PMI CAPM – Plan and Control Project Time Management Part 6

11. Explore the Critical Chain Method of Project Network Diagrams

So we’ve talked about the idea of “floating” in the critical path. I want to wrap this up by talking about the critical chain method. The critical chain method is another project network diagramming approach. It focuses, though, on the project delivery date. It considers the availability of resources, something that we don’t have in the critical path method. So the critical chain looks to see: can I use this resource at these times? Is it scheduled somewhere else in the project?

It incorporates buffering activities. It adds a buffer for risk and resource delays rather than activities. So buffers, also known as feeding buffers, allow well, there’s a relationship between paths that allows delays without interfering with the activities on the other path. So instead of floating, it uses buffers. So I would really pay attention to that for your exam. The critical path does not necessarily consider whether resources are available. So we did that critical path method. We didn’t pause to ask, “How many resources are on these activities?” And do I have the same resources scheduled in two places at once? The critical chain method does that.

12. Section Wrap

You did it. You’ve reached the end of Module 6, one of the biggest sections in the whole course. I know there’s a lot of information here in Section 6, which is Chapter 6, I should say, in the Pinbox, all about project schedule management. So good job! You’re making great progress. That’s just what it’s going to take, right? You have to do the work; you have to put in the time. This is not an easy task. Hey, everybody would do it. You’re not everybody. You could do this. In this section, we talked about planning the schedule. We looked at creating a schedule management plan. What are we going to do when it comes to level of accuracy, units of measurement, and what are our control thresholds? Do we have some models that this will be based off of?

How are we going to maintain that model of performance measurement? Who are we going to report to? And what are the descriptions of the processes we’re using in this schedule and in this project? We looked at defining the activities based on the work packages in the WBS. We could do some rolling wave planning. Also, keep in mind that we have milestones in phase gates. Phase-gate planning means that we plan at these different phases to move onto the next portion of our project.

Some planning components, control account plans, and planning packages There are two terms to remember for your exam. This is where we begin putting activities in the order in which they should happen. So we sequenced the activities. We could use a computer-driven approach or a manual process—a blended approach. You kind of start off on the whiteboard, and then you could add it to your computer later. This is all about predecessors and successors. What precedes the current activity and what comes after What succeeds the current activity? One activity can be a predecessor and a successor, so you can be both. We looked at the precedence diagramming method.

We discussed finishing to start, beginning to start, and finishing to finish. And that strange one begins in order to finish. You probably won’t see that one on your exam. Most of our activities are finished before they start, so just take that with a little grain of salt. All right? I asked you to remember two terms: hard logic and soft logic. So, what exactly is hard logic? Well, I can’t hear you, so don’t say it out loud. Hard logic means we have to do it in a particular order. Soft logic is discretionary; it has dependencies that we can handle in the order that we want. So, to a large extent, you have control over dependency determination. No, hard logic and soft logic are good. We looked at leads and lags. Lead implies hasten up. Lead is time accelerated. It allows activities to overlap. Lead is negative time because you’re going backwards towards the project start date.

That’s why I say it’s negative time, because you’re bringing it closer to today and even overlapping with activities. Lag time is positive time because you’re moving the start date of the next activity further away. So it’s a positive time. It will lengthen the time it takes to complete the next activity. So lag moves it away, and lead brings it closer together. really important term. In this section, we talked about activity resources and how those affect project completion or activity completion. People, equipment, materials, and facilities must all be considered when they become available. So the resource calendar came into play here. Remember, the resource calendar says when resources are available, and the project calendar says when project work can take place.

So we talked about that a little bit. In this section, we looked at our estimation types and created an analogy between projects. Parametrically, I have a parameter to multiply across for duration. So parametric estimating, a three-point estimate Remember the formula for the three-point estimate? Divided by three, it was optimistic plus most likely plus pessimistic. just an average. That’s all we have to do. So we’re doing an average. And then we had the pert.

Remember the formula for pert? Optimistic multiplied by four times the most likely multiplied by six And this is also called “beta distribution.” We looked at developing the schedule, putting things in the order in which they should happen, considering the duration of events, looking at when resources are needed, and then also considering any of those constraints, like must start on or must start no later than any of those six different constraints we could put on activities. And this began to set us up for your favourite thing, which is to find float, where we had free float, total float, and project float. So we walked through that forward pass in reverse.

You did the activity, right? I hope you completed the activity. It’s very important to do the activities involved in finding float. Then we looked at the critical chain method. We’re using these feeding buffers instead of a critical path and float so that we have buffers that are added to our paths. Schedule compression, crashing, and crashing people together add cost. Fast tracking adds risk because you’re overlapping. Typically, phases, or activities, but typically phases.

And then it began to lay the groundwork for earned value management about measuring project performance. As a result, we saw the estimated value at completion. So all of that’s coming up in our next section. I know you’re ready to go right there. Cost management. Seriously though, good job. You should be proud of yourself. I’m glad you’re moving forward. So many people go away. I don’t know why, but they do. They invest just a little bit of time. Not you. You’re sticking with it. You’re going to get this done. All right? Keep moving forward.