Project Management
Prerequisite: Basic Engineering Mathematics and Probability Theory
L-T-P: 4-0-0, Credits: 4
Type: Core Essential Subjects (CES)
Dr Deepak Gupta
Assistant Professor, SMIEEE
CSED, MNNIT Allahabad, Prayagraj
Email: deepakg@[Link]
Project Management
Project: A project consists of interrelated activities that are to
be executed in a certain order before the entire task is
completed.
The activities are interrelated in a logical sequence known
as a predecessor relationship.
The work on the project cannot be started until the
immediate preceding activities are completed. For example:
Whitewashing should be done after the plastering.
Some of the typical Project are:
➢ Construction of the house
➢ Construction of the bridge or dam
➢ Construction of the power plant
➢ New product launching
➢ Conducting National election
➢ State-level examination process
➢ Construction of Railway Coaches etc.
A project network is a graph that shows the activities, duration,
and interdependencies/ precedence relationship of activities
within your project.
The project is represented in the form of a network for the
purpose of analytical treatment to get solutions for
scheduling and controlling its activities.
A network consists of a set of arcs that are connected
meaningfully through a set of nodes
There are two methods to representing any project in the
network form:
1. Activities on the arrows diagram (AOA diagram)
2. Activities on the nodes diagram (AON diagram)
But AOA diagram is commonly used in project management.
Project Management Techniques:
1. Critical Path Method (CPM)
2. Project Evaluation and Review Techniques (PERT)
1. Critical Path Method (CPM) is a technique that allows you to
identify tasks that are necessary for project completion. The
critical path in project management is the longest sequence of
activities that must be finished on time to complete the entire
project. In CPM, the activities timings are deterministic in
nature.
The tasks on the critical path are called critical activities because
if they're delayed, the whole project completion will be delayed.
2. Project Evaluation and Review Techniques (PERT)
Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a method
used to examine the tasks in a schedule and determine a Critical
Path Method variation (CPM). It analyzes the time required to
complete each task and its associated dependencies to determine
the minimum time to complete a project.
In PERT, every activity has three time estimates viz Optimistic
time, most likely time, and pessimistic (doubtful) time
Phases of Project Management:
Phases of Project Management has three phases
1. Planning
2. Scheduling
3. Controlling
1. Planning: The planning phase has the following steps
• Dividing the project into distinct activities
• Estimating time requirement for each activity
• Establishing a precedence relationships among the
activities.
• Construction of the arrow diagram (network)
2. Scheduling: The scheduling phase determines the start and
end time of each and every activities. These can be
summarized in the form of a time chart/ Gantt chart.
3. Controlling: The control phase uses the arrow diagram and
time chart for continuous monitoring and progress reporting.
In this phase, the network will be updated if there is any
variation in the proposed schedule.
Guidelines for Network Construction
The terminology which are used in network construction are
explained as follows:
Node: Generally, a node represents the starting or ending of
an activity.
Branch/ Arc: A branch represents the actual activity which
consumes some kind of resources.
Precedence relations of activities: For any activity, the
precedence relations provide the information about: the
activities that precede it, the activities that follow it, and the
activities that may be concurrent with it.
Rules for Network Construction
The following are the primary rules for constructing AOA
diagram:
1. The starting event and ending event of an activity are called tail
event and head event, respectively.
2. The network should have a unique starting node (tail event).
3. The network should have a unique completion node (head
event).
4. No activity should be represented by more than one arc in the
network.
5. No two activities should have the same starting node and the
same ending node.
6. Dummy activity is an imaginary activity indicating precedence
relationship only. Duration of a dummy activity is zero.
Critical Path Method (CPM)
Example: Consider following Table summarizing the details of a project
involving 14 activities:
Activity Immediate predecessor (s) Duration (months)
A _ 2
B _ 5
C _ 4
D B 5
E A 7
F A 3
G B 3
H C, D 6
I C, D 2
J E 5
K F, G, H 4
L F, G, H 3
M I 12
N J, K 8
❑ Construct the CPM network
❑ Determine the critical path and project completion time
❑ Compute total floats and free floats for non-critical activities