Project delay is one of the most common issues Project Managers face. There are two techniques within the Develop Schedule process that specifically addresses this very issue. It is important to understand that these schedule compression techniques do not affect the project scope by any means.
Crashing
Crashing means adding more resources to do the job. This is your typical Project Management joke of how a Project Manager thinks 9 women can deliver a baby in 1 month!
Example – Since this the first time your development team is using Angular, you can hire an Angular SME for quicker turnaround.
Note that Crashing will always cost more. If you do not have the budget to crash the schedule then you should consider fast tracking.
Fast Tracking
Fast Tracking means working on project activities simultaneously which were planned to be worked upon in sequence. If there are independent activities within your project that do not have any dependencies, then they can easily overlap and you can have them be worked upon concurrently.
Example – On a web development project, you can work on web designing as well as the content writing concurrently.
Note that Fast Tracking can increase the project risk. You may have to do some rework that was done concurrently.
What are my other options?
Scope
Remember that we talked about how project scope isn’t affected with these schedule compression techniques. How about we go ahead and reduce the project scope?
Reducing the project scope is one option you can look into if both Crashing and Fast Tracking aren’t possible. Obviously, this may negatively impact the customer.
Quality
How about cutting down on quality? Can you remove some of the testing and compress the schedule?
Not just the schedule, this may also save some cost. However, this may significantly increase the project risk.
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