How to use activity codes

Think about how you will need to organise, track and report progress on your project. For example you may need to:

• Send tasks lists to the teams involved
• Group tasks by activity type e.g. welding, site clearance, surveying
• Send daily to do lists to each team member
• Group tasks by project phase e.g. design, build, test
• Report on progress of the activities required for a particular deliverable
• Report on progress towards a payment milestone
• and so on...

Check your organizations project management method for any standard activity codes that you should use. Often activities will need to be sorted by a cost center for financial reporting.

Most project scheduling software will allow you to add custom columns where you can enter your activity codes.

For example, Primavera P6 enables you to add your codes in a drop down list and Microsoft Project provides a similar feature called 'outline codes'.

Are WBS codes the same as activity codes?

For some projects WBS codes may be all that is needed to sort and group activities, but often these won't support reporting requirements.

Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) typically breakdown the work required by deliverable. For example, in a landscaping project building a brick wall might be broken down into:

order materials, book bricklayer, rent digger, book digger driver, dig foundation, lay foundation, mix cement, and lay bricks.

But the project manager might need to report on progress by activity type - purchasing, earth works, admin - cost center, deliverable, resources/people required etc.