Abstract:

Many projects such as Project Based Learning courses and various interdisciplinary academic projects are conducted in the universities. It is important for those projects to create a project schedule to surely achieve the goal of the projects by the due date. This paper reports the scheduling method effective to those projects and the evaluation result of the effectiveness of the method which was taught in the systems engineering lecture.

In general, a project schedule (or Gantt Chart) is created by connecting activities extracted from Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). WBS is defined as the hierarchical structure of decomposed elements of the project outcomes and is the base structure to make sure to extract all of the activities necessary to create the feasible project schedule. However, WBS creation is not a simple work for students because the method creating WBS has not been clearly defined.

Since the final outcomes are produced by performing activities and producing the intermediate deliverables as a result of activities repeatedly, the project process can be thought consisting of activities and deliverables. This means that WBS can be decomposed by activities or deliverables. The WBS decomposition method from the activities’ view is called Activity-based Decomposition (AbD) and the method from the deliverables’ view is called Deliverables-based Decomposition (DbD). Gantt Chart is created by connecting activities without clearly showing what deliverables are passed between activities. This causes some ambiguity in the schedule creation. To resolve this problem, Deliverables Dependency Matrix (DDM) is introduced. DDM can be created with WBS and is a matrix to show the relationship between activities and deliverables which activities produce, and the linkage of activities through deliverables. DDM can be thought as a tool to consider the relationship and linkage of activities and deliverables carefully to create the feasible project schedule. DDM can be easily converted to Gantt Chart.

This scheduling method was taught to graduate students and practical exercises were conducted suitable for student life such as a schedule creation of thesis paper project and the job hunting project. Students approached these exercises actively by studying the unfamiliar elements of the project to construct WBS and learning the scheduling method to actually create the Gantt Chart of their project.

This paper describes the basic concept and the characteristics of these WBS creation methods, AbD and DbD, such as a suitable application area, the expression of decomposed elements, a capability to extract activities and a way to select the method depending on the project type. This paper describes the basic concept of DDM and a way to convert AbD to DbD with DDM. This paper also discusses the effectiveness of these methods and some points noticed during the education of the scheduling method and the exercises. Those scheduling methods and exercises close to the academic life of students can be thought as a good way to educate the project management which will be useful through the following social life as well as the academic life.

Keywords:

WBS, Scheduling, Project Based Learning, Project Management.