COB 300 - The Operations Dimension Project Management – Chapter 7

COB 300C - The Operations Dimension Project Management

Project Management What is project management? Why is project management important? we want to complete projects on time we want to complete projects within budget Project management has made great advancement over the past few years. This is mainly due to increased computing power.

Project Management History of Project Management PERT - Project Evaluation & Review Technique (Polaris Missile Development) CPM - Critical Path Method (Dupont Co.) Today we use the terms PERT and CPM interchangeably.

Project Management At one point, ALL government bids were required to be evaluated by PERT. Therefore, we saw a huge rush of people learning PERT. However, the people did not understand it and only “evaluated” the project itself and they forgot to conduct continuous evaluation. Result?

Project Management We still see shows like 60 Minutes and Prime Time Live where overcharges are taking place by contractors -- especially in the Department of Defense. It’s all about budgets and timing. For example, CISAT Campus. We will look at several problems to study project management. We will look at evaluation AND review.

Handout Problem Number 1 Immediate Predecessor Column Note that some things occur simultaneously, while others have tasks that must be completed beforehand. Time Estimates - CPM assumes that time estimates are constant (e.g., someone tells you that the time that design prototype will take is 12 weeks). This is fixed at 12 weeks. PERT, on the other hand, assumes some variance in that time (optimistic, likely, pessimistic)

Handout Problem Number 1 (cont’d) AOA - Activity on Arc Network AON - Activity on Network (preferred method) AON: