Project Management: PERT, Critical Path Method, Crashing

This article discusses PERT, Critical Path Method, and Crashing in Project Management. It explains the characteristics of PERT, how to calculate slack time, how to identify critical path, and the impact of crashing on project constraints. The article also includes a case study and references.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management
Name of Student-
Name of University-
Author’s Note-

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Answer to Question 1:
PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) is basically a project management tool
that is used for scheduling, organizing and coordinating the tasks in a project. The PERT
methodology is developed by U.S. navy in 1950 for managing the Polaris missile program.
PERT chart is a tool that is used for making plan tasks in a project (Hajdu & Bokor, 2016). The
PERT chart help to make the schedule of the project easier and the team members can coordinate
for accomplishing work. With the help of PERT, the project developer can create three various
time estimates for a particular project. The first estimate that can be made is measuring the
shortest amount of time that each task will need, the second is the most estimated amount of time
and the third is the longest amount of time that the tasks will need if things are not planned
(Bastos et al., 2017). PERT is a process that is calculated backward from fixed date because the
deadline of the contractors cannot be changed.
The characteristics of the PERT are as follows:
 PERT helps to manage new projects.
 PERT can solve models that are under uncertainty.
 Depends on time.
 PERT is event oriented.
Answer to Question 2:
Earliest start time- Earliest start time of an activity is the earliest time at which the
activity starts.

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Latest start time- Latest Start Time is latest time at which the activity actually begins and
ensures to complete the project on time (Mazlum & Güneri, 2015).
Earliest finish time- Earliest Finish time is earliest time that the activity is expected to
end.
Slack time- Slack time refers to the time delayed between the earliest start time and latest
start time (Agyei, 2015). The slack time also includes time delay without changing the duration
of the entire project.
If an activity has more than one predecessor, for calculating the earliest finish time, the
predecessor that has the least time activity is to be taken. So, Earliest Finish Time will the
cumulative time for the least time predecessor and the own time of the activity to complete the
work.
The early start time of the D activity for Bart’s Ski Trip is 0.5, and
The latest start time of the D activity for Bart’s Ski Trip is 4.0
So, slack time can be calculated as:
Slack Time= Latest Start Time – Early Start Time
= 4.0 – 0.5 = 3.5 hours.
Answer to Question 3:
Critical Path Method is mainly based on the algorithm of scheduling to set up project
activities (Liberatore, 2016). There are many essential techniques for using the Critical Path
Method for constructing a model in a project. CPM includes all the activity lists that are needed

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to complete a project, it also shows all the dependencies in between the activities and the time
estimation for each activity for completing the project.
The critical path of the above example is
Start- Activity 2- Activity 3- Activity 4- Finish
Project managers need critical path analysis to identify all the activities that are necessary
for completing the task that includes identifying all necessary time to complete all the activities
and the relationships in between all activities.
For calculating the critical path for Bart’s Ski Trip, the activities involved in the trip
should have zero slack time. So, activities A, B, C, E, and F has zero slack time. The slack time
for activity D is 3.5 hours. So, the critical path can be taken as A-B-C-E-F.
Answer to Question 4:
Crashing is known as an advanced technique of project management that adds the proper
amount of project resources that are skilled to the Critical Path Task that are used commonly to
for compressing the schedule of the project. Project triple constraint are those that includes
project schedule, scope as well as project cost. Crashing impacts two of the project constraints

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including project schedule and project cost. When project stakeholders crash a particular project,
the stakeholders are actually not concerned about the cost of the project (Wildavsky, 2018).
Crashing mainly refers to some particular type of compression in project schedule that can be
performed for purpose of lessening the total time period of the project. The project duration can
be initiated only after proper analysis of all the project minimization.
The above mentioned example shows an example of critical path of a project consisting
of 12 activities. In above picture the red line denotes the critical path of the project that states
that the project will be completed in 60 hours. But, if the activity G is crashed, then instead of 60
hours, it will take 30 hours. After crashing the activity G, the critical path that is represented is
shown below:

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References
Agyei, W. (2015). Project planning and scheduling using PERT and CPM techniques with linear
programming: case study. International Journal of Scientific & Technology
Research, 4(8), 222-227.
Bastos, J., van der Sanden, B., Donk, O., Voeten, J., Stuijk, S., Schiffelers, R., & Corporaal, H.
(2017, September). Identifying bottlenecks in manufacturing systems using stochastic
criticality analysis. In Specification and Design Languages (FDL), 2017 Forum on (pp.
1-8). IEEE.
Hajdu, M., & Bokor, O. (2016). Sensitivity analysis in PERT networks: Does activity duration
distribution matter?. Automation in Construction, 65, 1-8.
Liberatore, M. J. (2016). A Counterexample to the Forward Recursion in Fuzzy Critical Path
Analysis Under Discrete Fuzzy Sets. arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.04583.
Mazlum, M., & Güneri, A. F. (2015). CPM, PERT and project management with fuzzy logic
technique and implementation on a business. Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 210, 348-357.
Wildavsky, A. (2018). Policy analysis is what information systems are not. In The Art and Craft
of Policy Analysis (pp. 7-23). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.