Scheduling: Critical path, PERT and Gantt

Developed by Frank Almirudis, currently under construction

Abstract

Under the aspect of Complexity in project management, Scheduling is the development and control of a plan which details when and how the products or services defined in a project scope will be delivered.

The resulting plan is known as a project schedule, which can also be used as a tool for management of stakeholders' expectations, means of communication and/or evaluating performance. Project data like planned dates, activities, resources, constraints, dependencies and activity sequence and duration are all inputs to the project schedule, and should be constantly monitored and updated by the project management team. To properly create and use the project schedule with the aforementioned inputs, the team must select the scheduling method that best suits the needs of their project.

Critical path method (CPM), Program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and Gantt are the three scheduling methods that are covered in this article.

The focus of this article is to help the reader:

• Understand the concept and purpose of each method
• in which cases a particular method excels at so the reader can assess which method fits best their case, th