Reducing Project Duration

Project management involves optimizing project cost, time, and quality performance. In
a move to assess the possibility of delivering a project early, one would consider the availability
of enough resources, such as finances, human resources, labor, supplies, and materials. Setting
aside sufficient resources for the project would make it possible to reschedule the project
deliverables as well as activities to ensure early delivery (PMBOK, 2013). This would mean
allocating more funds to the project, which could be almost double the budgeted amount as more
labor is utilized in a shorter time. One would also check the work breakdown schedule to
pinpoint where they might have total slack.
Increasing the human resources would ensure that more tasks are completed within a
shorter period or concurrently. The project manager would also perform some activities to
balance the task assignment for the team to avoid any overloads (PMBOK, 2013). Allocating
extra workers to the team would be better than working overtime to maintain quality. Redefining
the scope would cut the delivery time as the team would be forced to rearrange or eliminate some
tasks within the project. One would also eliminate any secondary activities from the project to
meet the new project schedule.
Crashing the project would use more resources than what was intentionally budgeted.
However, it would bring the project to completion more quickly at an increased cost. The
project manager would provide re-planning advice depending on the functional relationship of
cost and time. However, crashing the project would increase the risk of missing the deadline due
to reduced slack. With reduced slack and a fixed budget to work on, one would propose fast
tracking to deliver the project early. Fast tracking would help overlap tasks that had been

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initially scheduled sequentially (PMBOK, 2013). Limited resources and interdependencies
between the project phases would determine the decision to use fast tracking.

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References

PMBOK. (2013). Project Management Institute. A Guide to the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) (5 th Ed.). PMBOK.