PROJECT MANAGEMENT Project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to accomplish a unique purpose.

-Project has a unique purpose - A project is temporary - A project should have a primary sponsor or customer. - A project involves uncertainity. Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and technique to project activities in order to meet project requirement. Project Mangers not only strive to meet specific scope, time, cost and quality goals of projects, they must also facilitate the entire process to meet the needs and expectation of people involved in or affected by project. PROJECT TIME MANAGEMENT: Simply defined, involves the processes required to ensure completion of a project. The process involved in project time management includes: Activity definition, which involves identifying the specific activities that project team members and stake holders, must perform to provide the project deliverables. An activity or task is an element of work that has an expected duration, cost and resource requirements. Activity sequencing which involves identifying documenting relationships between project activities. and

 Activity duration estimating, which involves estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete individual activities. Schedule development which involves analyzing activities sequences activities duration estimates and resource requirements to create the project schedule. PROJECT NETWORK DIAGRAM It is preferred method of showing activities sequencing, a project network diagram is a schematic display of the logical relationships among, or sequencing of project activities.
Project Network diagram uses arrow diagramming method (ADM) or Activity-on-arrow (AOA) a networking diagramming technique in which activities are represented by arrows and connected at point called nodes to illustrate the sequence of activities. A node is simply the starting and ending point of an activity. The first node signifies start of project and last node represent the end of a project. 2 A=1 1 B=2 3 D=4 E=5 F=4 5 H=6 6 J=3 8

C=3 4 G=6 7

I=2

Find all of the activities that start at the node 1. Draw their finish nodes and draw arrows between the node 1 and each of those finish nodes. Put the activities letter or name on the associated arrow. If you have a duration estimate, write that next to the activity letter or name. For example A=1 means that the duration of activity is one day/week/other unit of time. Put arrowheads on all arrows to signify the direction of the relationship. PRECEDENCE DIAGRAMMING METHOD (PDM): It is another network diagramming technique in which boxes dates and duration represents the nodes. Each task box includes the start and finish date, labeled started and names of resources. Arrows and arrowheads are used to show the relationship between the activities The outline of the boxes for tasks on the critical path appear automatically in red.

Gantt Charts
Gantt Charts provide a standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format. It list out project activities or tasks in one column to the left and calendar time unit to the right, and horizontal bars under the calendar units to illustrate when activities should start and end. Arrows connecting these tasks shows the dependencies or relationship between the tasks. Latest version of Gantt chart as represented in MS project software includes features like

1. Summary tasks represent the summation of all the sub tasks under it. 2. It has provision to track the individual task indicating percentage of task that is completed. 3. It has feature of filtering the task base on its critically. 4. Task can be rescheduled. Project schedule Crashing Crashing is a technique for making cost and schedule trade off to obtain the greatest amount schedule compression for the least incremental cost. For example a critical activity that would require 2 persons to complete the in say two weeks, it could be crashed to one week by adding two more persons with out any incremental cost. The main advantage of crashing is shortening the time it takes to finish a project. The main disadvantage of crashing is that it often increase total project cost. Fast tracking is another technique for shortening a project schedule it involves doing activities in parallel that you would normally do in sequence. The main disadvantage of fast tracking is that it can end up lengthening the project schedule since starting some tasks too soon often increases project risk and results in rework.

CRITICAL PATH METHOD(CPM)

Critical Path Method/ Critical path Analysis is a project network analysis technique to predict total project duration. It is important tool that will help you combat project schedule overruns.

A Critical Path for project is the series of activities that determine the earliest time by which the project can be completed. It is the longest path through the network diagram and has the least amount slack or float. Slack or float is the amount of time an activity or the project finish date. To find the critical path a project, you must first develop a good network diagram which in turn requires a good activity list based on the WBS. Once you create a project network diagram, you must also estimate the critical path. Calculating the critical path involves adding the durations of all activities on each path through the project network diagram. The longest path is the critical path. WBS: Work Break down Structure an outcome oriented document that define the total scope of the project Features and capabilities of MS Project : 1. Project Scope Management : Develop a list task(WBS) that need to be done to complete the project. These tasks are entered into the project management software. 2. Project Time Management : Specific start date and finish date of each task and task dependencies is then entered. On entering these information you can view Gantt chart, network diagram and critical path. Gantt chart provides duration and task dependencies of all activities of a project. One can view schedule table which reveals early start, early finish, late start, late finish and slack for each task.

3. Project Cost Management : Fixed cost and variable cost based on type and amount resources used for each task is entered in the m s project software. Human resources cost are also entered for each task. This helps to track how many people are used and identify potential underutilized resources. Once resources information updated, resources cost are automatically calculate for the project cost. One can view /print the budget report of the project. 4. Project Tracking feature : Planned time and resources of each task are updated and saved as base line plan. As the project progresses MS project software allows to enter actual time & cost of each task. It allows to enter percentage of task that has been completed at the end of the day. Project manager can therefore track the project against the base line plan and take corrective action. 5. Project Human Resources Management (Resources Histogram) : This feature provides information on utilization of an individual employee over a time period. A histogram depicting % utilization of an individual shows whether a person is over or under allocated during a month. Resources histogram also shows number of human resources assigned to a project. 6. Project Communication Management: Project central one of the important feature of MS project that allows user to share project details and update a single by working collaboratively with multiple people across a internet or LAN. Project member can view to-do list i.e. tasks he has perform and similarly he can update activities that is completed over internet. Similarly Project manager can track the project and assign or reassign activities to the project member.