Gantt Chart and Network Diagram - Essay Example

The task assignments have overloaded certain resources. This is because, when setting predecessors, only adjacent tasks have been considered in certain cases. For example, some of the tasks to which the resource named Goran has been allocated on the same day are 75, 76, 109, and 110.

Task 76 has a dependency on task 75 and task 110 has a dependency on task 109. But, because the same resource is involved, there is a dependency between tasks 76 and 109 as well. Ignoring dependencies such as these have resulted in that resource been overloaded. Hence task assignments need to be reworked. The dependencies could be simplified if they were set using the summary task numbers instead of the detailed task numbers. Task 170, 'Test d_contactInfo table' has tasks 109, 110, and 111 as predecessors all of which are subtasks of task 108, the building of that table.

Predecessor could be set as 108, thereby, simplifying dependency management. There are several milestone tasks. They have been used to mark significant tasks which need to be completed before proceeding to later tasks. It is not prudent to deploy the system without validating it in the two migration environments. The validating activities, therefore, are marked as milestones and the Deploy task is set as dependent on the two validation tasks. Network DiagramThe network diagram appears very complex because of the setting of the dependencies to the lower-level tasks.

This complexity can be reduced if the dependencies are set to the higher-level summary tasks. Usually, in MS Project, the tasks that lie on the critical path are highlighted in red color in both Gantt chart and network diagram views. The testing of the dimension and fact tables is critical for the success of the system. Therefore, those testing tasks appear on the critical path, in red color, along with the migration and deploy activities. However, the fact that the critical path does not extend to the beginning of the network diagram should be analyzed carefully.

This could be due to a mistake in the setting of the predecessor activities. This observation is based on the idea that the critical path of a project is the path with the longest duration. Hence, it represents the shortest time in which a project can be completed. (Schwalbe, 2000). What this implies is that in a network diagram the critical path should extend from the beginning till the end of that network. The absence of this property in the critical path indicates the possibility of some missed dependencies.

Overall, it could be stated that the plan has been set up covering the full development cycle with a finer level of task breakdown. However, by doing the simplifications and validations mentioned above it is possible to ensure that the plan is manageable and traceable. (3 resources are shown as overloaded, which should be corrected by resource-leveling.