5.4 Employ Gantt charts as an alternative network method - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->I talked in the last lesson</v> a little bit about Gantt charts. I just wanna revisit them very briefly. I showed you a minute ago a Microsoft Project solution to our critical path problem. And so I wanna reiterate a couple points about Gantt charts then we'll move on. But just as you can probably tell I'm a fan and I think most people are a fan. Let's remember, the idea of the Gantt chart is to establish this time-phased network. So because I'm using a calendar, now I've got dates associated with all these activities, I can not only be accurate in terms of how long activities should take, but more importantly when they should conclude, when they should start on a specific date, when they should conclude. So this time-phased network is critically valuable to me. I can use it as a tracking tool because I can go in at any point in time and say, "All right, it's September 13th now, what's the status of this activity? Well, we're almost done, but in the plan you were supposed to be done. Why the discrepancy"? And so we start understanding the tracking of what's actually taking place as a result of having this kind of information. Gantt charts are easy for all of us to understand. We talked about this. They're allow for the scheduled baseline. We talked about they allow for updating control and they help me understand resource needs. So when we are developing the project network, we're going to be doing it most often at our own offices. We're gonna be using these Gantt charts. So even though that activity network we created is an alternative visual schematic for what the project plan looks like, the one that we're most often going to play with, the one that's probably going to be guiding our decision making, and our project tracking, and control, is one of these project Gantt charts that you're seeing here. So I can take the same information that I use to develop my critical path, as I said before, the forward pass and the backward pass, and I can apply that as you can see here, by just taking these same information bits, the task name, the duration time for it, and the predecessor, and sit on a network and create very quickly this sort of Gantt chart that allows me to do the same exact thing. So what we've done in this lesson is we've applied the next critical piece of the puzzle to our understanding of how we develop realistic, accurate project plans. By creating the schedules, by identifying through the work breakdown structure, all the different activities that had to be done. And by determining the precedents ordering of those activities, we're able to do a network. Once we add the other critical piece of the puzzle, the estimates for durations for those activities, we can take that network and we can create a critical path. We can estimate the duration of the project, how long it should take. We can determine which of the activities are critical activities that have to be done on time or the overall project will slide. We can determine which activities have some slack time built into them. We can use this information then to find ways if necessary to reduce the critical path, if our original project is too long. And that launch window has got to be met. And we've got to think now honestly and authentically how we're gonna reduce the critical path. There's some rules we've discussed, by the way, in which we can do that as well. Remember, just like in creating the project network initially, part of the process of finding ways to reduce a critical path come about through a collective means. Try not to do this on your own for a couple reasons. First, anytime, I, as the project manager attempt to unilaterally reduce the critical path without consulting my team, I create a mindset in their eyes that he's pulling one over on us. He asked for honest estimates, but when I gave him an honest estimate, look what he did with it. He just cut 20% out of it. And low and behold, all of a sudden we're back in that trust death spiral again. So don't do it on your own. Be collective. Get the input of your team. Get the team working together, recognizing that my activities depend upon you completing your activities. If I can help out with you to get yours done on time or even early, that's going to benefit me because it's gonna improve my delivery time on my activity on the back end. So when possible, try and get members of the team to collaborate with each other to try and help each other out. Get them to take a critical look at the duration estimates they came up with. Is that absolutely gotta have or can you give me a day or however long here or there in order to get this down to a working and a workable project network. There's a lot of challenges. And one thing we've noticed to this point in time, and I hope this lesson is born out, is the really fascinating thing about these challenges is some of them are computational. Yes, some of them involve math, and they involve calculations, and logic, and sequencing, and these sorts of things, which is all very important. But do you notice a lot of the other challenges in this lesson involve people and they involve me understanding and working with my team and creating an environment in which my team and myself can come together, can network, can trust each other, and as a result not only will I have more accurate schedule, I'll have a stronger team as well. Thank you.