Project Management is all about managing your time and understanding key objectives to meeting deadlines. Without some kind of tactical structure, it becomes extremely difficult to ensure that you’ll meet these deadlines. Network Scheduling Techniques allows you plan and utilize your resources in order to achieve time and cost goals. Some of the most common network scheduling techniques are PERTT charts, GANTT charts and milestone charts.
Depending on the field you’re in or what major you’re in, you’re going to come across several projects that requires a lot of effort to complete. The magnitude of the project can be quite large. With an assignment that’s massive, you’ll often need to rely on a planner that will get you through deadlines that you’ll have to meet. You’ll often have to present a timeline to your team that demonstrates the time duration per activity within the project and when they will be started and completed. With the effective use of network scheduling techniques, it’ll make the timeline much easier to construct. For example, a GANTT chart can allow the ability to view the activities involved in the project, along with an estimated duration that indicates how long they’ll take to complete. It’ll show you when an activity begins and end, where they overlap with one another, etc.
I did an internship at Air Products in Trexlertown over the summer. There were several projects that I was working on with my IT security team that needed to be completed by the end of August. We utilized network scheduling techniques to make sure each project was completed on time. MS project was used and the tools were there to aid us in making a PERTT chart and GANTT chart. I never used these programs other than software engineering prior to the internship, but I was glad I was able to obtain exposure during my internship. It made me realize how essential it is to learn these techniques. I was interested in learning more about PM activities and my manager gave me really good insight on how things operate from a Project Manger’s standpoint. I enjoyed working with my team on these projects and it gave me a lot of useful experience that I can apply to any project that I come across.
With the use of these GANTT/PERTT/milestone charts, you can monitor the progress of the project. One thing to note is that, it becomes important to know when an activity gets delayed due to the increase in duration from another activity that depends on it. For example, if activity B depends on activity A and if the activity A gets delayed, then B gets delayed as well. It’s also essential to understand slack time which measures the amount of time a task can be delayed without causing the project to be delayed. Without understanding slack time, it can be easy for a project to be delayed. Calculating slack time can help everyone involved in the project understand how much time they have to complete an activity.
Before learning these techniques from software engineering classes, my internship and now this class, I used to use inefficient methods in estimating time. I realized how poorly of a method this was because I’d delay a project due to my lack of understanding of efficient methods. After applying network scheduling techniques specifically GANTT charts to my project management, I realized how much easier it is to keep track of my progress for a particular project. My internship made me realized how significant it is to use these efficient techniques in order to meet deadlines. I think it’s important for everyone to learn these techniques because they’ll come across a time where a simple planner won’t work for them. They’ll need to adapt to a network scheduling technique because otherwise, they will have a high chance of delaying deadlines which can result in the delay of the entire project.
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