Types of activities

The different types of activities are relevant to scheduling and forms of changing and crashing (accelerating) a schedule:

Resource-dependent activities

• Duration can be changed.
• The duration of the activity can be halved if the resources are doubled (experienced employees).
• Examples: programming, digging drawing work
• Speed up: add more people

Process-dependent activities

• Activities where the duration is determined by a process that must be implemented to achieve the desired result
• Characterized by that it can't be rushed
• Examples: pregnancy, curing of concrete, training and education of employees
• Speed up example: Difficult, in some cases through e.g. change of equipment

Procedure-dependent activities

• Activities where a certain procedure must be followed
• The uncertainty related to the outcome of the procedure.
• Examples: steering committee meetings, consultation of stakeholders
• Speed up example: Ebola and the change on regulation

Open-Ended activities

An open-ended activity is an activity lacking either a predecessor or a successor or both. Open-ended activities obscure the logical relationships between project activities, create a false appearance of float in a project, and reduce the apparent impact of risk during a schedule analysis. In such cases, it brings into question the logical relationship of what is required to start the activity or what this activity accomplishes so that subsequent work evolutions can occur. This lack of logic damages the validity of the entire schedule model. The only open-ended activities in a project should be the start and finish milestones at the beginning and end of the project. Unless linked to other projects, a project's start and finish milestones always contain open ends. Open ends occur either through omission (the user fails to assign a relationship) or by the result of progress being reported on the project or relationships that do not close a path sometimes referred to as virtual open ends.

Problem-dependent activities

• Activities to solve a problem.
• Innovation is paramount. Can be difficult to estimate the duration
• Examples: design tasks, development, creative tasks
• Speed up example: difficult, through intermediary deadlines or forcing an end - 'time boxing'