Project Scheduling:

This involves the sequencing and allotting time to all project activities. At this stage, manager decides how long the activity will take and compute the allocation of material and manpower. Manager also prepares the separate schedules for personnel needs. One of the popular project scheduling approaches is the Gantt chart. Gantt charts are the low-cost means of helping managers that reveals the planning, time estimation, overall project time of the project. This represents the activities and their start dates, etc. It is more suitable when network techniques to develop schedules are to be communicated or to be displayed for easy reference. It may simply be updated and changed. But the fundamental problem linked with Gantt chart is that

 i.   It is hard to show the interdependence of the activities.

 ii.  It is hard to show all the dates for each activity.

To overcome this difficulty, new network analysis techniques are widely utilized that consider precedence relationships and interdependency of the activities. Network analysis technique provides a means of establishing schedules for sequentially interdependent activities. In this advanced technique, PERT and CPM are the two techniques widely utilized in project management. Therefore, in project scheduling, the purpose of techniques is as follows :

  i.   It shows the relationship of each activity to others and to the whole project.

  ii.  It recognises the precedence relationships among activities.

  iii. It encourages the setting of realistic time and cost estimates for each of activity.

  iv. It helps better use of money, people and material resources by recognising critical bottlenecks in the projects