Project Management Techniques Overview

Project Management Techniques

• A project is a series of activities directed towards a desired objective
• Project management involves planning, scheduling, and controlling
• Planning includes goal setting, defining the project, and team organization
• Scheduling involves relating people, money, and supplies to specific activities
• Controlling involves monitoring resources, costs, and quality; revising plans and shifting resources as needed

Project Management Activities

• Planning: Objectives, resources, work breakdown structure, organization
• Scheduling: Project activities, start and end times, network
• Controlling: Monitor, compare, revise, action

Project Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling

• Planning the project: Performance, goal setting, define the project, develop work breakdown structure, identify team/resources
• Time/cost estimates, budgets, engineering diagrams, cash flow charts, material availability details
• Scheduling the project: Sequence activities, assign people, schedule deliverables, schedule resources

CPM and PERT

• CPM (Critical Path Method): Activities represented as a network of precedence relationships with single estimates of activity time. Used for repetitive tasks with predictable activity times.
• PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique): Activities represented as a network of precedence relationships with multiple time estimates (optimistic, most likely, pessimistic) for probabilistic activity times. Used for non-repetitive projects with uncertain activity times.
• Both use similar calculations and are almost similar but PERT uses a probabilistic approach for time estimations.

Six Steps of PERT/CPM for Project Planning

• Define the project and prepare the work breakdown structure.
• Develop relationships among the activities, deciding on dependencies.
• Draw the network diagram connecting all activities.
• Assign time and/or cost estimates to each activity.
• Compute the longest time path (critical path).
• Use the network to plan, schedule, monitor, and control the project.

Questions PERT and CPM Can Answer

• When the entire project will be completed?
• What are the critical activities/tasks?
• Which activities are noncritical?
• What is the probability of completing by a specific date?
• Is the project on schedule, behind schedule, or ahead?
• Is the money spent equal to, less than, or greater than the budget?
• Are there enough resources available to finish on time?
• How can the project finish any shorter time with least cost?

Network

• Graphical portrayal of activities and event tasks/dependencies
• Clearly shows which tasks must precede and follow other tasks
• Powerful tool for planning and controlling projects

Project Network Conventions (AON & AOA)

• AON (Activity on Node): Nodes represent activities and arrows show precedence relationships
• AOA (Activity on Arrow): Arrows illustrate activities and nodes stand for events (points in time).

Classification of Activities

• Predecessor activity: A task that must be completed before another can begin
• Successor activity: A task that cannot begin until another preceding task is finished
• Concurrent activities: Tasks that can happen simultaneously
• Dummy activity: Depicts a dependency without consuming any resources. Used to represent precedence relationships between activities starting and ending at the same point in time

Project Network Construction

• Activity networks should be created based on logical dependencies among activities, ensuring the correct sequence of activities is implemented. Common errors to avoid: relying on time relations for logical activity sequencing instead of understanding activity dependencies.

Determining Project Schedule

• Critical path analysis: Identifies the longest path (critical path) through the network to ascertain the shortest time needed to complete the project without delays. Any delay on critical path activities will push back the entire project completion.

• Forward pass: Finds earliest start time (ES) and earliest finish time (EF) of each activity by beginning at the starting event and calculating forward in sequence.

• Backward pass: Calculates the latest start time (LS) and latest finish time (LF) by reversing from the final event using precedence relationships, preventing activity delays and making sure that the completion time remains unchanged.

• Slack: Time difference between an activity's latest finish and earliest finish time or latest start and earliest start time, representing the time an activity can be delayed without delaying the entire project.