Project Management – The Light On The Critical Path

The mysterious critical path notion seems to put project managers in difficulty and especially the novice ones. However if anyone would take just a few minutes from his precious time to pay a closer attention to it things would be a lot more clear.

The origin

In order to clear things up we need to have a background knowledge. On short it all started with the Critical Path Method (CPM) an algorithm for scheduling activities within a project. This method is best used within the project scheduling phase and basically it requires to construct a model of the project that includes:

  • the list of activities needed to complete the project (aka Work Breakdown Structure defined in the project planning phase)
  • the duration estimates for these activities
  • the dependencies between the tasks

Graphical representation


There are two possibilities to render the structure created according to CPM: activity on arrow and activity on node. The most used representation nowadays is the activity on node. The activities are rendered as nodes and each node contains the duration of that activity while the dependencies are rendered as arrows where the arrowhead points to the successor while the tail to the predecessor.

To some extent a Gantt chart can also be considered as a CPM presentation although a more complex one. (more…)

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00February 21st, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Tracking|2 Comments

MOOS Project Viewer 2.7 Added Team Planner View

MOOS Project Viewer version 2.7 added a new view from Microsoft® Project – the Team Planner view.

Project managers struggle with seeing clearly and quickly what their team is doing at any given point in the project schedule. Using Team Planner view in Microsoft® Project Professional 2010 you can see at a glance what tasks have been assigned to resources. According to Microsoft the main idea behind Team Planner is combining the power of the Gantt chart with the simplicity and familiarity of the Outlook calendar.

NOTE: Team Planner is a feature available only with Project Professional but starting with version 2.7 it is also available in MOOS Project Viewer.

The latest version can be downloaded from the official download page.

By |2012-02-15T20:45:25+00:00February 15th, 2012|Microsoft Project, MOOS Project Viewer|Comments Off on MOOS Project Viewer 2.7 Added Team Planner View

Time Management In Project Management

Time management is the act of planning, controlling and finally executing specific activities, especially to increase efficiency or productivity. It applies to a wide usage area starting from personal time organization and up to business related time management. For the best results and the biggest efficiency dedicated time management software should be used.

A time management system is a combination of processes, tools, techniques, and methods. There are many books and case studies focusing on these notions.

Personal Time Management

The notion of time management was initially used in business related area but in time the term started to also be used for personal activities. People started to be interested on it when they felt the need to be more organized and more productive. It all happens when you start working all day long and at the end you wonder why you haven’t accomplished much.

Time management methodologies consist of a series of habits and good practices which help you to get more organized. The most used and well known time management methodologies are GTD and ZTD. Getting Things Done (GTD) was created by David Allen and it is based on the following principles:

  • do not use your memory to collect your ideas, tasks and arrangements
  • do not delay decisions on what to do next
  • if you can complete a certain task in less than 2 minutes, do it now

(more…)

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00February 15th, 2012|Project Management Software, Time Management|Comments Off on Time Management In Project Management
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