Activities are the fundamental work elements of a project. They are the lowest level of a work breakdown structure (WBS) and, as such, are the smallest subdivision of a project that directly concerns the project manager. Although you can divide activities into steps, an activity's primary resource is typically responsible for managing and tracking the progress of an activity's steps, while the project manager is typically responsible for managing and tracking the progress of the overall activity.
You can define the following information for an activity:
- Activity ID and name, which enables you to uniquely identify and describe the activity
- Activity start and finish dates
- Activity calendar
- Activity type, duration type, and percent complete type, which are used to specify which calendar applies to an activity; whether an activity is a milestone; how to keep an activity's unit values, duration values, and resource units/time values synchronized; and how to calculate an activity's percent complete
- Activity codes and values, which enable you to classify and categorize activities
- Constraints on the activity's scheduled start and finish dates
- Expenses
- Predecessor and successor relationships, which are used to define relationships with other activities
- Work products and documents and deliverables
- Resources
- Notes, which are used to communicate with the resources working on an activity
- When connected to a P6 Professional database: Feedback, which is used to communicate with the resources working on an activity
- Roles, which enable you to identify skill requirements for staffing the activity
- Steps, which divide the activity into smaller units
- Work breakdown structure element