Crashing Project Activities - Decision Making

Prior to making the decision about crashing project activities, we need to make a clear examination of the project budget in order to determine: 1) which activities are the most likely candidates to be crashed, 2) the additional costs related to the decision to crash these activities, and 3) the impact on the overall budget and a comparison to the time gained from the decision to crash activities.

You will recall from the discussion on crashing the project in the Planning and Resource Management course that in order to shorten the project duration, at least one of the activities to be crashed must be on the critical path. Furthermore, the activity to be crashed first is the one that has lowest marginal cost of crashing compared to the other activities on the critical path. You will also recall that crashing can occur multiple times and the process can eventually lead to multiple critical paths. In such cases, the activities to be crashed are chosen from each of the critical paths that have the lowest marginal cost of crashing. In addition to the direct costs, it is also necessary when crashing the project to account for indirect costs such as overhead expenses and liquidated damages.

*Please Note: Portions of this section were adapted from Pinto, J. K. (forthcoming). Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Used with Permission.