Week 5 Assignment (Project Management)

Critical path analysis identifies the most efficient and cost effective way of completing a complex project. The various activities which together will make up the project are identified, and the order of these activities are identified. Then, the duration of each activity is estimated and these factors are then arranged as a network or graph, showing the whole project from start to finish, and showing which tasks can happen at the same time. The sequence of tasks which have to be done one after another with no gaps in between is called the Critical Path.

Analyzing the critical path, there is a high level risk as it runs parallel to itself, more than one task at a particular time could delay project. Some other tasks run parallel to the critical path and have same duration; a delay in one of these tasks will change the critical path and delay the whole project.

The paper is divided into three sections, the first of which will establish a timeline of events. This project background will serve as a case study for the analysis in the following section that will be structured such that each of the previously mentioned facets will be independently analyzed and contrasted with project management principles. Finally the paper will conclude with a summary of the analysis and recommendations based on

Larson, E., & Gray, C. (2010). Project management, the managerial process. (5th ed., p. 158).

Critical path is based on deterministic task duration, while critical chain involves the deterministic and probabilistic approaches;

With the exceptional growth in technology, the present day projects are often large and complex involving a significant risk. So, a Project Management Methodology enables the delivery organization to handle these projects comprehensively, systematically and in an integrated manner, which results in strategic, tactical and operational benefits.

In the current business environment, the demand for project managers is ever growing. In short, project management is a provisional project constrained by time, cost and scope (A guide to the project management body of knowledge, 2013). Between the immense organization, optimization, and communication assets skilled project management brings to a project, it is easy to see why project management is a booming field of study. Furthermore, project management can be both financially and personally rewarding when long term milestones and goals come to fruition.

Gray, C. F. & Larson, E. W. (2008). _Project Management: The Managerial Process_. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hills Companies, Inc.

In almost every business, project management is critically important. The critical path method (CPM) will provide a timeline for the project manager for when tasks should be completed. In addition, providing a deadline and the negative effects it will have on the following successors if not completed on time. These many task are interdepended. Therefore, the CPM provides the start and finishes times of the tasks, and identifies the few tasks on the critical path that the project manager should observe to determine which task needs the most attention. Already discovering and incorporating the details the task or assignments may require, CPM calculates all task times, which can be measured in hours, days, weeks, and months. For any unintended manually input errors, a warning message will be provided. Including an automatic successor generator, task numbering comment, and data validation, makes it easier on the project manager.

2. Construct a table containing the project activities using the letter assigned to each activity, the time estimates, and the precedence relationships from which you will assemble the network diagram.

One of the main concerns during the meeting was the impact of cost and time constraints on networking techniques and project schedules. Under the ideal situation, the project start and end dates are fixed. Adding resources is not usually feasible as it increases cost. There should be a balance between time and cost constraints as it avoids wasting of resources. Also most people are willing to accept that costs could exceed expectations, and might even take a perverse delight in recounting past examples, the same is not true for time constraints. This is probably due to the fact that cost over runs are resolved in-house, while schedule issues are open and visible to the customer. A company has a lot of useful, desirable work that could be done, but has limited and finite resources available with which to do that work. Choices have to be made about which work to do and how to allocate resources. This leads to constraints especially, the time constraint and the cost constraint. Time, in project management, is analyzed down to its smallest detail. Each and every component of the project is analyzed with respect to the time required for completion. After completion of this analysis these components are broken down even further into the time required to do each task.

Analyzing crash times and costs we see that if each activity were crashed the project could be finished in 42 weeks, however, the budget would skyrocket to $4.952 million. Therefore, the team will need to analyze the project network and its critical path to determine which individual activities can be crashed while maintaining the integrity of the budget and the duration of the project.

In field of project management, there are a plethora of mechanisms under perpetual reevaluation. One specific segmentation of project management under such scrutiny pertains to cost duration, which is the time and monetary costs of completing individual tasks within the project’s critical path (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). The process of monitoring and evaluating the time and financial impacts of each task is referred to as cost duration analysis (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). A chief concern of cost duration analysis is identifying tasks within the project’s critical path which can reduce project duration (PMI, 2013). A common approach to reducing a project’s duration is task “crashing” (PMI, p.181). According to The Project Management Institute (2013) crashing refers to the process of methodical determining the financial value of increasing a critical path task’s resources in order to decrease project duration (p.181).

Critical Path Analysis is an effective and powerful method of assessing: Tasks which must be carried out Where parallel activity can be carried out The shortest time in which a project can be completed Resources needed to achieve a project The sequence of activities, scheduling, and timings involved Task priorities

Having 3 days of delay in electrical can affect the whole project. Therefore, the negotiation of 15 working days would exceed up to 18 days, which could cause the penalty of $300 ($100 per extra day). In order to minimise a project’s critical path, sequencing of tasks should be changed. On the off chance that one can do a project’s tasks in alternate grouping to that initially proposed, one might have the capacity to shorten the critical path. A level of intricacy by striving for shortening the critical path, which is primarily hazardous, is unavoidably acquainted with the task. (Aydar, 2014) With a specific end goal to convey this shorter timescale, the critical path should be controlled