Chapter 4: Planning Research Projects

Undergraduate Program
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Overview
• Projects and networks
• Applications of CPM, PERT and Gantt chart

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Introduction to Projects and Networks
• Project is one or multiple activities which has a definite
start and end times
• Project may, in general, involve the followings
• Sequential (cascaded) and/or parallel (concurrent) activities
• Qualified/skilled and/or unskilled persons
• Small to huge amount of financial, material, time resources, etc.

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Projects and Networks …
• Large projects are better understood and managed using
network diagram of events and activities
• Event is an accomplished activity at a specified time point
• Activity is a continuous process of work to achieve or reach
an event point
• Takes a finite amount of time duration to complete

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Projects and Networks …
• Building blocks of a network diagram are nodes and
branches
• A node represents an event
• Designated by a small circle in which an event index (reference
number) is written
• A branch represents an activity
• Designated by a directed arc or line
• Activity index and other parameters, e..g., time duration and cost
are written
• Fig. below shows an example of a 2-node network diagram
2 wks, Br 1000, 3 persons

j
i

Activity ij Event j
Event i

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Projects and Networks …
• An event occurs iff all activities leading to it are complete
• Also no activity can start until its tail event has occurred
• In the above example Event j occurs only if Activity ij is
completed and Activity ij starts only when Event i has
occurred

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Projects and Networks …
• Example: Consider a capacity expansion project of a
manufacturing unit needing new equipments & operators
• Between approval of the expansion and starting of
production, the following activities must be considered

Activity Designation Duration (wks)

Get approval from authority a 2
Obtain the machines b 2
Install the machines c 2
Employ operators d 1
Train operators e 2
Start production f 2

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Projects and Networks …
• The network diagram representation of the above project
would be

e f
a b c 5
1 3 4
2 2 wks
2 wks 2 wks
2 wks 2 wks

1 wk

• We note that the network has 6 activities but 5 events

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Overview
• Projects and networks
• Applications of CPM, PERT and Gantt chart

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Applications of CPM, PERT and Gantt Chart
• CPM, PERT and the Gantt chart are effective tools used in
time, cost/finance and resource (human, materials,
machineries, …) scheduling of research projects/activities

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Critical Path Method
• Critical path method (CPM) or critical path analysis
• Activities and events have the following two fundamental
properties
i. an event only occurs iff all activities leading to it are complete
ii. no activity can start until its tail event has occurred
• Time at which an event occurs is the maximum duration of
the paths directed to the event
• Project duration is the maximum of the total elapsed times
along all paths from the origin node to the terminal node
• The time having the longest duration is called the critical
path
• Activities on it are called critical activities

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Critical Path Method …
• Thus if any activity on a critical path is delayed for any
reason, the entire project would be delayed accordingly
• It is possible to have multiple critical paths, if there are
more than one path with longest duration
• The entire exercise of finding out the duration of a project
by locating the critical path is referred to as critical path
analysis (CPA) or critical path method (CPM)
• In the above example, the critical path is 1-2-3-4-5 and its
duration is 10 weeks

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Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
• The conventional network and CPM are based on
deterministic approach
• I.e., durations of activities are assumed to be known with certainty
• However, the duration of individual activities may be non-
deterministic due to the following reasons
i. Human skill variations: performance variability
ii. Environmental factors: temperature, rain, snow and humidity
may affect durations of activities, e.g., painting (drying rate is
affected by humidity)
iii. Uncertain nature of work, e.g., construction excavation activity
duration is dependent on the nature of the soil
iv. Availability of resources, e.g. , procurement procedures and
scarcity of some necessary resources

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Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
v. Man power availability, e.g., in remote areas it is difficult to
obtain qualified and skilled experts
vi. Technological development: activities based on R&D are usually
uncertain, e.g., part of a project may be dependent on the
successful development of a new electronic device
• Thus, in the non-deterministic case, where there are many
nearly the same duration lengths, only probabilistic
(statistical) approaches are used to determine the most
probable critical paths
• i.e., each activity duration is considered as a random
variable and such method is called PERT

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The Gantt Chart
• The Gantt chart was originally set up to indicate graphically
the extent to which tasks have been achieved
• It was divided horizontally into hours, days or weeks with
the task marked out in straight line across the appropriate
number of hours or days etc
• The amount of task achieved was shown by another
straight line parallel to the original
• It was easy from such a chart to assess actual from
planned performance

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The Gantt Chart …
• There are many variations of Gantt chart in use today and
an example is given below

• The previous example may be presented with Gantt chart

as shown below

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