01:19
Faizan
You've checked your data, then rechecked it. No doubt, your project is over schedule compared to the baseline. As a Project Management Professional (PMP), what are you going to do to correct the project? We can change the order of tasks, add resources or people to the project, change scope, or some combination.
If the primary need is to get your project back on schedule, you'll have to compress the schedule without changing the project scope. Your two primary options are Fast Tracking or Crashing the schedule, but what's the difference? Let's take a closer look at these two schedule compression techniques and make it simple to understand them.
Fast Tracking
This technique is simply doing critical path activities in parallel, instead of in series as planned. There is a primary presumption that the dependencies for the activities to be fast tracked are discretionary, so you are effectively just removing those dependencies as a barrier to starting an activity.
Do you just grab your network diagram and look at which activities on the critical path can be done simultaneously? While this may sound like the easiest thing to do, there are several considerations before committing to this change in plans:
There is inherent risk in making this schedule change, and you should update your risk log accordingly. Be especially aware that the results of the parallelized activities may need to be reworked, as they may not be as expected initially.
You are potentially increasing the number of communication channels, or at least creating the need for closer correlation between the activities. Pay close attention to the additional effort involved in coordinating the activities.
There was a reason you initially had the activities in series, possibly because the same person was to do both activities or there was a limitation on equipment. Be sure you have the expertise, hardware, or software available to handle the additional workload for the duration of the fast tracked activities.
Another consideration is that if a deliverable, say information, was to be available prior to the start of a future activity, you may need to make some assumptions about that input as a basis to run the activity earlier than planned.
If the primary need is to get your project back on schedule, you'll have to compress the schedule without changing the project scope. Your two primary options are Fast Tracking or Crashing the schedule, but what's the difference? Let's take a closer look at these two schedule compression techniques and make it simple to understand them.
Fast Tracking
This technique is simply doing critical path activities in parallel, instead of in series as planned. There is a primary presumption that the dependencies for the activities to be fast tracked are discretionary, so you are effectively just removing those dependencies as a barrier to starting an activity.
Do you just grab your network diagram and look at which activities on the critical path can be done simultaneously? While this may sound like the easiest thing to do, there are several considerations before committing to this change in plans:
There is inherent risk in making this schedule change, and you should update your risk log accordingly. Be especially aware that the results of the parallelized activities may need to be reworked, as they may not be as expected initially.
You are potentially increasing the number of communication channels, or at least creating the need for closer correlation between the activities. Pay close attention to the additional effort involved in coordinating the activities.
There was a reason you initially had the activities in series, possibly because the same person was to do both activities or there was a limitation on equipment. Be sure you have the expertise, hardware, or software available to handle the additional workload for the duration of the fast tracked activities.
Another consideration is that if a deliverable, say information, was to be available prior to the start of a future activity, you may need to make some assumptions about that input as a basis to run the activity earlier than planned.
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