Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Constructing the Project Network Diagram

At this point in the PMLC, you have identified the known set of tasks in the project as output from building the RBS and WBS as well as the task duration for the project. Next, the planning team needs to determine the order in which these tasks are to be performed.

The tasks and the task duration are the basic building blocks needed to construct a graphic picture of the project. This graphic picture provides you with the following two additional pieces of schedule information about the project:

• The earliest time at which work can begin on every task that makes up the project
• The earliest expected completion date of the project

This is critical information for the project manager. Ideally, the required resources will be available at the times established in the project plan. This is not very likely, and Chapter 6 discusses how to deal with that problem. But first, you need to know how to create an initial project network diagram and the associated project schedule, which is the focus of this section.

Envisioning a Complex Project Network Diagram

A project network diagram is a pictorial representation of the sequence in which the project work can be done. You need to follow a few simple rules to build the project network diagram.

Recall from Chapter 1 that a project is defined as a sequence of interconnected tasks. You could simply perform the tasks one at a time until they are all complete, but in most projects, this approach would not ...