ITC493 Assignment 1 Task 2 Chapter 6

Q7: Using Figure 6-2, enter the activities, their durations, and their relationships in Project 2003. Use a project start date of June 1, 2005. View the network diagram. Does it look like Figure 6-4? Print the network diagram on one page. Return to Gantt chart view. Click view on the menu bar, select Table: Entry, and then click Schedule to recreate Table 6-1. You may need to move the split bar to the right to reveal all of the table columns. (See Appendix A for detailed information on using Project 2003.) Write a few paragraphs explaining what the network diagram and schedule table show concerning Project X’s schedule. (Chapter 6, Exercise 1, page 240)

A: Please click the picture or open these pictures in the new windows to display the whole images.


Figure 1. Gantt chart


Figure 2. Network diagram


Figure 3. Schedule

The network diagram (Figure 2) which I created in this exercise is as Figure 6-4 in the text book.

Schwalbe (2006, p.220) indicated, “Since the critical path is the longest path through the network diagram……” Then we could find the critical path for Project X from the network diagram. When we know the critical path, we could make clear which activities determine the earliest completion of the project X. It means when we make schedule, we should pay attention to those critical activities to shorten the schedule. We could allocate more resources to those activities to shorten the project schedule. We also could reduce some critical activities’ duration to shorten the project schedule.

From the schedule table, we could easily find early and late start and finish dates and free and total slack amounts for activities. When we know the number of float or slack, we could determine whether this schedule is flexible and its flexible grade. Then we could use this as the basis to negotiate the project schedule.

So both of network diagram and schedule table are useful tools to help set down and adjust the Project X's schedule.

Reference
Schwalbe, Kathy, 2006, “Information technology project management 4th”, Thomson Course Technology, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc.

Please click the link to download the source file
http://www.box.net/shared/fun40upf3l