Question

To develop a schedule for a project, we use the concept of a project network diagram, which shows work activities taken from the work breakdown structure and organized according to the logical flow in time and relationships governing when the work will be performed. Address the following questions.

How is that useful? How does it help to organize the tasks in the project? How will it help in formulating the budget?

Answer 1

The project schedule helps the project manager to identify the precedence relationships between different tasks, thus the minimum duration of the project. The project network diagram helps the manager to allocate reources to different tasks and schedule the activities in such a way so as to make the optimum use of available resources. It also helps to identify the critical and non critical activities which can be addressed according to their position in the project. The project network diagram also helps the manager to determine the most optimum combination of cost and duration, by balancing one tradeoff against the other, thereby minimise the costs. Once the resource allocation and the cost estimate is done, it is easy to formulate the budget, taking into account the cost incurred in all activities and uncertainties if any.