Effective Software Project Management

Analyzing the Initial Project Network Diagram

After you have created the initial project network diagram, one of two situations will be present.

• First, the initial project completion date meets the requested completion date. Usually this is not the case, but it does sometimes happen.

• The more likely situation is that the initial project completion date is later than the requested completion date. In other words, you have to find a way to squeeze some time out of the project schedule.

You will eventually need to address two considerations: the project completion date and resource availability under the revised project schedule. Here I proceed under the assumption that resources will be available to meet this compressed schedule. In Appendix H I look at the resource-scheduling problem. The two are quite dependent on one another, but they must be treated separately.

Schedule Compression

Almost without exception, the initial project calculations will result in a project completion date beyond the required completion date. That means that the project team must find ways to reduce the total duration of the project to meet the required date.

To address this problem, analyze the network diagram to identify areas where schedule compression opportunities exist. You look for pairs of tasks that allow you to convert tasks that are currently worked on sequentially into more parallel patterns of work. Work on the successor task might begin once the predecessor task has reached a certain stage ...