Already behind as the new year starts? Crash the schedule!

As usual, the new year brings new expectations for productivity increases, quicker and smarter project delivery and as always some new twist coming out of no-where.

This posting will review the fundamentals of crashing a schedule. Whether you find yourself behind schedule with clients breathing down your neck, or you want to look for ways to move your project ahead of schedule, there are certain fundamentals to consider.

It has been my experience that even good project managers make mistakes because they fail to master the fundamentals. It is always a good idea to review fundamentals.

If you plan to shorten a schedule by crashing, take these basic steps.

1. Look at the critical path activities. (Assumes the good practice of creating a CPM schedule before starting a project.)
2. Review longish activities in the near future that have small associated costs and make a list of the targeted activities. (You might have to use Pareto analysis to fill the list, but that's a good thing).
3. From your list, pick the longest task with the smallest cost. (Low hanging fruit.)
4. Analyze what resources would need to be added or compressed to shorten the activity. Never overlook new technologies or new ways of doing the same thing. I once was able to crash a schedule simply by de-cluttering the workspace of tools. (The idea came from junior team members.)
5. Analyze any "added" cost of the added resources.
6. Simulate "what-if" to the critical path if you shorten the chosen activity. You might just create a new critical path that does not significantly shorten your schedule.
7. Analyze the cost benefit, or non-monetary cost benefit and make a decision, yes or no.
8. Repeat activities 3 to 7 until you have looked at a variety of options and new schedules.
9. Bring the team together to discuss the options and decide on a course of action. The team will probably have some good ideas and maybe see opportunities or pitfalls that you have overlooked.

When the decision, which activities to crash, has been made, ensure that it is communicated widely and that you have buy-in from anyone who can help or hurt actualization.

Pay promptly for the change.

Communicate success or failure. Failure should be rewarded at least by acknowledging the effort and diligence of the team.

Start looking for opportunities again.