NETWORK ANALYSIS

Network analysis is a quantitative model designed to aid managers in

managing projects. The knowledge of network analysis is imperative for
business managers because they spend most of their active lives in
managing one project or the other. Thus, it could be argued that the
performance of business managers might be evaluated by the quality of
work they exhibit on given projects. As a result, managers always seek
and utilize the best methods or techniques of project management.
Hence, studies have revealed that one of the most important methods of
project management is the network analysis.

Concept:

What is project management?

- Phases of project management

- Guideline for Network Construction
- Critical Path

Project Management

 A project consists of interrelated activities which are to be

executed in a certain order before the entire task is completed
 The activities are interrelated in a logical sequence which is known
as precedence relationship
 Project is represented in the form of a network for the purpose of
analytical treatment to get solutions for scheduling and controlling
its activities.

Techniques

i) CPM – Critical Path Method

ii) PERT – Project Evaluation and review techniques

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Phases of project management

1) Planning
- Dividing the project into distinct activities
- Estimating time requirement for each activity
- Establishing precedence relationships among the activities
- Construction of the arrow diagram (network)
2) Scheduling:
- Determines the start and end time of each and every activity
3) Controlling:
- Uses the arrow diagram and time chart for continuous monitoring
and progress report.

GUIDELINE FOR NETWORK CONSTRUCTION

1. The starting event and ending event of an activities are called tail
event and head event, respectively
2. The network should have a unique starting node (tail event)
3. The network should have a unique completion node (Head event)
4. No activity should be represented by more than one arc in the
network.
5. No two activities should have the same stating note and end with
same ending note
6. Dummy activity is an imaginary activity indicating precedence
relationship of a dummy activity is zero.

THE CRITICAL PATH

The critical path of a project network is the longest path in the network.

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This can be identified by simple listing out all the possible paths from the
start node of the project to the end node of the project and then selecting
the path with the maximum sum of activity times on the path.

Then selecting the path with the sum of activity times on that path.

Two Phases:

1) Determines earliest start times (ES) of all the notes. This is called
forward pass
2) Determines latest completion times (LC) of various notes. This is
called backward pass