PROJECT mANAGEMENT( CASE STUDY) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

PROJECT mANAGEMENT( CASE STUDY) - Essay Example Number in the top of the set is the time this activity individual requires or the total time allocated to complete this activity. Compartment with 0 carries the point in time particular activity can be started. Therefore Activity A can be started at 0 point in time means that as soon as the project started and it is the Earliest Start Time (Anantatmula, 2010). Whereas Compartment with 7 refers total time consumed after completing this particular activity which means it shows the Earliest Finish Time (Brotherton, Fried, and Norman, 2008). Bottom right compartment is the time of latest finish activity. For instance, activity can be finished at the latest by 10 weeks and any further delay than 10 weeks would impact total duration of the project. Number below the complete box refers the amount of time (weeks in under study case) this particular activity can be delayed without affecting the total project time; called float (Brotherton, Fried, and Norman, 2008). For instance, activity A ca n be delayed to maximum of 3 weeks without affecting the total project time. This delay would also allow this activity to be included in the critical path and as the gap available for delay would entirely be consumed by the initially activity. So an activity can be represented as follows: Duration of the project Earliest Start Time A Earliest Finish Time Latest Start Time Latest finish Time float Path identified with red arrow is the critical path. Critical path refers to path or the flow of activities that are critically dependent on each other and delay in these activities would immediately result in delay of the project. Critical path of this project includes following activities: B-E-H-J-K-L. It is identified with activities that have zero (0) float; referring to no time cushion to delay this particular activity. It is the longest path and any delay in these activities will delay the entire project. The float of the activity D and F are 3 weeks and 1 week respectively. This mean s that activity D and activity F can be delayed by 3 weeks and 1 week respectively and this delay would have no impact on the duration of the project and project will be still completed on time. However, any delays in these activities with more than the stated time would impact completion of project on time (Alojairi, and Safayeni, 2009). Activity F has a float of 1 week and delay in this would affect the overall time required to complete the project. Manager in order to reduce time for delay in the critical path can take the benefit of float of F and G and shall take up both activities parallel. Hence, this way, two weeks benefit will be in hand to project manager. Within these two weeks manager can allocate additional resources for such as multiple panel for hiring and training staff in order to complete the project within due time or minimizing the delay. ANSWER # 1 (b) Each component of the project plays its part in order to complete the project within the duration. However, amo ng large number of factors few are regarded as critical and discrepancy on these factors such as delays can resultantly cause the delay of the entire project along with cost also being affected. Being critical these factors require considerable attention to ensure minimization of the discrepancy chances (Bredillet, 2005). For the given project of developing petrol station with convenience stores being market already explored by Tesco Metro and Sainsbury’s Local but with distinction to exploit the high income class