is no longer on the critical path or before its duration becomes zero.
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