Scheduling is the process of coordinating tasks, employees, facilities, equipment, and materials necessary to create products within a given point in time. The process begins with strategic planning and continues through various detailed stages (Kerzner, 2018). However, the process is among the most challenging areas in operations management within an organization as there are various types of scheduling techniques. The essay explores the Critical Path Method (CPM) technique, which is the most common in project management tasks.
CPM is used by project managers to establish the longest path of planned tasks towards the end of a project. According to Kerzner (2018), any delay in a project’s critical path may be detrimental to the scheduled completion date. There are key steps in CPM used by project managers to develop a model of the project. The step selected for this discussion is data collection, which focuses on specifying each activity involved in a project. For instance, if a project takes thirty days to complete, specifying each activity will assist team members to identify the main deliverables when executing project tasks by gathering information.
I selected CPM since it allows project managers to understand the schedule activities that are flexible and those not on the critical path. Through the use of a network diagram, it is possible to identify the activities and their dependencies. This will enable the project management team to draw the network diagram, which will be used to represent the order of activities, which are based on the project’s dependencies. Data collection will provide an opportunity to identify the estimates for each project task based on previous experience. The step will allow the project manager to understand what tasks may delay and by what duration before they have an impact on the project schedule.
Reference
Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.