Define project and some characteristics?
- A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result
- Generally are focused, temporary, uncertain and unique
(A programme is a collection of projects)
What are the benefits of project management?
- Organise complex, coupled processes
- Establish a plan and a schedule
- Promotes teamwork and collaboration
- Manage budget and control costs
What are project controls?
Techniques to ensure that a project is completed on time and in budget.
What information is required to work out project timings?
- The actions required. A list of all actions that must be completed to succeed in the project
- Time required to finish each activity
- Resources required to finish each activity (people, machines, materials etc)
- The interdependencies of activities (i.e which activities must be completed before others can begin etc)
What are 4 techniques that can be used for time management?
- Gantt chart
- Network diagrams
- Critical Path Analysis (CPA)
- Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
+ve / -ve of Gantt charts?
+ve:
- Provides a high level overview - visually appealing and easy to understand
- Helps manage resources ; allows for realistic schedules to be set and therefore resources allocated to those realistic schedules.
-ve:
- Does not give much detail on task interdependencies
- Length of a bar does not correspond to how much work is required, only time. EG a short bar may require significant resources.
+ve/-ve of Arrow-on-Arrow network diagrams?
+ve: - Very good visual representation of the tasks required
- Can easily see relationships and interdependencies
- Can be combined with CPA (or PERT)to see critical tasks and project duration
-ve:
- Not very flexible. Many things in a project are very variable and a network diagram does not allow for much modification should it need it.
- Can become very complicated for projects with many of tasks.
