Project Management

Temporary and customized initiative that consists of many smaller tasks and activities that must be coordinated and completed
◦ Goal: To finish the entire initiative on time and within budget

What is project management?

• Planning, directing, and controlling resources (people, equipment, material, etc.) to meet the technical, cost, and time constraints of the project.

Project definition

• Defining goals, scope, risks, budget, timeline, and resources.

• Identifying the activities that must be completed and the sequence
  to perform them

Project planning

• Determining resource and financing needs for each activity

Project scheduling

• Specifying a time schedule for the completion of each activity

Project control

• Establishing controls for determining progress and responding to problems

What makes a project successful?

Time, Cost, Quality, Client Satisfaction

Activities: Discrete tasks that consume resources and time

Immediate predecessors: Activities that must be completed immediately before an activity may start

◦ Precedence relationships ensure that activities are performed in the proper sequence when they are scheduled

Project network: Consists of nodes and arcs, which define the precedence relationships between activities

◦ Nodes: Set of circles or boxes, which represent activities

◦ Arcs: Set of arrows

◦ This is called an activity-on-node (AON) network representation

Critical path: Sequence of activities that takes the longest time and defines the total project completion time

We need to find two starting time and two ending times for each activity to conduct CPM

• Earliest start (ES)- earliest possible date on which an activity can start

• Earliest Finish (EF) – earliest possible date on which an activity can be completed

EF = ES + T, where T is activity duration

• Latest start (LS) – latest possible date that an activity may begin without

delaying the project completion ; LS = LF - T

• Latest Finish (LF) – latest possible date an activity can be completed without delaying the project completion; LF= LS + T

Slack time: is the length of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the entire project

• Slack = LS –ES or LF –EF

Critical Path: Activities with Zero slack are critical activities