Define Activities - PMBOK® Guide – Fifth Edition

6.2 Define Activities

Define Activities

Define Activities Process:

The Define Activities process is concerned with decomposing the Work package into a list of relevant activities. In most of the projects, the Create WBS and Define Activities are done as part of the same process. In order to create a WBS that covers all the work packages within the scope, the whole team must be involved in the process. It is natural from there for the team to breakdown to the initial activity list. Also, when the project manager actually starts with the project schedule, the starts with the preliminary activity list and then goes onto relate those (with a project management software like MPP),  allocates, durations for each of the activities along with the resources to come up with a detailed schedule. So, most of the processes in the schedule management knowledge area overlap without distinct demarcation.

Define Activities Process - Introduction

Inputs:

1. Schedule Management Plan: The Schedule Management Plan has the process to decompose the WBS to an activity list relevant to the project objectives.

2. Scope baseline: The Scope baseline covers the scope statement, scope management plan and WBS. When coming up with the activity list, it is good to keep in mind what is the scope and the baseline is a good input to that effect.

3. Enterprise Environmental Factors: For all the planning processes, enterprise environmental factors are a vital input since the planning phase needs to factor the proper conditions under which work will be carried out.

4. Organizational Process Assets: Initial Process outline, process tailoring guidelines for this customer, context.

Define Activities Process Inputs

Tools & Techniques:

1. Expert Judgment: Expert opinion from team and SMEs is very important in order to define activities.

2. Decomposition: Breaking down the work package to one or more activities, while work package is assigned to a team , the activities are allocated to individual resources.

3. Roll Wave Planning: When the WBS is broken down to work packages and then the individual work packages are broken down to activities, not all of the work packages in the WBS are broken down, only work packages relevant to current project phase are broken down keeping the other deliverables at the high-level. This process is called roll wave planning. Plan what you want to execute in the coming next period say, a week or two.

Define Activities Process Tools & Techniques

Outputs:

1. Activity List: It is a list of activities for a work package. Each individual activity has an activity identifier and an activity description. 

2. Activity Attributes: Any further details useful while developing the schedule can be part of activity attributes -  any unique characteristics for each of the activity gets added as activity attributes.

3. Milestone List: While activities have durations attached during estimate activity duration process, milestones are pre-marked or they have zero duration. They are mostly delivery-related and are checkpoints.

Define Activities Process Outputs

Define Activities Process - Match the Following

Define Activities Process - Match the Following (Answers)

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