Q 625. What is a Hammock Acitivty in Project Management? Could there be any Hammock activities in a Lean Six Sigma project? Provide examples to support your answer.

 

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Hammock Activity

While doing the project chatter in a project management we have to map all the activities in a critical path method to know the project completion dates .

Like

Optimistic dates 

Pessimistic dates 

Most likely dates. 

So Hammock activities are grouping of the  small activities that are float between the bigger activities.

IT helps us to finalizing the CPM.

As they are small tasks they have no fixed duration because there is a float between the tasks.

So its completion dates are calculated on the bigger task start date and end date.

 

In project management, a hammock activity is a task or series of tasks that covers all or part of the project timeframe and helps or guides in grouping and organizing other similar activities.

It performs the job of a supervisory level work which oversees multiple intricate tasks within the main tasks, this helps in ensuring the project is as per the schedule and no major milestone is affected.

Comin to Lean Six Sigma way of working, we do already have schedule management within the framework of the project, hence Hammock activity is in a way inbuilt within the framework, to understand the applicability of usage of hammock activity within lean six sigma we can check the below listed points:

Define Phase:

Hammock activity will be deployed where we plan the overall schedule of the project with main tasks and sub tasks clearly listed with a defined time of completion for each, subtask could be preparing project charter, understanding, and onboarding required stake holders.

Measure Phase:

In Measure phase Hammock activity comes into play in terms of data collection and processing the data based on the need, understanding the current KPI’s, any other factor that needs to be included in the project for monitoring purposes.

Analyze Phase:

In Analyze phase, we often use tools such as fish bone, why why and other tools to analyze the root cause of the problem, which is identified in measure phase, Hammock exercise will helps in going to the depth of these causes which are lying under the problem.

Improve Phase:

In Improve phase, we talk about implementing the solutions identified for the root causes, this will include Pilot deployment in certain cases, process improvements or changes based on reflections from previous steps, all these are taken up under Hammock activity.

Control Phase:

In control phase there are again multiple subtasks which needs to be performed, these tasks include creating and establishing control plans, SOP preparation and deploying, in this phase Hammock assists in establishing process enhancements.

Hammock is a swing tied at two opposite corners . Therefore by definition it hangs between two corners. In a project management instance, it would mean a task that that hangs between two dates.

In a six sigma perspective it would mean to carry ‘x’ for a period of time before applying f(x) so that it becomes a y. For example in Theory of constraints we studied to increase the capacity of existing resources or deploy more capacity at non constraints. 

So if a resource who is a non constraint needs to work extra days  to build in capacity, needs to be pid wages and acts as a hammock or also a supporting link between two dates.

Hammock is a project management planning term used for identification & segregation of sub tasks which are not interlinked to other tasks, but these tasks must be completed before ending current activity or starting another activity in order to achieve desired target.

 

Hammock activity has no fixed duration. The time assigned to the activities is flexible and it can be used in reduction of wastes in organization.

The 7 wastes (Muda) in lean management are described as WORMPIT.

W-Waiting

O-Over production

R- Rework

M-Motion

P-Over Processing

I-Inventory

T-Transportation

 

In Lean, substantial reduction in W(Waiting time) is possible by planning Hammock activities. Let’s consider below example where product launch in manufacturing company is planned.

 

	Final QA/QC Approved Product ( Main Task-1)				Product launch (Main Task-2)
		Location Finalization (Subtask)		Advertisement (Subtask)
			Guest List (Subtask)

 

In above example Product launch in a manufacturing company is being planned, It consist of Main tasks like Final QA/QC approved product which is getting ready to be launched in market and it also consists of multiple sub tasks like “Finalization of location’, “preparation of List of guests”, “Advertisement”, etc. Both Main tasks 1 & 2 are linked and to be executed in sequence however, any of sub tasks can be done first, without the other being initiated or completed. But there is an overall target to complete these tasks within specified timeline which must not be exceeded.

Planning of Hammock activities help to improve efficiency and productivity of team and help reducing waiting time effectively.

Rahul Ganapathy has provided the best answer to the question. Other answers are also a must read.