Critical Path Method and Its Marketing Plan

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2002). This paper's focus will be on the CPM and PERT methodologies.

The Rockfest event has 26 tasks, each conveniently denoted by a letter in the alphabet. Having drawn up the Critical Path and analyzed it, I found the following. The Critical Path starts with task A, continues with B, D, E, F, G, and finally O. The time it takes to complete these tasks is 34 weeks. That is approximately eight and a half months. You will notice that the Critical Path does not include myriad tasks. That is because these tasks can be completed while the Critical Path tasks are being implemented.

Now, if, for instance, task B, or "select a local printer" took two more weeks than planned, how would a project manager handle the problem? I argue that the best thing to do, since task B. is part of the Critical Path, is begin crashing tasks until the problem is rectified. Since two weeks is the amount we need to crash, let us find the cheapest task to crash. Now, there are 26 separate tasks in the project, and it can be a pretty daunting task to analyze each one. However, there is one thing we can do to lighten the load. Analyzing only the Critical Path can cut down on analysis time, while resulting in accurate and complete analyses. Since the Critical Path is the longest time the task is going to take, it makes sense to try to cut that down as much as possible.

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Crashing a non-critical task does not reduce the overall project length, and thus wastes money. Task A costs $11,500 to crash and saves 3 weeks, putting us a week ahead of schedule. Expensive, but it might be worth it. Task D. costs $3,000 and saves two weeks.

Task E. saves the same amount of time, but is $500 dollars cheaper, putting it ahead as the safest task to crash thus far. Task F. costs $5,000 dollars and saves one week, making it useless to us. Task G. cannot be crashed. Task O. takes saves two weeks, and costs $1,800 dollars to crash. We have a winner, as Task O. is the cheapest while still saving the right amount of time.

A recent study determined that "the heart of network-based planning methods is a graphical portrayal of the plan for carrying out the program" (Huang, Wong, Liu, Qiu, 2005, p. 703). Therefore, ensuring the program is carried out efficiently will necessarily include a graphical portrayal of the plan to do so.

There are a plethora of problems a project manager can encounter. CPM is perhaps the best method of simplifying and easing the burden of managing complicated tasks. It creates an easily seen and understandable graphic which delineates potential problems while explaining the length of projects. Implementing CPM can mitigate many of the troubles a project manager will come across......

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