How Project Schedule activities are related?

Project scheduling is a constant activity for a Project Manager. There are multiple challenges a project managers face when it comes to making sure the timelines are met and the project is going as per schedule or project schedule is able to absorb the challenges.

It’s very important to understand for a project manager how different activities are related to each other. Without which any adoption or control of project schedule will be near to impossible. Relationships in a network diagram are defined depending upon the type of project and project needs/constraints.

From PMP® prospective, there are four types of relationships one activity can have with another

• Finish to Start
• Finish to Finish
• Start to Start
• Start to finish

Finish to Start (FS): As per PMBOK®

A logical relationship in which a successor activity cannot start until a predecessor activity has finished.

Example: The awards ceremony (successor) cannot start until the race (predecessor) has finished.

Finish-to-finish (FF): As per PMBOK®

A logical relationship in which a successor activity cannot finish until a predecessor activity has finished.

Example: Writing a document (predecessor) is required to finish before editing the document (successor) can finish..

Start-to-start (SS): As per PMBOK®

A logical relationship in which a successor activity cannot start until a predecessor activity has started.

Example: Level concrete (successor) cannot begin until pour the foundation (predecessor) begins

Start-to-finish (SF): As per PMBOK®

A logical relationship in which a successor activity cannot finish until a predecessor activity has started.

Example: The first security guard shift (successor) cannot finish until the second security guard shift (predecessor) starts.

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About Sparsh Goyal

A passionate IT professional, Sparsh Goyal boasts of 4.3+ years of experience. He has worked for various projects under AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Spring Boot, Python, Microservices, RESTful, RESTFUL APIs/SOAP, Scripting, Shell and JAVA. He is also working towards gaining proficiency in Oracle Cloud PaaS, DevOps, SaaS and Docker/Kubernetes. His primary and secondary skills validate his relentless pursuits of expanding his horizon and developing more as an IT person. He boasts of the following certifications: *Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer. *AWS Cloud Solutions Architect Associate. *Oracle certified JAVA programmer.

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