Project Management
Name: Ahmed Gamal | أحمد جمال عبدالعال
ID: 20120029
Group: 5
Dr. Ebrahem Frrag
Critical Path Analysis & PERT Charts
- Planning and scheduling more complex projects
Critical Path Analysis and PERT are powerful tools that help you to
schedule and manage complex projects. They were developed in the
1950s to control large defense projects, and have been used routinely
since then.
As with Gantt Charts, Critical Path Analysis (CPA) helps you to lay out
all tasks that must be completed as part of a project. They act as the
basis both for preparation of a schedule, and of resource planning.
During management of a project, they allow you to monitor achievement
of project goals. They help you to see where remedial action needs to
be taken to get a project back on course.
The benefit of using CPA over Gantt Charts is that Critical Path Analysis
formally identifies tasks which must be completed on time for the whole
project to be completed on time, and also identifies which tasks can be
delayed for a while if resource needs to be reallocated to catch up on
missed tasks. The disadvantage of CPA is that the relation of tasks to
time is not as immediately obvious as with Gantt Charts. This can make
them more difficult to understand for someone who is not familiar with
the technique.
A further benefit of Critical Path Analysis is that it helps you to identify
the minimum length of time needed to complete a project. Where you
need to run an accelerated project, it helps you to identify which project
steps you should accelerate to complete the project within the available
time. This helps you to minimize cost while still achieving your objective.
How to use the tool:
As with Gantt Charts, the essential concept behind Critical Path
Analysis is that you cannot start some activities until others are finished.
These activities need to be completed in a sequence, with each stage
being more-or-less completed before the next stage can begin. These
are 'sequential' activities.
Other activities are not dependent on completion of any other tasks. You
can do these at any time before or after a particular stage is reached.
These are non-dependent or 'parallel' tasks.
Drawing a Critical Path Analysis Chart
1. List all activities in the plan For each activity, show
the earliest start date, estimated length of time it will take, and whether it
is parallel or sequential. If tasks are sequential, show which stage they
depend on.
For the project example used here, you will end up with the same task
list as explained in the article on Gantt Charts (we will use the same
example as with Gantt Charts to compare the two techniques).
The chart is repeated in figure 1 below:
Figure 1. Task List: Planning a custom-written computer project
NB: The start week shows when resources become available. Whether
a task is parallel or sequential depends largely on context.
2. Plot the activities as a circle and arrow diagram
Critical Path Analyses are presented using circle and arrow diagrams.
In these, circles show events within the project, such as the start and
finish of tasks. Circles are normally numbered to allow you to identify
them.
An arrow running between two event circles shows the activity needed
to complete that task. A description of the task is written underneath the
arrow. The length of the task is shown above it. By convention, all
arrows run left to right.
An example of a very simple diagram is shown below:
This shows the start event (circle 1), and the completion of the 'High
Level Analysis' task (circle 2). The arrow between them shows the
activity of carrying out the High Level Analysis. This activity should take
1 week.
Where one activity cannot start until another has been completed, we
start the arrow for the dependent activity at the completion event circle
of the previous activity. An example of this is shown below:
Here the activities of 'Selecting Hardware' and 'Core Module Analysis'
cannot be started until 'High Level Analysis' has been completed. This
diagram also brings out a number of other important points:
• Within Critical Path Analysis, we refer to activities by the numbers
in the circles at each end. For example, the task 'Core Module
Analysis' would be called 'activity 2 to 3'. 'Select Hardware' would
be 'activity 2 to 4'.
• Activities are not drawn to scale. In the diagram above, activities
are 1 week long, 2 weeks long, and 1 day long. Arrows in this case
are all the same length.
• In the example above, you can see numbers above the circles.
These show the earliest possible time that this stage in the project
will be reached. Here units are whole weeks.
A different case is shown below:
Here activity 6 to 7 cannot start until the other three activities (12 to 6, 5
to 6 and 9 to 6) have been completed.
See figure 5 for the full circle and arrow diagram for the computer
project we are using as an example.
PERT
PERT stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique.
PERT is a variation on Critical Path Analysis that takes a slightly more
skeptical view of time estimates made for each project stage. To use it,
estimate the shortest possible time each activity will take, the most likely
length of time, and the longest time that might be taken if the activity
takes longer than expected.
Use the formula below to calculate the time to use for each project
stage:
shortest time + 4 x likely time + longest time
-----------------------------------------------------------
6
This helps to bias time estimates away from the unrealistically short
time-scales normally assumed.
Key points:
Critical Path Analysis is an effective and powerful method of assessing:
• What tasks must be carried out
• Where parallel activity can be performed
• The shortest time in which you can complete a project
• Resources needed to execute a project
• The sequence of activities, scheduling and timings involved
• Task priorities
• The most efficient way of shortening time on urgent projects.
An effective Critical Path Analysis can make the difference between
success and failure on complex projects. It can be very useful for
assessing the importance of problems faced during the implementation
of the plan.
PERT is a variant of Critical Path Analysis that takes a more skeptical
view of the time needed to complete each project stage.
