Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
The process of managing project costs is an activity for estimating costs, developing
project budget and controlling spending. The project cost management process includes
the following key steps:
It is the project cost management process step when the project manager
cooperates with the financial department to estimate costs required for purchasing all
necessary good/services and undertaking necessary activities to deliver the project.
Project Cost Estimation is conducted at the planning phase. The project manager uses
project cost management software to develop spreadsheets and make calculations.
It is the step when the allocated budget is reviewed and spending is tracked. The
project manager takes responsibility for control spending and to ensure that the
budget allocation is optimized and costs are fully covered with the planned and
allocated budget.
Ans: A resource is any physical or virtual entity of limited availability that needs
to be consumed to obtain a benefit from it. Resources (typically human) are assigned
to tasks, deliverables and milestones that need to be executed.
Over allocation is most likely to occur when there are multiple projects in a
company or when software is used to allocate tasks to resources. Over allocation puts
unreasonable pressure on resources and can be costly not only in overtime monies but in
resource burnout.
Resource Leveling
Resource leveling is the process that ensures resource demand does not exceed
resource availability. The ideal scenario would be a build up of resource usage at the
beginning of the project and a reduction at the end of the project. However, the approach
to resource leveling will also depend on whether resources are dedicated to a particular
project or shared across several projects and whether there is a need to keep all resources
fully utilized.
Generally, there are two approaches to leveling and smoothing the resources
required:
Q: Describe in brief PERT technique and critical part analysis used for project
scheduling.?
Ans: Critical Path Analysis and PERT are powerful tools that help you to schedule
and manage complex projects. They were developed in the 1950s to control large defense
projects, and have been used routinely since then.
1. Define the Project and all of it’s significant activities or tasks. The Project (made
up of several tasks) should have only a single start activity and a single finish
activity.
2. Develop the relationships among the activities. Decide which activities must
precede and which must follow others.
3. Draw the "Network" connecting all the activities. Each Activity should have
unique event numbers. Dummy arrows are used where required to avoid giving
the same numbering to two activities.
5. Compute the longest time path through the network. This is called the critical
path.
6. Use the Network to help plan, schedule, monitor and control the project.
For each activity, show the earliest start date, estimated length of time it will take, and
whether it is parallel or sequential. If tasks are sequential, show which stage they depend
on.
Critical Path Analyses are presented using circle and arrow diagrams.
In these, circles show events within the project, such as the start and finish of
tasks. The number shown in the left hand half of the circle allows you to identify each
one easily. Circles are sometimes known as nodes.
An arrow running between two event circles shows the activity needed to
complete that task. A description of the task is written underneath the arrow. The length
of the task is shown above it. By convention, all arrows run left to right. Arrows are also
sometimes called arcs.
Here the activities of 'Select Hardware' and 'Core Module Analysis' cannot be
started until 'High Level Analysis' has been completed. This diagram also brings out a
number of other important points:
• Within Critical Path Analysis, we refer to activities by the numbers in the circles
at each end. For example, the task 'Core Module Analysis' would be called
activity 2 to 3. 'Select Hardware' would be activity 2 to 9.
• Activities are not drawn to scale. In the diagram above, activities are 1 week long,
2 weeks long, and 1 day long. Arrows in this case are all the same length.
• In the example above, you can see a second number in the top, right hand
quadrant of each circle. This shows the earliest start time for the following
activity. It is conventional to start at 0. Here units are whole weeks.
•
PERT is a variation on Critical Path Analysis that takes a slightly more skeptical
view of time estimates made for each project stage. To use it, estimate the shortest
possible time each activity will take, the most likely length of time, and the longest time
that might be taken if the activity takes longer than expected.
Use the formula below to calculate the time to use for each project stage: