Project Management Techniques
Project Management techniques
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES
TERMINOLOGY PERT: is the acronym of Program Evaluation and Review Technique. It was developed by the US Navy
as a part of the Polaris project (1958). The target was to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects with a high degree of dependence. The best known feature of PERT is the PERT network, a chart that connects activities and calculates times.
CPM: acronym of Critical Path Method. It was developed by Du Pont Nemours & Co. and was first applied to the construction of a chemical plant (1958). GANTT: a Gantt chart is a visualization tool developed by Charles Gantt in 1917. It uses a X‐Y chart with a sequence of horizontal bars drawn in it. Each bar represents a task. The length of the bar corresponds to the duration of the task.
TASK: or activity is a job that must be completed as a part of a project. Tasks are represented by arrows and they consume time and resources. TASK LIST: it’s an ordered list of tasks that must be done to complete a project. EVENT: it’s a point that marks the start or ending of an activity. We represent the events with circles. Events must be numbered sequentially. Two consecutive events are linked by one activity. Events are the milestones of the activities
PREDECESSOR ACTIVITY: activity that must be completed before the successor activity starts. SUCCESSOR ACTIVITY: activity that follows another without any other activity between them. CHART: or network chart. It’s the result of combining events and activities. A network chart represents a complete project with all the activities in a sequential order. OPTIMISTIC TIME (O): in PERT charts. Minimum time required to complete a task, assuming that
the precedent activities have been completed as expected.
PESSIMISTIC TIME (P): In PERT charts. Maximum time required to complete a task assuming that everything goes wrong. MOST LIKELY TIME (N): In PERT charts. The logical time required to accomplish a task, assuming that everything works normal. EXPECTED TIME (E): the best estimated time required to accomplish the task. It’s an average time assuming that the most likely time has more chances to be real than the other times.
CRITICAL PATH: the longest continuous path taken from the starting event towards the terminal event. It determines the total calendar required to complete the project. Any delay in activities belonging to the critical path will delay the reaching of the terminal event in the same amount of time.
Escola Universitària de Turisme TERRES DE LLEIDA
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Project Management techniques
CRITICAL ACTIVITY: activity belonging to the critical path. NORMAL TIME: in CPM. Time required to complete a task assuming an ordinary development.
Similar to most likely time in PERT charts.
ACCELERATED TIME: in CPM. Time required to complete an activity without any cost restriction.
The minimum time required with the maximum concentration of resources.
EARLY TIME: the most early time for a task to be started after having completed all predecessor
activities. LAST TIME: the most late time for an activity to be completed without causing delay to the whole
project.
FLOAT: or slack. Is the amount of time that a task can be delayed without causing delay to the whole
project.
CRASHING CRITICAL PATH: in CPM. Shortening the duration of critical activities. DUMMY ACTIVITY: inexistent activity in a project. Dummy activities are used only to simplify chart
network designs.
CONVENTIONS
• • • • • •A chart always starts and ends with only ONE event. Events must be sequentially numbered Each task (activity) must start with an event and must end with another event. Between two consecutive events only ONE arrow can be drawn. If we need to draw more activities between two consecutive events we use dummy activities. ...
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