Project Management

Module 4 - Planning Projects

Cdr Vijay Pratap Singh, Adjunct Professor, E&TC

 What is Project Crashing?

➢ Project crashing is when you shorten the duration of a project by

reducing the time of one or more tasks.

➢ Crashing is done by increasing the resources to the project, which

reduces the duration of project and the tasks gets completed earlier than
planned. This also adds to the cost of the overall project.

➢ The primary objective of project crashing is to shorten the project

keeping costs at a minimum.
 What is resource loading?
➢ Resource loading is your total assigned hours of work divided by the number
of hours you have to do the work. Resource loading is looked at on a per day, per
week, per month, or per the duration of the project basis.

Resource loading =hours of work per time period/hours of capacity per time period

✓ For example, as project managers we expect a resource loaded to 75% to

complete 30 hours of planned work each week (40 hours of capacity), or 6
hours a day. The other 10 hours that week is expected to be spent doing other
stuff that is not in the plan, or is not related to the project (e.g., training,
department meetings, etc.).
 How to calculate Resource Loading

There are two options:-

❖ Estimate all the work needed (each day) and divide by the
resource’s full capacity (8 hrs per day).

❖ Alternatively, estimate the work needed on the project tasks

and divide by the resource’s availability to do those project
tasks (usually much less than 8 hrs per day).
 How to calculate Resource Loading
❑ Either way, you must account for time that is not available for completing the
project tasks in your plan including:

▪ project-related meetings and ad-hoc discussions (which aren’t included in

the plan)
▪ regularly scheduled staff meetings
▪ work that the person is assigned to on other projects
▪ time spent supporting products that have already launched
▪ vacation time
▪ even bathroom breaks, and a lot more.
❑ In fact, the more diverse a person's activities are, the more time is added in the
form of switching costs which are also quite significant. These other activities
are largely unavoidable, and often take priority over project tasks. The time left
for our planned project tasks is almost always a lot less than we planned for.
 Resource Leveling
➢ Resource leveling is traditionally defined as: “The process of using a company's
resources in the most efficient way possible.” However, high efficiency is the same
as high utilization, which generally results in low throughput, and throughput is
where the profit is...
➢ Project plans must first be based on realistic estimation of work package and time
duration required to complete the project.
➢ The most effective plan accounts for foreseeable and unforeseeable work or task
emerging out during project execution phase due to fast changing global scenario.

➢ Resources required in such unforeseeable conditions are also accounted for in the
plans to complete the task within the time stipulated.

➢ Visibility of issues before they occur is critical — certainly where people’s

workloads are concerned.
 Goldratt’s Critical Chain
❑ Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt was Israeli and was known as “a business management
guru”. He was an educator, a physicist, a theorist as well.

❑ In 1997, Goldratt introduced the Critical Chain methodology to apply ‘Theory of

Constraints’ concepts to manage projects.

❑ The Critical Chain methodology expands on the notion of a critical path and
helps determine where buffers should be placed to prevent unplanned
disruptions from delaying project completion.

❑ To schedule work is also to schedule resource usage. Resource availability

constrains all solutions to the scheduling problem.

❑ Project management is fundamentally concerned with effectively trading off

performance, cost, and time. Yet, to what extent is the need to make these trade-
offs caused by human decisions and practices?
 Goldratt’s Critical Chain
The Critical Chain Concept
➢ A project has four sets of activities that must be completed before a
synchronization operation, represented by C4 can be completed.
➢ Use historical data to obtain an estimate of the average time for each
activity.
➢ Sum these estimates to obtain the average time it takes each series of
activities that must be completed before C4 can begin.
➢ An analysis reveals that the series of activities with the longest average
time is C1-C2-C3.
➢ This is the Critical Chain and the activities along the critical chain are
termed critical activities.
The Critical Chain Concept
 Estimating Task Times
3 Project Scenario
❑ The primary difference is the degree of interdependence across the paths.

❖ Scenario 1: there is only a single path

❖ Scenario 2: the path B-C-D-E is preceded by three activities A1, A2, &
A3. The completion of path B-C-D-E depends on which of its three
preceding tasks takes the longest
❖ Scenario 3: there are two completely independent paths each
consisting of five tasks

❑ All three tasks require 10 days to complete.

Three Project Scenario
 Critical Chain Project Management
➢ Identify the critical chain: set of tasks that determine the overall duration of
the project
➢ Use deterministic CPM model with buffers to deal with uncertainty
➢ Remove padding from activity estimates (otherwise, slack will be wasted).
Estimate task durations at median.
➢ Place project buffer after last task to protect customer’s completion
schedule
➢ Exploit constraining resource(s)
➢ Avoid wasting slack times by encouraging early task completions
➢ Have project team focus 100% effort on critical tasks
➢ Work to your plan and avoid tampering
➢ Carefully monitor and communicate buffer status
 Three Project Scenario
➢ Project Times are not known with certainty
➢ Activities that takes less than the expected time tend to cancel out
the variability of activities that take more than the expected
completion time for the project
 Project stakeholder communication plan

➢ A stakeholder communication plan is a strategy developed by an organization

to better connect with its stakeholders and to assess their feedback regarding
major projects on the company's agenda.

➢ The primary goals of a stakeholder communication plan are:

❖ To help the organization meet its goals and achieve its long-term objectives
❖ To maintain or improve relationships with the people who can influence
the organization's success, also called key stakeholders or target audience
❖ To improve the effectiveness of the company's operations
6 ways to effectively communicate with
stakeholders of project
➢ Schedule a meeting. ...
➢ Send out a newsletter. ...
➢ Separate online “screen to screen” meetings. ...
➢ Project summary report. ...
➢ Schedule a conference call. ...
➢ Lunch meetings.
 7 ways to effectively communicate
with stakeholders

➢ Identify key stakeholders and plan communications.

➢ Email and e-newsletters. ...
➢ Communication automation. ...
➢ Presentations. ...
➢ Project Summary Reports. ...
➢ Group video call or 'screen to screen' meetings. ...
➢ Leverage informal stakeholder communications.
Block concept of Project Communication Plan
Sample of project communication plan
The End