schedule analysis
Completing a CPM schedule calculation and getting the schedule of what activities can be started when is, actually, just the beginning of the project manager’s effective use of this information. The process of relying on the schedule dates alone to ensure that your job is productive is shown in the figure below. The entire point of the use of CPM is to get beyond the seat-of-the-pants style shown in the figure below.
We have already seen a motivating example. The CPM schedule provides a list of activities and the earliest that they could start. A project manager that relies on the CPM schedule and starts every activity as soon as possible may experience significant cost overruns. As was shown during the Line-of-Balance example, when two crews follow each other through a project the rate of productivity should govern the actual date that the crews arrive on the schedule.
The analysis of CPM schedule data includes the evaluation of crew sizes using the time-cost tradeoff analysis, the analysis of crew productivities and start dates using techniques such as line-of-balance, cash flow analysis, and change order/claims analysis.