Hi,

in this Post I will introduce two Terms: Crashing and Fat Tracking. When your Schedule is too long, and you want to short it, you will can add additional Resources to Tasks (and this is called Crashing), or you can do some work in parallel (if it is possible, and this is called Fast Tracking)

Now Let’s look how to do it in MS PROJECT 2013! Consider that we have a Project Call – New year celebration. You can not celebrate New year latter than 31.12-01.01. So I will create Project with Schedule form: Project End Date, e.g End date must be 01.01.

Now I will create Schedule:

Since Today is December 9, 2014, notice that my first Task should be Started at December 4, 2014, and this is back to the Past and it is impossible. So, for example, I can add Mary to help John to find a Place for Celebration. This Task should be effort driven if I want to short duration:

and:

and I will get:

Now I will make this Task as Effort Driven, and I will assign John to it:

and finally I’ll get:

So I’m back in track! But if this is impossible for some reasons (for example, Mary is on the another Project). What can I do? I can perform Tasks: Invite Friends, and Find the Place for Celebration in Parallel:

and I’ll get:

But what if this is not possible, either! Then, you are in trouble! What can you do? You can cut off some Tasks (for example, celebrate at your home, and cut Find the Place for Celebration), or you can cancel The Project (in rare cases).

Be aware of this. Both Fast Tracking, and Crashing increase Risks in Project

Best Regards,

Nenad