Project Management Methodology - Essay Example

Project management is a fast-growing area of management. This determines the cost associated with the project. Different methods have been proposed to process the projects quicker, enabling efficiency and productivity by spending the slightest amount of energy and time. Like:
- Critical Path Method.
- PERT.
- Critical Chain.

Out of the above-mentioned techniques, I have chosen the CPM for my project. CPM has gained wide popularity and is mostly used in the industry. It is the most versatile planning and control technique extensively used for managing complex projects. It emphasizes flexible schedules and controlling costs (Knapp, B. W., 2010, p.62). CPM is used for analyzing the projects by estimating the longest series of tasks or with those tasks that have the least slack by a project network.

I prefer it because even after being a traditional technique it is most frequently used in managing the project (Uher, T. E., 2003, p.38). It can calculate the starting and finish date of a given project, enabling project managers to find out the exact dates for every activity compare what should be happening to what is happening and respond accordingly. It has the following added advantages over other techniques and methods:
- Useful for maintaining schedules, monitoring, and controls of projects.
- Helpful for Project Managers in finding correct dates of every activity that enables them to find out what will happen and what is currently happening and how to react accordingly.
- All the activities are illustrated through the diagram.
- To help scheduling dependencies are displayed.
- It reviews activities that can work parallel.
- Calculates relaxed and proposed times.
- It can identify numerous, equally critical paths.
- The critical path method finds out the duration of the project, which reduces the total of direct and indirect expenses.

My decision to choose the CPM technique was justified once I compared it with other traditional techniques, PERT and scheduling analysis techniques like critical chain scheduling. Both other techniques have some limitations, like the probabilistic nature of PERT, in which estimations are unsure (Schwalbe, K., 2010, p. 236). Pert lays more stress on the time element while in CPM efforts are made to make optimum use of resources. PERT can only be used on entirely new projects (Singla R. K., 2010, p. 283).

The Critical Chain approach has stated advantages over the conventional approaches. This approach has its limitations, like in the scenario where simultaneously different projects are handled using the same resource is not workable, due to loss of resource productivity (NocêRA, R. D. J., 2013, p.283). While on the other hand, CPM can handle multiple projects simultaneously (Demkin, J. A., 2008, p.733). Critical chain scheduling is not a revolutionary approach, fundamentally it is based on CPM theory (Levine, H. A., 2002, p.89). Another major limitation of Critical Chain Scheduling is that it is expensive to implement, and depending on the project has a certain degree of accuracy as well (Sebastian N., 2007, p.191).

After researching and going through all the methods mentioned previously, I found the Critical Path Method to be the best for my project. It is widely used and has several advantages over all the others.