In this video of #engineeringmanagementacademy #excel is used to Draw #CriticalPathMethod by #drmehrdadarashpour
❎ Excel workbook to follow along: bit.ly/Excel_CPM_Draw
▶ RELATED VIDEOS: kzitem.info/news/bejne/sat61WqqjHuWnoY
⌛ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Introduction to the Critical Path Method (CPM)
0:25 - “Linked Picture” Feature in Excel
0:56 - Step 1 (Create the CPM Template for Project Activities)
1:29 - Step 2 (Link Activity Templates to the Project Data Table)
1:58 - Step 3 (Link the Project Network to Our Activity Templates)
2:50 - Step 4 (Draw Activity Dependencies & Enhance the Network Look)
3:24 - Final Touches to Highlight the Critical Chain of Activities
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Critical Path Method or CPM is often plotted using Microsoft Project or Visio. Today, we’ll be using Excel to draw this diagram.
In a previous video, we discussed different activity relationships including “Finish to Finish” (FF) and “Start to Start” (SS) in Critical Path Networks. The link to that video can be found here (kzitem.info/news/bejne/sat61WqqjHuWnoY). Now, we want to draw the project critical path using Excel. Although Excel does not provide a direct solution for plotting project networks, we can use Excel’s "Linked Picture" feature, to create dynamic drawings of critical path analysis or CPA. You can follow along by getting the Excel workbook via the provided link in the description below. bit.ly/Excel_CPM_Draw
Let’s start with a small project with 6 activities for which durations & dependencies or predecessors are specified. A schematic view of the network can be seen on the right side of screen. After we have calculated early & late dates by using forward pass & backward pass, we can follow only 4 simple steps to plot the project critical path.
Step 1 is to create the CPM template for project activities
We start with “Activity A”, which is the first project activity. We select a 3 by 3 group of cells and select all borders to be shown. Width of columns can be adjusted to make a nice square & the central cell can be shaded. We can then copy/paste this template for all activities in our project. According to our design for the template at the bottom left of this screen, we can record activity IDs in the middle top cell of the block. This concludes the first step in plotting our project's critical path in Excel.
Step 2 is to link the template to your project data
Click on the top left cell of the block for “Activity A” & press the “=” sign. Then select the “early start” of zero from the table & press “Enter”. We can follow the same process to link all cells of “Activity A” to our project data, including “late start”, “early finish”, “late finish” & “duration”. The beauty of having a linked template is that whenever you update your table, the template is automatically updated. This concludes the second step in drawing our project's critical path in Excel.
Step 3 is to Link the project network to activity templates using the "Linked Picture"
Select “Activity A” template & right-click to choose “copy”. Then right-click on an empty cell & from the “Special Paste” options, choose “Linked Picture”. The beauty of using “Linked Picture” is that both formatting & values of project network will follow our template, which is also linked to the project data table. For example, we can create a linked picture of “activity B” & instead of hard coding the network values, link the template to the project data table. Even float or slack values in the middle row, can be calculated by finding the difference between late & early starts. Subtracting “early finish” from “late finish” will also have the same results. The whole network can be linked to activity templates using the procedure explained. This concludes the third step in plotting our project's critical path.
Step 4 is to draw activity dependencies & enhance the network look
Now that we have all activity blocks, arrows are drawn to show relationships. From “Insert menu”, select shapes & the “Elbow Arrow”. Hover your mouse on the boundary of “Activity A”. Then click & drag to connect to the boundary of “Activity B”. The same can be done for “Activity C”. To show the “finish to finish” relationship between C & B, draw an arrow between the right-hand side boundaries of the 2 activities. This way, we can plot all the relationships. We know that those activities with zero slack or float are critical. You may want to change the font color or highlight them. The best practice is to modify the template to update the network automatically. To enhance the network look, you can click on arrows & from “shape outline”, change the “line weight” to a desired level. This concludes the last step in drawing our project's critical path in Excel.
And there you have it: an easy drawing of project critical path using only 4 simple steps in Microsoft Excel. Again, you can access the Excel workbook via the provided link: bit.ly/Excel_CPM_Draw
Негізгі бет Draw CPM by EXCEL (4 minutes) Dynamic Critical Path Method- Project Management & Scheduling Analysis
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