What are four criticisms and caveats to bear in mind as you develop a project activity network?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There are several criticisms and caveats that must be considered as we develop project activity networks, the first of which is that networks can become too large and complex to be meaningful. For a project that is hugely complex, the number of discrete activities can run into the thousands and the project duration can extend for years. The complex interrelationships of all these activities and the difficulty of forecasting activity lengths some time into the future makes a fully detailed activity network difficult to realize. Second, faulty reasoning in network construction can sometimes lead to oversimplification or incorrect representations. A multiple tiered approach sometimes compromises the information sharing aspect that is vital to project management. Third, networks are sometimes used for tasks for which they are not well suited. As the adage goes, "If it doesn't fit, get a bigger hammer," applies with the use of this valuable project management tool. In addition, networks used to control the behavior of subcontractors have special dangers. Subcontractors must be privy to the overall network and all subs must use consistent timeframe scaling and network techniques. Finally, there is a strong potential for positive bias in PERT estimation used in network construction. Most activity estimations using PERT methods lead to overly optimistic activity duration estimates.