Order the Project Activities
Show which tasks are critical to the successful achievement of the project
NOTE
Time spent on planning is never time wasted
Not all activities will have to start at the same time in order to meet the project’s planned completion date. Put activities into a logical sequence, estimate the duration of each, and then devise a project schedule.
Estimate Timings
An accurate estimate of the time each activity will take is crucial to creating an effective schedule. If you do not know how long it will take to do something, look for guidance from people, inside or outside the organization, whose experience will help you. Getting it badly wrong at this stage can throw the project off course. Make sure that the team members are involved in this estimation, particularly if they have previous experience, and get their agreement to the timing of each of their activities. If there is any doubt about how long an activity will take, estimate the worst and best case scenarios and use a compromise between the two.
Create a Network Diagram
A network diagram shows the relationship between activities and which ones depend on the completion of others. The diagram will be simple or complex, depending on how many activities there are and how they inter-relate.
Estimate the Total Time
Where there are several routes through a network, you can complete tasks simultaneously as long as they do not require the same resources at the same time. Use the time estimates you have made to estimate the total time it will take to complete each route and find the longest route. This longest route is known as the critical path and shows the shortest possible duration for the project.
Use Critical Path Analysis
Some activities will be critical to completing the project on time; if they slip by a week then the whole project will slip by a week. Project planners use critical analysis to identify the activities on the critical path.
They put a lot of effort into making sure that these activities have no time slippage.
They recognize that, as the project continues, time targets may be missed and the critical path may change.