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Question:
Published on: 3 December, 2024

Explain when and why you will use PERT charts and when and why you will use Gantt charts while you are a project manager. 

Consider a software project with 5 activities T1 to T5. Duration of 5 activities in weeks are 3,2,3,5,2 respectively. T2 and T4 can start when T1 is complete. T3 can start when T2 is complete. T5 can start when both T3 and T4 are complete. Draw activity network for the project. When is the latest start date of the activity T3? What is the float of the activity T4? Which activities are on the critical path? Draw the Gantt chart also.

Answer:

A PERT chart is a project management tool used to schedule, organize, and coordinate tasks within a project. A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Both PERT and Gantt charts will display the tasks to be completed, but the charts emphasize different pieces. In Gantt charts, the focus is on the percentage completion of each task, without demonstrating the link that two tasks may have to each other. Gantt charts present project tasks and time allocation as the only two pieces of data. While PERT typically does not show the percentage completed, because it employs a network model, it is easy to see which tasks depend on each other. Tasks in PERT charts will have three representative time structures: optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic. By averaging these times, a manager can predict how long a task will actually take to complete more realistically than the single time that Gantt charts provide. Gantt charts are ideal for straightforward projects with few interlinking tasks. Gantt charts are easier to change as a task moves along and it comes closer to completion. Gantt charts are simpler to read, but PERT charts extend an element of detail to the project scheduling through both the network model's ability to display dependency and PERT's unique ability to anticipate actual time that a task will take to completion.

 

TASKS

DURATION

DEPENDENT ON TASKS

T1

3

----------------

T2

2

T1

T3

3

T2

T4

5

T1

T5

2

T3,T4

 

TASKS

EARLIER START

EARLIER FINISH

LATEST START

LATEST FINISH

T1

0

3

0

3

T2

3

5

3

5

T3

5

8

5

8

T4

3

6

3

8

T5

8

10

8

10

 LATEST START: It is the difference between MINIMUM time and the maximum of all paths from this task to the finish.

The latest start of T3 is 3.

FLOAT: It is the total time that a task may be delayed before it will affect theend time of the project.(Latest Start-earlier start)

The float of T4 is 0.

The activities that are on the critical path are T1, T4,T5.(they are the tasks that need to be performed in a sequence and which together takes the longest time to complete.)

 

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