Project Time Management Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Project Time Management - Research Paper Example or organizations are undertaking project management, they are feeling the pressure from the governments, policymakers, and public to finalize the project as soon as possible. In case of private organizations, there are both internal and external pressures, which force the project managers to meet deadlines and utilize the resource of time effectiveness (Sen, 2008). Many projects regarding new product development have to use time effectively so that the competitors do not come up with similar innovations before them. Therefore, the bottom line here is that time management has emerged as important determinant of project success in the 21st century. This explains why over the past few decades, great deal of literature has surfaced about project time management and its different processes stressing its importance and need (Lock, 2007; Lewis, 2007). Importance and Development As mentioned earlier that in today’s competitive business world, efficiency is the key a large proportion o f this efficiency depends upon time management. Effective time management reduces not only the costs but it may also reduce potential conflicts as well. For example, if the workers are billing you as a project manager at an hour rate, effective management may reduce the costs (Kerzner, 2009). In the same way, if the project manager takes more time than usual and then bills you as the client for greater number of hours then that may create tension and poor word of mouth advertising. The fact is that when it comes to other resources, such as building, cash, human resource, IT, and others, corporations and companies have found a way to store them and utilize them on their terms but the same is not true in case of time. Therefore, project managers have to utilize time without any delay since it... For example, Gantt charts may suit small projects but for large projects with more than 30 activities, it may become troublesome to handle. Furthermore, Gantt chart also does not communicate anything about the magnitude of different activities. Gantt charts have also received criticism for their inability to follow the 100 percent rule which the activities divided usually fail to account for 100 percent performance of the actual project either adding more elements or leaving out the existing ones (Meredith & Mantel, 2005).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In simple words, critical path method is a time management technique in project management, which allows project managers to understand the shortest and longest time required for the completion of each project. The first step entails specifying all the individual activities concerned with the completion of the project. The second stage has to with determining the sequence of those activities (Sen, 2008). Third, in light of the sequence, at this stage, one would draw a network diagram showing the flow of activities. Fourth, at the same time, taking into account all the overlapping, at this stage, the manager would calculate the total time required for completing each activity. Fifth, the most important step is about identifying the critical path or the longest path (Portny, et al., 2007; Leach, 2005). The same is done by evaluating the four elements about each activity, which are earliest start time, earliest finish time, latest finish time , and latest start time.