Project Management

Module 5

Project Scheduling
Project Scheduling & Its Characteristics
“Project Scheduling communicates the discipline for completing a
project within a certain time frame, with defined stages,
designated resources and pre-determined deliverables”.
Characteristics:
• It lists the activities that need to be performed
• Planned start and finish dates
• Showcases resource allocation
• Effective time management
• Easily communicated
• Accounts for flexibility and reviews 2
 Project Scheduling Process

Define Estimate
Review Create WBS Estimate Develop
Define Sequence and
the Project and note the Activity the
deliverables Activities of Allocate
Charter Duration Schedule
Activities Resources

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1. Review Project Charter

Objectives Scope Constraints

Success
Deliverables
Criteria

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2. Create WBS

Note: WBS includes 100% of the work and deliverables 5

 3. Define Activities and their Sequence

• Identify individual activities that need to be done

• Decide the precedence
• Take into consideration all the constraints
• Identify activities that can be done in parallel
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4. Estimate and Allocate Resources
Manpower

Equipment

Budget

Efficient utilization of resource

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5. Estimate Activity Duration
• Time for each activity

• Stress and fatigue allowances

• Consideration of holidays

• Identify risks which may delay the activities

• Consider Optimistic, Pessimistic and most likely time

• Use various tools like MSP, Primavera

for efficient estimation

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6. Develop the schedule

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Advantages of Project Scheduling
• Assists with tracking , reporting and communicating progress
• Ensures everyone is on the same page as far as tasks,
dependencies and deadlines is concerned
• Helps highlight issues and concerns such as lack of resources
• Helps identify task relationship
• Can be used to monitor progress and identify issues early
• Get idea about the risks associated with tasks
• Helpful in managing quality and reducing errors
• Makes large project more manageable

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Limitations of Project Scheduling
• Time consuming
• A small mistake can affect the whole project
• Tight deadlines increase pressure
• Tight deadlines can lead to conflict
• Sometimes, the tools may increase complications
• E.g. : It may show 10 steps in tool but practically only 7 are required
• The Scheduling tools don’t allow much flexibility

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Project Scheduling Techniques
• Used to develop, monitor and control Project Schedules

• Helps in estimating time taken to complete a process

• Accounts for unexpected delays or complications

• Considers interrelation between various activities on account of

Start and Finish times

GANTT
CPM PERT
CHART

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GANTT Chart
• Designed by Henry Gantt in 1910-1915
• Displays activities of project in bar chart
• Considers Start and Finish date along with logical relationship
among activities

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 Critical Path Method (CPM)
• Developed by Morgan R. Walker in 1957.
• The name is derived from its characteristic of prioritising critical
project activities from non-critical ones.
Determine the
Identify Develop the Estimate the
sequence and
activities in a project duration of
dependency
project network activities
of activities

Determine Calculate the

Calculate Calculate the
the critical backward
floats forward pass
path pass

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Example:
Table below lists activities along with their duration and predecessors. Draw network
diagram and find out the critical path.
Activities Duration Predecessor
A 4 -
B 9 -
C 10 -
D 5 A
E 8 B
F 12 B
G 6 B
H 8 C
I 4 E,D
J 7 F,H
K 8 I,G
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Solution:

D(5)
2 5
A(4) I(4)
E(8)

B(9) G(6) K(8)

1 3 7 8
F(12)
C(10)
J(7)
H(8)
4 6

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Determination of Critical Path:
A project may have multiple paths but the longest path determines the duration
of the project. Based on the given example, the following paths can be seen

Path Activities in the Path Length

1-3-5-7-8 B,E,I,K 29
1-2-5-7-8 A,D,I,K 21
1-3-6-8 B,F,J 28
1-3-7-8 B,G,K 23
1-4-6-8 C,H,J 25

Answer: The first path (1-3-5-7-8) is the longest path. So, this is the critical
path of the project. Activities on this path are called critical activities. Any delay
in these activities would affect the whole project .

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PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique)
• Unlike CPM, PERT model considers uncertainty such as weather,
equipment failure or absenteeism, in the estimation of activity time
• Mostly used for projects having high risk such as R&D projects.
• PERT has three time estimates for each activity
• Optimistic time (to) – Shortest time for activity completion
• Most likely time (t1) – Most probable project completion time
• Pessimistic time (tp) – Longest time for activity completion
• Expected time of an activity is calculated using the following formula
to +4t1+tp
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Questions Answered by CPM / PERT
• Completion date?
• On schedule? Within budget?
• Probability of completing by ...?
• Critical activities?
• Enough resources available?
• How can the project be finished early at the least cost?

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Difference between CPM & PERT

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Crashing
• Projects can be delayed despite project scheduling. This may be
due to unrealistic schedule, Delay in procurement of resources,
Unavoidable incident, Client requirement, etc.
• This delay hampers the promised completion time of project. So,
there is a need to reduce time of critical activities which is done by
Project Crashing
• Crashing is done by devoting more resources thereby increasing
cost.
• It is a corrective action tool to accelerate project delivery date.

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Why Crashing?
• Accelerate the delivery

• Get the maximum schedule compression

• To meet the deadline

• Too much of work piled up

• More resource available

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Time – Cost Trade off
• For crashing, we have to
reduce time which
ultimately means that cost
will increase

• Thus, time and cost are

inversely related and
trade-off needs to be done
to optimize the result

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Example:
• The MahaMetro project started in 2016 is expected to be
complete by the year 2021

• In the initial three years, the pace of project was not up to the
mark and milestones were not met.

• Ultimately in 2019, crashing was done and extra resources

were put up along with whole three shift working

• The project is being brought back on track and is expected to

be complete as estimated.

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Fast Tracking
• Activities or phases performed
in parallel and not sequentially
up to a certain extent
• May result in rework and
increased risk
• Works if activities can be
overlapped to reduce overall
time
• The new path after Fast
Tracking can become a critical
path
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Crashing v/s Fast Tracking

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Advantages of Crashing

• It gets the project back on track

• Reduces time taken to complete the activities

• Avoid penalty due to delayed delivery

• Helps in mitigating the risk

• Free up the resources early

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Limitations of Crashing
• New allocated resources may be less experienced with the
process hence less productive
• Conflict among team members if they are not flexible enough
• Team members may not support crashing
• Use of additional resources may not always guarantee better
results
• Quality may be compromised
• Critical activities may get hampered

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