What is 'crashing' the project and its effect?
Crashing a project is modifying the schedule to get it done in the minimum
amount of time. The most common way of doing this is to add resources to
critical tasks to shorten their durations. There are other ways.
The effects can be many and varied, depending on how the project was
shortened. I.e. in many cases, adding resources actually increases the
amount of time it takes to do the critical tasks because of the ramp up
time involved and the extra load on the old resources of training the new.
Likewise, overtime can often result in delaying rather than accelerating
the completion of the tasks. Thus, the project is further delayed, not
accelerated. To make matters worse, this can also be accompanied by a
serious decrease in overall project quality.
If done correctly, and avoiding the above, as well as other, pitfalls,
crashing will increase total project cost by quite a bit over "optimum"
scheduling. How much depends on the type of project, the amount of
acceleration, etc.
In some cases, projects that are futher along are incapable of being
accelerated. Any attempt at doing so will merely add more duration. This is
particularly true of software projects.
Hope this helps!
