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PMP Concepts: What are Activity Attributes?

By Son Nguyen, on March 25th, 2011
This entry is part 6 of 8 in the series PMP Concepts

PMP Concepts

Specific components of a particular activity are known as activity attributes. In the beginning, these are typically descriptive factors related to the specific activity, but they can also describe activities that will become more relevant later in the project timeline.

Most activity attributes can be organized, sorted and summarized. This happens based on a few specific categories. A few of the categories for activity attributes are activity codes, the specific people involved in the activity, locations for the activity, the time and costs required for completion, etc. It helps to organize the activity attributes into similar categories. The various components that are a part of each activity can be described to further extend the activity attribute.

Frequent uses for activity attributes are to recognize the specific people who will be handling specific pieces of the work or to specifically state where the work will be carried out. Other uses include indicating the effort levels that will be required. These include LOE (level of effort), discrete effort, or AE (apportioned effort). Developing a schedule that will identify when planned activities will be selected, ordered and sorted is another use of activity attributes. There is always a difference in the number of attributes based upon the application area.

The PMBOK Guide discusses this topic in section 6.1.3.2 of the fourth edition.

Until next time,
Cornelius Fichtner, PMP
President, OSP International LLC

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  • http://twitter.com/galleman Glen B. Alleman

    Son,

    You seem to be mixing several things together here. When you mention LOE, Discrete, and Apportioned Effort. Those are Earned Value terms. Apportioned effort is discrete EVT (Earned Value Technique).

    Where does the WBS and the WBS dictionary come into this “activity” discussion?
    As well in the earned Value world (since you mentioned LOE and Discrete) the specific people are defined in the RAM (responsibility Assignment Matrix), who’s intersection with the WBS forms the Control Accounts, or Work Packages, or maybe Tasks for the project.

    PMBOK says “The technique of decomposition, as applied to defi ning activities, involves subdividing the project
    work packages into smaller, more manageable components called activities.” The Work Package or similar sctivity is the key here, not a specific task. In the EV context, the Work Package would have a Work Authorization (likley at the Control Account level), where you would define the attributes of the “activity.”

    But like all good over generalized bodies of knowledge, this section (6.1.2.3) needs to have a domain and a context to be of much use.

    So you might want to provide some example Domains where knowing the “attributes” of the “activity” provide actionable information to the team.

    The EVT is part of the Work Package, and all work in the WP must use the same EVT. There can be multiple WBS’s inside the same WP, not my recommendation but it happens as the project matures. Named resources cause all kinds of problems in EV systems, so we avoid those like the plague. Location and things like that might be useful, but HR systems can provide those much better, when the WP’s and Control Accounts are loaded to them through the Performance Measurement Baseline.

    • Giang Sơn

      Hi Glen,

      According to the PMBOK Guide, after defining project scope, we will creat a WBS, which is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the works to be executed by the project team. The lowest level of the WBS is the work packages. Having developed a WBS, we will define activities for each work packages, i.e, specific actions to be performed to produce the work packages. At this time, we still have no information about who will do these activities, which are the activities to be done before, which are the activities to be done after, time and costs (in estimation) for these activities, constraints, assumptions etc. Therefore, initially, we just input these ‘attributes’ (including LOE, AE etc.) into a seperate list associated with the activities.

      This list will be used in creating schedule, in identifying project risks, in developing HRM plan etc. For example, we can regularly review the constraints and assumptions to determine if they are still actual as a project is executed. Or, in sequencing activities, we can see from the attributes list which are the first activities, which are the latter, who is responsible etc.

      You may say that, for example, HR systems can provide better information regarding who is responsible for each activities. That is right, actually, if this information is already in the HR system, we will take from it, if not, we will input to the HR system. The point here is to consolidate information into a list associated with activities for future review and uses.

      I do not say that this is the best practice. Many people (including me), incorporate all activities into a WBS, if they manage projects of small and middle size, and do not use attributes list at all. An article above is just about the practice in the PMBOK Guide.

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