Project Management

Project Management

(1) Discuss how project management techniques can be used to improve the completion of projects. With this in mind, discuss the role of start and finish times with respect to project completion time.

Two most common project management techniques with direct bearing on project completion are Program/Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM).

PERT analyzes the various activities of a project and designs a network that computes for the duration of the project and its expected completion time.

The network utilizes the concepts of Earliest Start Time (ES), Latest Start Time (LS), Earliest Finish Time (EF), and Latest Finish Time (LF).

Identifying the slack times utilizes the following formula:

Slack time = LF - EF or LS - ES

CPM identifies which of the specific activities of the project need not be delayed. Activity with zero slack time is considered critical, which means that a delay in this particular activity will cause a delay in the completion of the entire project. Activities with greater than zero (>0) slack times are considered non-critical and therefore a delay of such will not affect the completion of the entire project. Finding the critical path is a major part of controlling a project. The activites on the critical path represent the task that will delay the entire project if they are delayed. Managers derive flexibility by indetifying noncritical activities and replanning, rescheduling and reallocating resources. (page 460 chap 12)

(2) Explain the role of software in project management.

There are cases where it will be cumbersome to use the manual computation of PERT and CPM. Projects, let us say, with activities of more than 25, (albeit can be computed using paper and pencil) takes time to do. Thanks to computer programmers, various softwares are available today. QM (Quantitative Management) version 2.2 by Howard G. Weiss is a good project management software. Other project...