Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

19.2. Crashing

"Now," she took her pipe out of her mouth, "we need to talk about crashing."

"Is this another test to see if I'm paying attention?"

Martha chuckled as she stuffed more tobacco into her pipe. "Crashing just happens to be the name for what you have to do now: make the project shorter." She studied her tobacco stuffing job. "The rules are simple but important. I'll start with a question. To decrease the duration of the project, what activities should you focus on making shorter?"

I thought for a minute. "I guess the ones you can shorten for the least money."

"Only partly right, Will. The activities you want to focus on all have a certain characteristic."

I had no idea until I visualized our dependency chart. "They are the critical activities, the ones that determine the length of the project. Otherwise you might spend money or cut tasks that don't affect the finish date at all."

I got a smoke ring in the face as a reward. "Correct, you must focus on the critical path. Now, how can you make those activities shorter?"

I thought about a simple activity like spreading topsoil where you want your front lawn to be. If I wanted to do it faster, I would add more people.Or I could change the scope by making the lawn smaller. Or I could change the quality by spreading the top soil thinner. Or I could hire a bulldozer to do it, instead of doing it by hand. "To shorten activities you could add resources, or reduce the scope of the task, or not do it as well, or even change the ...