Selling a house Project Management

(Source: Created by Author)

2.2 Critical Path

Figure 3: Critical path

(Source: Created by Author)

3. Schedule after unexpected risks

3.1 Delays and revised deadline

It is identified that after the 50% completion of the project, an unexpected risks occur due to which the time that is needed for receiving purchase offers and negotiate increases by 8 days (10% of total days that is 80). It is found that the deadline of the project increases by 8 days and as per the new schedule, the project will complete on 13th June 2018.

3.2 Recommendations

a) Option for achieving original planned completion date

In order to achieve the original planned completion date, it is quite necessary to hire additional stakeholders within the project so that the delay in the work of the project will be managed or completed by new stakeholders of the project. However, it is found that due to hiring the number of stakeholders the budget of the project will also increase.  This, it is identified that for accelerating the project work, more budget is needed.

b) Option for achieving original total budget

It is identified that in order to achieve the original total budget it is very much necessary to follow the project scope. Project scope must be  followed during the execution of the project activities so that each of the activities of the project will be finished within the expected date and thus there is no requirement of additional budget in the project. Hence, it is analyzed that in order to finish the project within the original total cost it is necessary to follow the project scope.

4. Benefits and limitations of critical path scheduling and alternative scheduling method

a) Benefits and limitations of critical path scheduling

According to Nafkha and Wiliski (2016), critical path scheduling is one of the method that generally assists in determining the most significant activities of the project that can create impact on the schedule of the project. This method is found to be quite useful in creating schedule and for handling the risk activities on the critical path. There are number of advantages as well as disadvantages of critical path scheduling.

Advantages of critical path scheduling

The advantages of critical path scheduling are illustrated below:

Make dependencies visible: Critical path scheduling helps in making the project dependencies visible between various activities of the project. This is generally done by creating the precedence diagram or network diagram.

Organizing complex projects: It generally helps in organizing complex as well as large projects by allowing proper systematic approach of project scheduling, planning, executing as well as risk management (Jayagowri and Geetharamani 2015).

Enable calculation of slack: The critical path scheduling helps in enabling the calculation that is associated with float of each activity and it generally assists in reflecting the activity that can come late without creating any impact on the schedule of the project.

Encourage project managers for minimizing duration: The critical path scheduling encourages the project managers to minimize the duration of the project by optimizing the project critical path and by utilizing appropriate compression techniques as needed (Fleming and Koppelman 2016).

Enhancing visibility of schedule revisions: This method of scheduling mainly helps in enhancing the visibility of impact which are generally needed when most of the milestones of the project are missed or when there is risk of losing the major milestone occurs

Helps in handling large projects: It is found that with the help of critical path scheduling the large projects can be handled easily (Hornstein 2015). It is found that with the help of jumbled as well as cluttered network, each of the activities of the project can be sensed easily so that the entre work of the project can be completed efficiently.

Disadvantages of critical path scheduling

Problems with bigger tasks: The first and the most important disadvantage of critical path scheduling is that when it is applied in complex project tasks them it generally will involve large number of activities that end up by making a large that looks quite incomprehensible.

Managing resources: The critical path scheduling technique does not provide much information about the resources of the project and one need to manage the resources of the project by utilizing some other techniques (Kulkarni, Yadav and Nikraz 2017). This generally results in handling much work along with the project and thus it can therefore become a reason for lowering project efficiency.

Size of sheets: Another main disadvantage of this technique is that this technique is mainly related with large number of sheets and one has to plot all the activities for complex project however it is very much difficult to handle the charts on site due to its size.

b) Other alternative scheduling method for managing time

Schedule network analysis is another scheduling technique that is helpful in managing time of the project. They are very much useful for the project and there advantages are illustrated below:

Helps in justifying time estimation: As network diagrams helps in reflecting how project activities are related with each other from the initiation till the closure phase of the project, it is quite beneficial in calculating the entire duration of the project (Costantino, Di Gravio and Nonino 2015).

Network diagram helps in planning organizing and controlling: Since all the activities of the project are reflected in sequence with appropriate interrelations, the schedule network analysis assists the project manager as well as the team of the project in planning as well as organizing the activities of the project. In addition to this it is found to be very much useful during the execution phase of the project since it is one of the snapshot of project activities with their interdependencies.

Reflects workflow of project activities: The network diagram is quite helpful in reflecting the interdependencies of the project and thus with the help of schedule network analysis, it become quite easier to see the sequence of activities and their interrelation with each other including predecessor as well as successor (Niesen and Corboz 2017).

Provides opportunity of compressing projects: As with the help of network diagram the project team can be able to know about the sequence of project activities and thus at a specific point in project, it will be quite easier to see the network diagram along with the remaining project activities and their interdependencies.

Reflect activities interdependencies: If one needs to shorten the project duration of the remaining activities as the project is behind schedule then in order to finish the project within the expected time, network diagram helps in reflecting the order of the project activities as well as duration (Niesen and Corboz 2017). Thus, it will become very much easy to reflect the project activities compression effectively.

Reflects project progress: As network diagram helps in reflecting the order of the project activities as well as the total path from the initiation till closure phase of the project and thus it is considered as one of the important instrument for reflecting the progress of the entire project.

Defines activity workflow: It is found that project workflow is very much important to be planned as well as understood. The network diagram helps in representing the dependencies as well as sequence of project activities (Ji et al.2016). The network diagram that is generally created on Sinnaps helps in reflecting the activities in the workflow that is completed, which are in process and the ones that are left. Thus, it is considered as one of the most effective technique in judging the project status workflow.

References

Costantino, F., Di Gravio, G. and Nonino, F., 2015. Project selection in project portfolio management: An artificial neural network model based on critical success factors. International Journal of Project Management, 33(8), pp.1744-1754.

Fleming, Q.W. and Koppelman, J.M., 2016, December. Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.

Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.291-298.

Jayagowri, P. and Geetharamani, G., 2015. Using metric distance ranking method to find intuitionistic fuzzy critical path. Journal of Applied Mathematics, 2015.

Ji, Y., Mo, C., Ma, W. and Liao, D., 2016. Feedback gating control for network based on macroscopic fundamental diagram. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2016.

Kulkarni, A., Yadav, D.K. and Nikraz, H., 2017. Aircraft maintenance checks using critical chain project path. Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, 89(6), pp.879-892.

Nafkha, R. and Wiliski, A., 2016. The critical path method in estimating project duration. Information Systems in Management, 5(1), pp.78-87.

Niesen, I. and Corboz, P., 2017. A tensor network study of the complete ground state phase diagram of the spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic Heisenberg model on the square lattice. SciPost Physics, 3(4), p.030.