Project 2016 - Introduction

Project 2013

Lesson – Exploring Project

All projects evolve over time. Analyzing your data prepares you to make informed decisions when changing the plan is necessary.

Communicating the plan’s progress is important to management and to the project team assigned to perform the project tasks. In some situations, monthly or weekly status meetings are held to discuss problems and review reports. In other situations, the Internet or company intranet may provide the best method of communicating project information.

When you close a project, you mark all the tasks as complete. A completed project can be very helpful in planning future projects. Use the entire project or particular tasks as the basis for planning a new project.

R ECOGNIZING M ANAGEMENT T OOLS

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Discussion

Today’s project management software is a result of three major forces developed in the 1950’s: the Critical Path Method (CPM), the Gantt chart, and the Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT).

The CPM is a scheduling system created by the DuPont Corporation. It is the foundation of all modern project management software. CPM calculates the duration of a project based on the duration and relationships of each task. Tasks are defined as critical or noncritical. Tasks on the critical path (critical tasks) determine the completion date of the project. Critical tasks must be completed on time or the project will be delayed. Noncritical tasks have slack time, which means there is flexibility in the task’s finish time. A delay in a noncritical task will not cause a delay in the project. As changes to the project are made, however, noncritical tasks can become critical.

The Gantt chart was initially called a bar chart, but the name was later changed to Gantt after its creator, Henry Gantt. This chart graphically represents the duration of tasks across a timescale, showing the start and finish dates. If you want to illustrate the length of time a project or an individual task will take, use the Gantt chart.

The PERT was developed by Lockheed in conjunction with the Navy’s Polaris Missile Project. This scheduling system originally calculated expected durations. The modern

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