ASQ CQE Certified Quality Engineer – Section I – Management and Leadership (18 Questions)

30. 1B-2d Project Management – Gantt Chart – Part 2

So on the previous slide, you looked at one example of Gantt chart which came out from Microsoft Excel that was slightly complex. So I just want to make a very simple Gantt chart here. Let’s say we have four activities. So what I will do is I will draw a line here and then this will be activity number one. Activity one, two, three and four. So these are four activities. And this is my timeline. So this is my time, day 1234-5678, 910. And then you draw bars related to each activity. Let’s say the first thing which you want to do is you start with activity one on day number one. And this will take, let’s say three or four days. Let’s say four days. So we will reach up to five.

This is 1 bar. The second activity probably will start after we complete activity number one. So something you need to do, like making a house, you need to have foundation first. Then only you can build wall on day number five. So day number five, this activity two will start and this will take another two days. Activity three also can start after activity number one. So both two and three can start. So you make another bar here and then you can make another bar for activity number four, which can start somewhere in the middle of two and three. And then it will take maybe another four days or something. Let’s say you see at one particular time on day number three, you evaluate that. So let’s say this is my day number three.

I put a line here. On day number three, I evaluate that and I see that only 25% of activity number one has been done. So what you do on that day is 25% of that activity. You shared that. And now on day three, if I look at that, then I can know that that my project is delayed because by this time I should have had 50% of the activity number one completed. But instead of 50%, only 25% has been done. Similarly, let’s say I make another review on day number five.

So this is my review number two, day number five, review two. And then on that day I see that, okay, activity number one has been completed. So this will be all shaded. Activity number one has been completed even on day five. Activity number two and three also have started. Let’s say 50% of activity number two has been done. Activity three number has been totally done.

Now you can see that now things are going well because on this date, on day number five, I was supposed to have activity with number one completed. So that’s done. Activity two and three should have started, but it’s already half of the activity number two is done. Activity three number has been completed. Done. So now you can see that now my project project is moving very nice and I’m ahead of schedule. So that’s how you draw a Gantt chart. Very simple chart to show how your project or various activities are performing.

31. 1B-2d PM Tools – Activity Network Diagrams

So for managing project, we talked about Gantt chart earlier and now let’s move on to a little bit more complex one, which is the CPM or the critical path method. CPM or the critical path method is one of the activity network diagrams. So activity network diagrams is a product, CPM is one of those. Let’s look at activity network diagrams first. So activity network diagrams are diagrams which manage number of tasks which are in sequence. So earlier, also in Gantt chart, we had an example where we had four activities, activity number 1234. And we plotted a Gantt chart for that. Here we might have more number of activities and we want to manage that. So probably for that we will use activity network diagrams. So the activity network diagrams are to manage number of tasks which happen in sequence. So first thing you do is you list down all the tasks or all the activities which you do. And then you note down the time for each activity. Let’s say activity with number one will take five days, activity number two will take two days, activity number three will take two days and so on. In addition to that, you define predecessor and successor.

Also here, before we talk about that, let’s understand what predecessor and successor is. So let’s say if you have two activities, so I have one activity which is activity number A, and then there’s activity number B. I can start activity B only after I have completed activity A. Just like the same example which I talked earlier, I cannot build the walls of a house until I have made the foundation. So first I make the foundation. So let’s say A is the foundation. Let’s make it here. This is making foundation of the house and B is making walls of the house.

And this I connect with the arrow. So activity number A leads to activity number B. Here if you see the predecessor and successor, a is the predecessor of B. Predecessor means pre, pre means before. So this is predecessor and B is the successor of A. So B is the successor. Successor is something which happens after A. So that’s something which you need to list down when you want to draw activity network diagram, that what is the predecessor and successor for each of these activities. And then that will help you in identifying the bottlenecks or the critical path, where the problem is which path is important, what activity needs to be completed in time for the project to be completed in time? That’s something which you will see on the next slide with the help of a very simple example. First, do.

32. 1B-2d PM Tools – Activity Network Diagrams – Example

So as we earlier talked on the previous slide that to draw an activity network diagram you need to have a list of activities which I have here in the column number one which is here. So I have activity number ABCDE and then I have the duration of each of these activities. Duration is two days for activity number A, four days for activity number B and so on. And then the third thing we said there was we need to have predecessor or successor and that’s what I have in depends on.

So if you look at activity number A, activity number A doesn’t depend on anything so A can start independently but if I look at activity number B that says that B depends on A. So that means A is the predecessor and B is the successor. So this is the predecessor, predecessor means this is something which should happen before B gets started. So this is the information I have and as I earlier said that CPM or the critical path method is one of the activity network diagram and it includes the list of activities which are required to be completed. I see that list of activities, I see the duration and I see the dependencies.

So here in dependencies it shows me that the predecessor is for the activity number B is A and then it could have logical endpoints such as milestones or deliverable. We are not going into those details right now. So let’s look at this particular table which we have based on that if you are asked to draw an activity network diagram and remember that if you are appearing in CQE exam, you might get some question related to this thing. Something related to how to draw activity network diagram, how to interpret that, how to find out the critical path. You might get some question related to that. So just be aware of that, that this is important from exam point as well. So let’s draw this. So for anything to start the first thing you need to have is a start. Let me use this white space and this diamond is that shows that this is the start of my project. So this is my start.

The first thing which I can do is I can do activity number A because activity number A doesn’t depend on anything. So with the start I go to activity number A, I do activity number A because A doesn’t depend on anything and let me note down the time also so this is two days now coming to activity number B. Activity number B depends on a So b has to happen after a So after A I draw one arrow and I make activity number B here. So this is my activity number B. This will take four days coming to the next one which is activity number C which also depends on A. So I can do both B and C parallel. So I have C here that also depends on A and C has the time period of one day. So I have come up to this, I have taken care of A, I have taken care of B and C in the network diagram now coming to activity number D. Activity number D is of two days and it depends on B. .

So it depends on B means I have to draw an arrow from B and do activity number D and this activity number D is of two days. Now coming to activity number E, activity number E depends on B and C both to be done. So if I put activity number E here, e will depend on B and E depends on C as well and this is of seven days and all these things done, then my project is done. So all these things will lead to my diamond shape end point. So this is how you can draw an activity network diagram. Now based on this activity network diagram you can find out what is the critical path. Is there any activity which must be completed on time for this whole project to be completed on time? There might be some activities if you might want to delay that really will not matter much.

For example, if we look at this that you do activity number A first in two days. So you are here. So activity number A done in two days. Then activity number B done in two plus four six days and activity number D done in six plus two eight days. So in eight days all these top activities, top three activities will be done. But now if I look at the bottom part of this so two days here for activity number A, another one day for C. So this will take me two plus one, which is equal to three days. And then it goes to activity number E, which is three plus seven is equal to ten days. And in ten days, I will be able to complete this bottom root. But if I take another way which is A-B-E which tells me two days for A, four days for B and seven days for E. So this will be seven plus 411 1213. So this path will be completed in 13 days. So now there are three main paths.

The top path, this top path, let me put it in the red this top path takes eight days, this bottom path takes ten days and this path take 13 days for the whole project to be completed all these things need to be completed so this project will get completed in 13 days. Now if you look at this activity D, what happens if this activity D gets delayed by let’s say two days then the top line, which is two plus four and then this will be four days, two plus four plus four then the top line still will be completed in ten days. Still there’s no problem because overall project will get completed in 13 days.

So there is a lot of float here in D. D you can delay. If you want to delay, you can delay D. But you cannot delay activity number A. Because if you delay activity number A instead of two days, if it takes three days, then every path which are three paths here, the top path, this middle one and the bottom one, everyone will get increased by one day. So a you cannot change if you delay A, your project gets delayed if you delay D by two days, three days doesn’t matter. That’s something which we will learn in the next slide. When we talk of critical path and float now we have a good understanding of that. So let’s look at the formal definition of float and the critical path. The next slide.

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