Project Management and Analysis of a Gantt Chart

Question: Review the Gantt Chart and identify any problems you can see with the project plan. How can the Gantt chart be improved? Answer: Activity Schedule Task Name Duration Start Finish Predecessor Develop project plan 6.25 days 1/3/07 1/11/07 Develop orientation materials 7 days 1/10/07 1/18/07 Schedule orientation meeting 1 day 1/22/07 1/22/07 Copy orientation materials 1day 1/19/07 1/19/07 2 Reserve conference room 1day 1/22/07 1/22/07 4 Conduct meeting 1day 1/25/07 1/25/07 Write first draft of IM plan 30 days 1/26/07 3/8/07 6 Review drafts 20 days 3/1/07 3/28/07 Provide feedback to Directors 1 day 3/02/07 3/2/07 Revise plan 14 days 3/2/07 3/21/07 Review revisions 10 days 3/30/07 4/12/07 Compile documents into one 5 days 4/16/07 4/20/07 Submit to administration for approval 1 day 4/17/07 4/17/07 Approve Plan 3 days 4/18/07 4/20/07 13 Implement any changes from administration 30 days 4/23/07 6/1/07 14 Identification of problems with the plan Gantt chart is one of the most effective project monitoring tool which has been used for the making the project scheduling which involves the total duration of each activities taken by the project manager to complete the project on time. This is helpful in the identification of the starting and the ending data of each and every activity which has been involved in the project. The main problem with this project scheduling is that the first task is of the duration of 6.25 days which is not proper for the task to be completed and its ending date is 1/11/7 which is of 7 days so it indicates that the duration of first task is not right so the whole project takes one day more in the completion of the project. The other problem is that the predecessor activities are not linked properly with the activities which are related in this project so if the predecessor activities are not linked with the project then the prior activities are not done at the first as a result the project milestones wo uld not be completed. It has also been seen from the project scheduling plan that all the activities are not linked together as a result which activity is the prior activity is not identified and there is a risk of wastage of resources in implementing the unimportant activities and the project takes a longer period of time to complete it successfully. It has also seen that for the activity 4 and 5 the duration is one day but both the activities starts at the same date and finishes at the same date which is peculiar. Improvement in the chart plan The improvement needed ion the chart plan is that that there is no milestone set in the project and there is no link between the main activities with the predecessor activities so for the completion of the project it is very important that the prior activities are needed to be completed first for the project. The activities which have been used in this project plan have to be linked properly with the predecessor activities chosen in this project. References Calder, P., Thomas, B. and Jarvis, D. (1994).A flexible Gantt chart editor system.The Levels, S. Aust.: School of Computer and Information Science, Faculty of Applied Science and Technology. Jobin, M., LefrancÃÅ' §ois, P. and Montreuil, B. (1992).Communicating scheduling information between agents using a public 3-D Gantt Chart. Sherbrooke: FaculteÃÅ'  d'administration, UniversiteÃÅ'  de Sherbrooke.