What is Crashing in Project Management?

Crashing is a way in project management that allow you the speed up the timeline of the project by adding more resources. Project managers use this procedure to maintain of expedite a project.

Crashing takes in different shapes. One of them is expanding the team working on the project so things are done faster. It also could mean increasing the budget or paying more fees to get faster results.

Crashing main goal is reducing the time of the project while trying to keep the cost minimal to the budget that was set in the begging of the project.

However, there is a significant cost associated with project cancellation, and any significant cost or reallocation of resources must be approved by the stakeholders or client. Even with such a trade-off, Crashing in Project Management remains one of the best methods to achieve faster results.

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Why Crashing?

Crashing is used in critical situations when you need a change to the project roadmap. Keep in mind that if one item is delayed, the entire project gets delayed too.

Think of the following scenario, you have a working team with the goal of launching a new Phone by the end of this month. When the production process takes place, your screen manufacturer suddenly has a delay in delivering the screens that will take to two additional weeks. The goal now is to find out a solution that meets the expected date of release.

In such case, you can use crashing by changing manufactures for the current time. That could include a higher cost of payment to the new source of screens but the project remains on track.

How to take the Decision of Crashing?

When projects are planned, they are set to have certain milestones and goals. Shrinking the timeline is not necessarily the best solution out there. In general, it’s recommended to keep crashing in project management to the emergences and try to keep a minimal effect to the new constrains.

A traditional time to decide when to crash is when the deadline set is not realistic according to the plan. In such cases, crashes will take new scheduling overhaul that fits the suppliers and the employees availability.

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Tips for Crashing in Project Management

Usually, there are no straight forward steps for project crashing since every situation is unique. One project may require adding extra fees to the project, while other may mean shrink the timeline. Generally, balancing this specific tradeoff is how you make the best use of the crashing in project management.

Crashing Early is better than crashing late

When you crash a project early in the time, it becomes easier to manage this trade off we mentioned. The Idea of waiting to the end of the Project may sound better since you will have more ground details and facts. But it doesn’t. Since crashing may bring the project upside down, you maybe do not have the time to do

Manage a project during and after a crash

The decision to crash comes with its own risks, all of which require additional monitoring. Follow these best procedures to properly manage a project crash:

Breakdown tasks: Breakdown all the required tasks, so you can understand each step that needs to take place.
Prioritize important tasks: Prioritize tasks that have a direct impact on project completion. The term “responsible” refers to the act of determining whether or not a particular task should be completed.
Consider task duration: Longer tasks often have the most room for improvement during a crash, and you may be able to find cost-effective solutions for some of them.

What are the disadvantages of crashing a project?

Project crashes typically result in increased costs that cannot be recovered if the project fails. Adding more resources to existing teams may present difficulties as responsibilities are shuffled and shared.