Gantt and Pert Charts

Task:5 Make a critical analysis methodologies used in your project. Explain how your methodologies can be applied to similar types of project and cannot be applied to different type of project.

Advantage of Gantt and PERT charts: 1. It gives the start time and end time of the project. 2. It gives you a precise time of each step of the project.

3. It gives you good view of which steps are the main or additional. 4. It provides exact prospective of which step depends on the other. Advantages of Gantt Charts.

5. It creates a picture of complexity.We think in pictures. Therefore, if we can see complex ideas as a picture, this will help our understanding. 6. It organizes your thoughts.

A big problem is conquered by dividing it into component parts. A Gantt chart will force you to do this. 7. It demonstrates that you know what you’re doing. When you produce a nicely presented Gantt chart with high level tasks properly organized and resources allocated to those tasks, it speaks volumes about whether you are on top of the needs of the project and whether the project will be successful.

8.It (should) help you to set realistic time frames. The bars on the chart indicate in which period a particular task or set of tasks will be completed. This can help you to get things in perspective properly. And when you do this, make sure that you think about events in your organization that have nothing to do with this project that might consume resources and time. 9.

It can be highly visible. It can be useful to place the chart, or a large version of it, where everyone can see it. This helps to remind people of the objectives and when certain things are going to happen.It is useful if everyone in your enterprise can have a basic level of understanding of what is happening with the project even if they may not be directly involved with it.

Disadvantages of Gantt Charts. • They can become extraordinarily complex. Except for the simplest projects, there will be large numbers of tasks undertaken and resources employed to complete the project. There are some very good software programs that can cope with all this complexity (e.

g. Microsoft Project). However, hen the project gets to this level, it must be managed by a small number of people (perhaps one) who manages all of the details. Sometimes this does not work so well in a business that is not used to this type of management.

Big businesses will frequently employ one or more project managers who are very skilled in this. For a range of reasons, this may not work so well in a smaller enterprise. • The size of the bar does not indicate the amount of work. Each bar on the chart indicates the time period over which a particular set of tasks will be completed.However, by looking at the bar for a particular set of tasks, you cannot tell what level of resources are required to achieve those tasks.

So, a short bar might take 500 man hours while a longer bar may only take 20 man hours. The longer bar may indicate to the uninformed that it is a bigger task, when in fact it is not. • They need to be constantly updated. As you get into a project, things will change.

If you’re going to use a Gantt chart you must have the ability to change the chart easily and frequently.If you don’t do this, it will be ignored. Again, you will probably need software to do this unless you’re keeping your project management at a high level. • Difficult to see on one sheet of paper.

The software products that produce these charts need to be viewed on a computer screen, usually in segments, to be able to see the whole project. It then becomes difficult to show the details of the plan to an audience. Further, you can print out the chart, but this will normally entail quite a large “cut and paste” exercise.If you are going to do this frequently, it can be very time-consuming. • Advantages of PERT Large Project Planning: A PERT chart makes planning large projects easier. It answers three key questions about each activity that help managers identify relationships between tasks and task dependencies.

These questions involve how long it will take to complete an activity, and which other activities must occur immediately before and immediately after this activity for effective project completion. PERT is a good way of making these relationships visible in a diagram.Visible Critical Path: The critical path includes all activities that cannot be delayed without affecting the project completion date. PERT makes the critical path visible.

All tasks not on the critical path can have some slack time without affecting project completion time. When the project manager must delay one task to allocate more time to another, the critical path makes clear which tasks cannot be delayed. • disadvantages of PERT Complicated Charts: PERT charts can be complicated and confusing, with hundreds or even thousands of tasks and dependency relationships.This is especially true of very large projects. PERT diagrams can be expensive to develop, update and maintain. Prediction Inaccuracies: PERT charts depend on the ability to predict precise time frames for multitudes of tasks.

Complicated projects involving many activities and suppliers can make this prediction difficult. Unexpected events occur, and sometimes the original estimate of time needed for specific steps was inaccurate. PERT works best in projects where previous experience can be relied on to accurately make these predictions.