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116 PROJECTMANAGEMENTTECHNIQUESFigure 8: Sample responsibility assignment matrix.PROJECT SCHEDULING TOOLS
AND TECHNIQUES
When many people think of project management tools
and techniques, they think of Gantt charts and network di-
agrams. Of course all nine knowledge areas are important
in project management, but scheduling problems often
cause the most conflicts on projects. This section briefly
describes Gantt charts, network diagrams, and a more
recent development in project scheduling called critical
chain scheduling.Gantt Charts
Figures 6 and 7 show how a WBS is a basis for creating
a Gantt chart. Project managers must know what work
needs to be done in order to develop a project schedule.
Gantt charts provide a standard format for display-
ing project schedule information by listing project
activities and their corresponding start and finish dates
in a calendar format. Henry Gantt developed the first
Gantt chart during World War I for scheduling work in
job shops. Early versions simply listed project activities
or tasks in one column to the left, calendar time units
such as months to the right, and horizontal bars under the
calendar units to illustrate when activities should start
and end. Gantt charts normally do not show relationships
between project activities as network diagrams do, how-
ever.
Today most people use project management software
to create more sophisticated versions of Gantt charts andFigure 9: Responsibility assignment matrix showing stake-
holder roles.allow for easy updates of information. This chapter in-
cludes several figures created with Microsoft Project 2000.
There are many other project management software tools
available (see http://www.infogoal.com/pmc/pmcswr.htm
or http://www.allpm.com). Note that project management soft-
ware can do much more than just create Gantt charts.
Figure 10 shows a Gantt chart based on a software
launch project, one of the template files that Microsoft
provides with Microsoft Project. Recall that the activities
or items in the Task column on the left side of the figure
coincide with the activities on the WBS for the project.
Notice that the software launch project’s Gantt chart con-
tains milestones, summary tasks, individual task dura-
tions, and arrows showing task dependencies.
Notice the different symbols on the software launch
project’s Gantt chart (Figure 10):
The black diamond symbol represents a milestone—
a significant event on a project with zero duration. In
Figure 10, Task 1, “Marketing Plan distributed,” is a mile-
stone that occurs on March 17. Tasks 3, 4, 8, 9, 14, 25, 27,
43, and 45 are also milestones. For large projects, senior
managers might want to see only milestones on a Gantt
chart.
The thick black bars with arrows at the beginning
and end represent summary tasks. For example, activi-
ties 12 through 15—“Develop creative briefs,” “Develop
concepts,” “Creative concepts,” and “Ad development”—
are all subtasks of the summary task called Advertising,
Task 11. WBS activities are referred to as tasks and sub-
tasks in most project management software.
The light gray horizontal bars represent the duration
of each individual task. For example, the light gray bar
for Subtask 5, “Packaging,” starts in mid-February and
extends until early May.
Arrows connecting these symbols show relationships
or dependencies between tasks. Gantt charts often do not
show dependencies, which is their major disadvantage.
If dependencies have been established in Project 2000 or
other project management software, they are automati-
cally displayed on the Gantt chart.
Tracking Gantt charts can also be used to display
planned versus actual schedule progress (Schwalbe,
2002). The main advantage of using Gantt charts is that
they provide a standard format for displaying project
schedule information, and they are easy to create and
understand. The main disadvantage of Gantt charts is
that they do not usually show relationships or depen-
dencies between tasks. If Gantt charts are created us-
ing project management software and tasks are linked,
then the dependencies would be displayed, but not as
clearly as they would be displayed on project network di-
agrams.Project Network Diagrams
A project network diagram is a schematic display of the
logical relationships or sequencing of project activities.
To use critical path analysis, one must determine task re-
lationships. A critical path for a project is the series of
activities that determines the earliest time by which the
project can be completed. It is the longest path through
the network diagram and has the least amount of slack or