Question

Describe the process of manually crashing a project network.

Answer 1

Process Of Project Crashing-

the manager must finish the project sooner than indicated by the CPM/PERT network analysis. Project duration can often be reduced by assigning more labor to project activities, in the form of overtime, and by assigning more resources. However, additional labor and resources increase the project cost. Thus, the decision to reduce the project duration must be based on an analysis of the trade-off between time and cost. Project crashing is a method for shortening the project duration by reducing the time of one (or more) of the critical project activities to less than its normal activity time. This reduction in the normal activity time is referred to as crashing. Crashing is achieved by devoting more resources, usually measured in terms of dollars, to the activities to be crashed.

Project Crashing with POM for Windows-

The manual procedure for crashing a network is cumbersome. It is basically a trial-and-error approach useful for demonstrating the logic of crashing. It quickly becomes unmanageable for larger networks. This approach would have become difficult if we had pursued even the house building example to a crash time greater than 30 weeks, with more than one path becoming critical.

When more than one path becomes critical, all critical paths must be reduced by an equal amount. Since the possibility exists that an additional path might become critical each time the network is reduced by even one unit of time (e.g., 1 week, month), this means that a reduction of one time unit is the maximum amount that can be considered at each crashing step.

The General Relationship of Time and Cost-

The objective of crashing was to reduce the scheduled completion time to reap the results of the project sooner. However, there may be other reasons for reducing project time. As projects continue over time, they consume indirect costs, including the cost of facilities, equipment, and machinery, interest on investment, utilities, labor, personnel costs, and the loss of skills and labor from members of the project team who are not working at their regular jobs. There also may be direct financial penalties for not completing a project on time. For example, many construction contracts and government contracts have penalty clauses for exceeding the project completion date.

Method of project crashing-

Increasing Your Resources- There are a number of standard and typical approaches to attempting to crash a project schedule. One of the most commonly utilized methods involves increasing the assignment of resources on schedule activities. This essentially means decreasing the time it takes to perform individual activities by increasing the number of people working on those activities.

Pros- This makes sense, at first glance. For example, if it takes Bob 4 hours to complete an activity, it would logically take Bob and Sue 2 hours to complete the same activity.

Cons- Adding resources isn’t always the best solution, though. Sometimes it ends up taking more time in the long run. Consider the following-

- New resources aren't going to be familiar with the tasks at hand, so they will probably be less productive than current team members.

- Being available does not equal being qualified. Not even the best neurosurgeon in the world will help if you need an HTML programmer. Sometimes extra hands are only tangentially qualified for the work, and even if the new resources have the right skills, they may not be on the same caliber as the current team members.

Fast Tracking- Another solution may be fast-tracking, which involves over-lapping tasks which were initially scheduled sequentially. Or you might be able to optimize your schedule in other areas.

- For example, maybe you can split long tasks into smaller chunks to squeeze more work into a shorter period of time

- reduce lag times between tasks

- or reduce the scope to eliminate less important tasks.

Finally, sometimes the best method is some combination of resource addition and schedule activity alteration. For instance, adding additional, qualified people to the task to be completed earlier and re-assign members with less experience to tasks that do not have a pressing deadline.

When NOT to Crash- The key to project crashing is attaining maximum reduction in schedule time with minimum cost. Quite simply, the time to stop crashing is when it no longer becomes cost effective. A simple guideline is-

- Crash only activities that are critical.

- Crash from the least expensive to most expensive.

Crash an activity only until-

- it reaches its maximum time reduction.

- it causes another path to also become critical.

- it becomes more expensive to crash than not to crash.

Conclusion- Business and its environment are more complex today than ever before, so project managers must become more rational in their decision making by using the most effective tools and techniques. Before you decide to crash a project, make sure you've looked at all of the possible options and thoroughly evaluated cost analysis models. That way you can achieve the greatest results for your efforts.