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Categories: Scheduling
Crashing your schedule is hard work and not something that is advisable in many cases. So why would you do it? Here are 7 reasons why schedule crashing might be the right thing to do.
1. To get the greatest schedule compression
The main reason for crashing your schedule is to get the project done faster. If you need to bring your project’s end date forward then crashing gives you the most schedule compression for the least impact and the smallest cost.
2. When part of the project jeopardises progress
You could also look at crashing when you are facing one part of the project putting the rest of the project at risk. If a particular workstream isn’t going well it could suddenly become the route of the critical path. That might be OK, but equally you might feel that this difficult strand of work is going to hold the rest of the project to ransom. Crashing the schedule around those tricky tasks is one way to get yourself out of difficulty.
3. When meeting a fixed deadline
Projects require change and changes (however formal and appropriate your change control processes) have a habit of adding more time into the plan. When you are dealing with fixed date projects that’s not a good thing. So what happens when your necessary and obligatory changes start adding more time to your fixed date project? You have two choices: tell the project sponsor that you can’t do it and that your end date has to change or try crashing and see if you can claw back some time.
Whether you choose to crash or not will largely depend on your relationship with your project sponsor and how ‘fixed’ your fixed date project really is. I know that many project managers are given a fixed date to deliver by but with this often has some flexibility (especially if the compulsory changes that add more time are requested by the project sponsor).
4. When you are delayed
Delays early in the project necessarily have an impact on later work. You might consider crashing your schedule as a way to make up for some of the lost time.
5. When the team is needed on other work
And now we reach the reasons that are to do with resources. Your project simply might not be the most important thing happening in the business right now. Your team might be needed on other projects – or at least a particular subject matter expert might be.
Crashing your schedule is one way to free up certain resources more quickly. You could look at crashing a workstream so that your critical resources are available for other tasks or projects. The alternative to this is that you let them go (or are asked to let them go and can’t say no) and then find someone else to do the work. That’s a valid route too but depending on how far you are through the project you might find it easier to simply crash and deliver what you can with the original resources earlier.
6. When another resource is free
Sometimes the opposite happens – more resources suddenly become available. Ooo, more people for your project. The impact this can have on your schedule can go one of two ways:
- You add an additional resource, refocus the resource allocation and deliver on certain tasks faster
Or
- You add an additional resource and it takes them ages to get up to speed so actually you don’t make any time saving at all.
Only you will know which of these scenarios is most likely on your project, and who the extra resource is matters hugely. A junior programmer who has no experience on your project is not likely to gain you much time. But an experienced technical architect who has always kept half an eye on the project and now is available to complete some solution design work alongside your existing resources should speed things up for you dramatically.
7. When another resource needs training
Finally, you may face a situation where you have a resource who is not contributing effectively to the project because they simply don’t have the skills. This hopefully doesn’t happen to you too often – ideally as project managers we would select people for the project team who have the skills we need to get the job done. However, I’m sure you are aware of situations where either ‘the skills we need to get the job done’ were not defined or changed halfway through the project or we couldn’t get a resource with the appropriate experience allocated to the project.
If you have to let someone go on training they obviously won’t be working on the project during that time. If they aren’t working on the project, then their tasks won’t get done. If you don’t have someone else to pick up their work, this will push their overall delivery milestones out.
You may find that crashing the schedule gives you some more slack around their work – either for them to get work done before they go on training (probably not if they don’t have the skills to do their work in the first place) or to speed things up when they get back.
Would you agree with these? What other reasons have you found in the past to crash your schedule? Let us know in the comments.
Posted on: August 19, 2014 11:43 AM |
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