1 Criticisms to Network Techniques
The CPM and PDM analyses for network scheduling provide very important information that can be used to bring the project to success. Both methods share some drawbacks that require attention from the project manager. These drawbacks are as follow:
a. Confining the schedule to a specified duration: the formulations of CPM and PDM methods do not incorporate a deadline duration to constrain project duration [12].
b. Ignoring project costs: since CPM and PDM methods deal mainly with activities durations, they do not deal with any aspects related to cost minimization of the project.
c. Assuming that all required resources are available; therefore dealing with limited resources and resource smoothing has to be done separately after CPM/PDM analysis.
d. Using deterministic duration: the basic assumption in CPM and PDM formulations is that activity duration’s are deterministic. In reality, activity durations take certain probability distribution that reflect the effect of project conditions on resource productivity and the level of uncertainty involved in the project