Activities

What they are: The pieces of work that make up your project. Each activity has a duration, sits in a phase and a work package, has roles assigned with their responsibilities and hours, and produces or depends on products.

Example: "Stakeholder Analysis" (4 weeks, led by the Systems Engineer), "Detail Design" (12 weeks, led by the Design Engineer), "Final Audit" (2 weeks, led by the Quality Manager).

Key points:

Activities are the work itself: everything else in the plan describes who does it, when, and what it produces
Each activity is assigned to a phase, which sets when it happens in the project lifecycle
Each activity belongs to a work package, which places it in the project's structure
Each activity has roles assigned with RACI responsibilities and hours
Activities can be linked to processes to show which governance method they support

Adding activities

Every activity belongs to a work package, so add at least one work package first (see Work packages). Then, in edit mode, choose Activity on the WBS tab or Add Activity on the Workflow tab. Give each one a name, a phase and a trigger.

Click an activity anywhere it appears to open its details. Outside edit mode they're read-only, showing its phase, work package, processes, roles and hours, products, milestone criteria and tools. In edit mode the same panel lets you change them.

Roles and hours

In an activity's details, add the roles involved and give each one a RACI responsibility (see Organisation and RACI) and its hours. Depending on the project's estimation mode, that's one Hours figure, or optimistic, most likely and pessimistic hours, plus Actual hours as the work is done (see Estimating).

Triggers

An activity's trigger says why it starts:

Phase Start: when its phase starts
Dependency Complete: when a product it depends on reaches the state it needs
Periodic: on a regular cadence, such as monthly or every sprint
Manual: when someone starts it on a planned date
Continuous: throughout the project, such as ongoing monitoring

Products

An activity can produce products and depend on products made by other activities. In edit mode, link them in the activity's details under Outputs (Products) and Dependencies (Products), or from a product's Produced By section (see Products).

An activity's products appear on the Roadmap in its phase, in the lane of its Accountable party. If an activity produces something but has no phase or no Accountable role, its products can't be placed. Its details show an amber warning, the WBS tab shows a warning icon beside it, and the Health Check offers Assign to Phase and Assign Accountable fixes.

Tools