Project Management Assignment - Coursework Example

Project Management Assignment a) An Activity-on-Node (AoN) representation of the given project alongside its critical path and its duration. Critical Path: B – D – H – K – L Duration: 38 days NB: The letters in the nodes represent the activities and the numbers in brackets are the duration time each activity took for completion. The critical path of the Activity on Node diagram above is B – D – H – K – L, which takes 38 days to complete. b) Gantt chart c) Determine the theoretically smallest maximum number of people required at any point in time without lengthening the duration of the critical path.

Explain why it is not feasible to reduce the number of people required down to this level and state with reasons the practical minimum for this project. ACTIVITY HUMAN RESOURCE A 40 B 32 C 96 D 40 E 24 F 48 G 12 H 48 I 120 J 32 K 60 L 80 TOTAL 632 Man Days 60 days are required to finish the project. Theoretical smallest maximum number : 632/60 = 10.53 ~ 11. The critical path is B – D – H – K – L. This number is not practical without the interference of the critical path as all activities on the critical path apart from L on a slight note, are dependent on other activities and some overlap with other activities that demand human resource too.

An imbalance would alter the duration of some dependencies thus directly affecting the critical path. However, with more human resource, the implementation would have been viable and would have been implemented to in fact reduce the duration with a condition that the activities were done only in succession. The practical maximum number could thus be 10 while the practical minimum would be 2 as provided by the initial schedule. d) Determine a schedule such that the maximum number of people required at any point in time may be reduced to 14 without lengthening the duration of the critical path.

Activity A B C D E F G H I J K L Dependencies - - B A,B C D,E E D,F,G G D H,J K Durations 10 10 21 4 6 8 6 6 20 16 8 10 Human Resource Requirements 4 3 2 10 4 6 2 8 6 2 8 8 The critical path is through B, D, H, K and L. this totals to 38 days. To maintain a maximum number of 14 humans at a time without interfering with the critical path duration in the schedule, we have to increase the duration of activity B to 10 days and reduce the human resource to 3. We then increase the duration of C to 21 days and reduce humans in the same activity to 2 humans.

Finally, we reduce the duration of activity K by increasing human resource by 2 to 8. These changes ensure that at any particular time, including overlapping dependencies, the number of human resources is maintained to 14 humans. The schedule is redrafted in the above drawn table. NB: No changes are done to the dependencies as this is illegal. Bibliography Kerzner, H., 2009. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. New York: Wiley.