Network Management on Project ManagementIntroduction PERT charts contain detailed information relating to the activities necessary to produce the

required products. The PERT chart should be developed from the product flow diagram by examining the tasks needed to produce the products required. The resources required to complete each product should be identified and the PERT chart should then be updated to reflect these. An alternative style of diagram to the PERT chart is the arrow diagram and both of these techniques have their advantages. The main difference is that on the arrow diagram the activity information is shown on the relational link, whereas the PERT chart shows activity information within the node, or activity box. The use of either technique should produce the same result. PERT charts have become established as the most popular planning technique and have been included in project management software packages. Symbols Used PERT charts are made up of a series of activity boxes, each of which depicts a discrete activity or task. Each activity box may contain up to 7 items of information. The top line of the box reflects the earliest point at which the activity could start and finish. The center line should contain descriptive information about the activity and the bottom line should be used to reflect the latest start and finish times.

PERT Chart In this example, activity A must be completed before activity C can begin as indicated by the line that joins the two activity boxes. Activity A requires 5 days and Activity C requires 4 days. This part of the project will therefore last 9 days. The earliest start time for activities right at the beginning of the network are set to zero. The earliest finish time for whichever input activity is the latest is used to establish the earliest start time for the dependent activity. In this example activity A is scheduled to be completed on day 5. Only then can activity C begin. A Simple Example

In many cases an activity will be dependent on the completion of more than one preceding activity. In the example shown the two activities A and B must both be completed before activity C can begin. A requires 5 days, B requires 4 days and C requires 4 days.

Activities A and B can be carried out in parallel as they are not dependent upon each other. In this example this part of the project will also last 9 days. Determining the relationships between activities can be a complicated process and may require a substantial amount of discussion involving numerous personnel across the various departments that may be concerned. The process of identifying relationships between the activities should only be concerned with logical requirements, in other words it should be assumed that there are no resource constraints when drawing the PERT chart. This issue has then to be addressed and appropriate adjustments made. Resolving resource shortfalls and conflicts is the scope of resource planning and scheduling. Diagrammers may find it useful to produce sub-diagrams and use these to conduct a brainstorming approach to identifying all possible relationships, prior to building the final network. The project will need to be monitored at various points to ensure that its business and technical integrity is being maintained - the PERT chart should also reflect these activities. PERT charts, contain detailed information relating to the activities necessary to produce the required products. It should be developed with reference to the product flow diagram.

The top line of the activity box reflects the earliest time at which the activity could start and finish. The centre line should contain descriptive information about the activity and the bottom line should be used to reflect the latest start and finish times. The lines that join activity boxes are used to represent dependency between the activities. Identifying Spare Time Reading through the PERT chart from left to right gives the total duration of the plan.

Reading back through the network, subtracting each duration, shows those activities that have any spare time. This spare time, known as float, is a very useful concept in relation to resource scheduling and smoothing.

In the example shown activity R is dependent upon the completion of both of the activities P and Q. However activity P is scheduled to take 5 days whilst Q should be completed in 2 days. The area of work represented by this part of the network should last 12 days. Activity Q has a float of 3 days - so activity Q could start up to 3 days late or take an extra 3 days to complete without delaying the start of the subsequent activity (R). Reading back through the PERT chart, subtracting each duration, shows those activities that have any spare time. This spare time, known as float, identifies parcels of time that can be used to introduce flexibility into the production sequence. All planning should be iterative, and the drawing of the PERT chart may highlight further products which need to be added to the work breakdown structure and the product flow diagram. The Critical Path Once the resources required to complete each product have been identified and the PERT chart updated to reflect these, then the start and finish dates can be added. With the shape and size of the project now visible, the total cost of the resources for each planning period can be calculated.

The PERT chart also clearly identifies the critical path (shown in red above), which is the sequence of related activities which will take the longest time. The critical path is an

invaluable concept in project planning - as it defines that sequence of activities that should take the longest time. Total & Free Float The above network represents a small project. The activities that are on the critical path (shown in red) have no float, whilst those that lie off the critical path can have an associated float.

In addition to the float associated with a specific activity, two other types of float need to be considered.

Total Float (shown in yellow above) is shared with all of the other activities in the arm. Therefore using the float in one activity will reduce the float available for the other activities. For example, in the arm PQ the total float is 19. This is because the dependent activity L has a latest start of 23 and the total duration of the PQ arm is 4. That is 23 minus 4 equals 19.

Free Float (shown in yellow above) is the amount of float that the activity can use up without affecting the earliest start of any other activity. Only activities that precede a junction can have free float. For example, the earliest finish of activity Q is 4. The earliest start of the dependent activity L is 12. Therefore the completion of activity Q could be delayed for a maximum of 8 without affecting the earliest start of activity L. Float is a measure of the amount of time an activity can be delayed without affecting subsequent activities. The amount of float indicates the extent of time that the activity can be delayed without putting back the end date of the overall project. Activities that have an associated float are natural candidates to be delayed when other activities are suffering from problems or overruns.

The critical path (shown in red) is defined as the series of activities which have zero float. There will always be a critical path running through a project from the first activity to the last. However any task, if subjected to sufficient delay, may itself become critical - and this will occur at the point when its float has been entirely consumed by the passage of time. In larger projects, particularly as the project nears completion a number of the arms of the network may contain zero float i.e. the project may contain numerous critical paths. The critical path is an important feature in project planning and control and is usually highlighted on the network in some manner - e.g. bold print, red or a different style of line. It is important to remember that the critical path is not defined at the initial planning stage and then set in stone.

As the project progresses and planned activities overrun the network should be frequently updated to ensure that it continues to reflect the true status of the project. The failure to do this is a common reason for projects going out of control and ultimately failing. CPM

Introduction to Network Analysis of Projects and CPM

The Critical Path Method (CPM) is one of several related techniques for doing project planning. CPM is for projects that are made up of a number of individual "activities." If some of the activities require other activities to finish before they can start, then the project becomes a complex web of activities. CPM can help you figure out:
y y

how long your complex project will take to complete which activities are "critical," meaning that they have to be done on time or else the whole project will take longer

If you put in information about the cost of each activity, and how much it costs to speed up each activity, CPM can help you figure out:
y y

whether you should try to speed up the project, and, if so, what is the least costly way to speed up the project.

Activities An activity is a specific task. It gets something done. An activity can have these properties:
y y

names of any other activities that have to be completed before this one can start a projected normal time duration

If you want to do a speedup cost analysis, you also have to know these things about each activity:
y y y

a cost to complete a shorter time to complete on a crash basis the higher cost of completing it on a crash basis

CPM analysis starts after you have figured out all the individual activities in your project. CPM Analysis Steps, By Example

This document describes the steps for doing CPM analysis for this course. The steps will be illustrated by two examples. I recommend that you work through the examples, so that you can follow the steps yourself when you do the homework. Example 2 is especially valuable for you to work through. Excel has bugs that vary from version to version. By working through Example 2, and comparing what you get with what I got, you can find out which bugs apply to you and how to work around them when you do the assignment.

Example 1: Activities, precedence, and times

This first example involves activities, their precedence (which activities come before other activities), and the times the activities take. The objective is to identify the critical path and figure out how much time the whole project will take. Example 1 Step 1: List the activities CPM analysis starts when you have a table showing each activity in your project. For each activity, you need to know which other activities must be done before it starts, and how long the activity takes. Here's the example:

Activity Description Required Predecessor Duration A Product design (None) 5 months B Market research (None) 1 C Production analysis A 2 D Product model A 3 E Sales brochure A 2 F Cost analysis C 3 G Product testing D 4 H Sales training B, E 2 I Pricing H 1 J Project report F, G, I 1 Example 1 Step 2: Draw the diagram Draw by hand a network diagram of the project that shows which activities follow which other ones. This can be tricky. The analysis method we'll be using requires an "activity-on-arc" (AOA) diagram. An AOA diagram has numbered "nodes" that represent stages of project completion. You make up the nodes' numbers as you construct the diagram. You connect the nodes with arrows or "arcs" that represent the activities that are listed in the above table.

Some conventions about how to draw these diagrams:

y y

All activities with no predecessor come off of node 1. All activities with no successor point to the last node, which has to have highest node number.

In this example, A and B are the two activities that have no precedessor. They are represented as arrows leading away from node 1. J is the one activity that has no successor, in this example. It therefore points to the last node, which is node 8. If there were more than one activity with successor, all of those activities' arrows point to the highest number node. Students sometimes make the mistake of creating a diagram with several starting or ending nodes. Don't do this. The trickiest part for me of building the above diagram was figuring what to do with activity H. I had drawn an arrow for activity B coming off node 1 and going to mode 3. I had later drawn an arrow for activity E coming off node 2 and going to node 6. Since H requires both B and E, I had to erase my first E arrow and redraw it so it pointed to the same node 3 that B did. H then comes off of node 3 and goes to node 6. When designing these diagrams, work in pencil.

CPM - Critical Path Method

In 1957, DuPont developed a project management method designed to address the challenge of shutting down chemical plants for maintenance and then restarting the plants once the maintenance had been completed. Given the complexity of the process, they developed the Critical Path Method (CPM) for managing such projects. CPM provides the following benefits:
y y y

Provides a graphical view of the project. Predicts the time required to complete the project. Shows which activities are critical to maintaining the schedule and which are not.

CPM models the activities and events of a project as a network. Activities are depicted as nodes on the network and events that signify the beginning or ending of activities are depicted as arcs or lines between the nodes. The following is an example of a CPM network diagram: CPM Diagram

Steps in CPM Project Planning 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Specify the individual activities. Determine the sequence of those activities. Draw a network diagram. Estimate the completion time for each activity. Identify the critical path (longest path through the network) Update the CPM diagram as the project progresses.

1. Specify the Individual Activities From the work breakdown structure, a listing can be made of all the activities in the project. This listing can be used as the basis for adding sequence and duration information in later steps. 2. Determine the Sequence of the Activities

Some activities are dependent on the completion of others. A listing of the immediate predecessors of each activity is useful for constructing the CPM network diagram. 3. Draw the Network Diagram Once the activities and their sequencing have been defined, the CPM diagram can be drawn. CPM originally was developed as an activity on node (AON) network, but some project planners prefer to specify the activities on the arcs. 4. Estimate Activity Completion Time The time required to complete each activity can be estimated using past experience or the estimates of knowledgeable persons. CPM is a deterministic model that does not take into account variation in the completion time, so only one number is used for an activity's time estimate. 5. Identify the Critical Path The critical path is the longest-duration path through the network. The significance of the critical path is that the activities that lie on it cannot be delayed without delaying the project. Because of its impact on the entire project, critical path analysis is an important aspect of project planning. The critical path can be identified by determining the following four parameters for each activity:
y y y y

ES - earliest start time: the earliest time at which the activity can start given that its precedent activities must be completed first. EF - earliest finish time, equal to the earliest start time for the activity plus the time required to complete the activity. LF - latest finish time: the latest time at which the activity can be completed without delaying the project. LS - latest start time, equal to the latest finish time minus the time required to complete the activity.

The slack time for an activity is the time between its earliest and latest start time, or between its earliest and latest finish time. Slack is the amount of time that an activity can be delayed past its earliest start or earliest finish without delaying the project. The critical path is the path through the project network in which none of the activities have slack, that is, the path for which ES=LS and EF=LF for all activities in the path. A delay in the critical path delays the project. Similarly, to accelerate the project it is necessary to reduce the total time required for the activities in the critical path. 6. Update CPM Diagram

As the project progresses, the actual task completion times will be known and the network diagram can be updated to include this information. A new critical path may emerge, and structural changes may be made in the network if project requirements change.

CPM Limitations CPM was developed for complex but fairly routine projects with minimal uncertainty in the project completion times. For less routine projects there is more uncertainty in the completion times, and this uncertainty limits the usefulness of the deterministic CPM model. An alternative to CPM is the PERT project planning model, which allows a range of durations to be specified for each activity.