Leaderboard

Projects are a set of activities or tasks that must be completed in some pre-defined sequence by individuals or groups of individuals, within a certain timeframe, and using a specific set of resources or domain knowledge. There are a set of relationships that can exist between the start and end points of these activities/processes in their execution. There are four possible activity relationships, which are defined in the Project Management Institute's “Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).” These relationships are Finish-to-Start, Start-to-Start, Finish-to-Finish and Start-to-Finish. FINISH –to- START The Finish-to-Start relationship means that one activity (predecessor) must be fully complete before any following (successor) activities may begin. It happens to be the most common activity relationship in project management. Example: - Newspaper Writing. The writing and editing processes share a finish-to-start relationship because the editor can't start the editing process until the writer has completed their work on an initial draft formation. Example: - Film Making . START-to-START The next relationship is Start-to-Start. In this phase, an activity cannot start until and unless another activity also starts. Example: - Painting an apartment/home. Each room needs a coating of primer and painting. The priming and painting share a start-to-start dependency because the homeowner must apply the primer coat before they can apply paint . Although paint can only begin after the primer, as the homeowner awaits one room's primer to dry, they can apply primer to the rest of the rooms they wish to paint. FINISH-TO-FINISH This phase of relationship exists where two or more activities can only be considered completed if and when both are completed. Example:- Computer Manufacturing. Employees in each department are involved in creating memory chips and assembling motherboards. The creation of memory chips and assembling motherboards share a Finish to Finish dependency. START-to-FINISH And finally, we come to the Start-to-Finish relationship. It is rarely found in real-life projects. In start-to-finish relationships, as soon as the predecessor activity starts, the successor activity will get finished. Company manufactures products and sells them directly to consumers for consumption/usage. For delivering a product, the company requires both warehouse and shipping operations in tandem. The warehouse and shipping departments share a Start–to-Finish relationship for each product they send out for delivery. Benefits of Activity Relationship in Project Management Activity relationship in Project Management helps in identification of :- · Project deliverables that meets stakeholder expectations and business objectives. · Timely and expedited delivery. · Project deliverables with minimum or zero defects. · Enhanced cost control. · Increased quality of product delivery. · Reduced rework . · Reduced customer complaints and grievances. · Integration of Supply Chain & Logistics. · Improved productivity. · Increased team morale and satisfaction, motivation. · Strong service delivery. · Improved decision making. · Continuous improvement of process.