A finished BUS-660 Topic 8 project scheduling recommendation example, with the critical path identified, slack computed and a crashing decision defended on cost. Searches like "bus 660 topic 8 assignment example", "bus660 topic 8 sample" and "bus-660 topic 8 example" land here.
What a finished BUS-660 Topic 8 project scheduling recommendation looks like
The finished example finds the constraint and then prices relieving it. Activities are listed with their durations and their predecessors, and the network follows from those relationships rather than from a preferred layout. The critical path is identified by computing early and late times rather than by inspecting the longest looking chain, and slack is reported for every activity, since the non critical ones are where resources can safely be moved from. Crashing is then treated as a purchase: each compressible activity has a cost per day saved, and the example buys the cheapest days first, checking after each whether the critical path has changed, which is the step most analyses forget.
How a BUS-660 Topic 8 example is structured
The example schedules, analyses, then decides. It opens with the full activity list, the duration of each and the predecessor relationships between them. A second section builds the network and computes early start and finish times forward, then late times backward. A third identifies the critical path from zero slack activities and reports slack for everything else. A fourth introduces the crash costs per activity and per day. A fifth buys reduction incrementally, taking the cheapest day available and rechecking the critical path after each purchase, since compressing one path can promote another. A sixth compares the total crash cost against the value of finishing earlier. A closing section recommends a target completion date and states what it costs and what it risks.
The path computed, not eyeballed
Early and late times identify the critical path reliably where inspecting the longest looking chain does not.
Slack reported for everything
Non critical activities are where resources can be taken from safely, which is a planning finding in itself.
Crashing treated as a purchase
Each compressible activity has a price per day saved, and the cheapest days get bought first.
The path rechecked after each purchase
Compressing one path can promote another, and analyses that forget this crash the wrong activities.
A date recommended with its cost
The paper commits to a completion target and states what buying it costs and what it puts at risk.
Where marks go in BUS-660 Topic 8
Identifying the critical path by looking at the network rather than computing it is unreliable on anything but a trivial project, and it is the shortcut that produces wrong answers here. A second failure is crashing without rechecking, which spends money compressing a path that stopped being critical two purchases ago. Papers lose marks for reporting a schedule with no slack figures, since slack is what tells a manager where flexibility exists. Crashing every activity that can be crashed ignores that only the critical path affects the finish date. Ending with a network diagram and no recommendation misses the closing requirement, which asks for a defended decision about how much time to buy and at what price.
Get a BUS-660 Topic 8 example written to your instructions
Send the BUS-660 Topic 8 problems and the rubric from your classroom, with the activity list and crash costs your section supplied. We write a custom example to those criteria, with the critical path computed rather than inspected, slack reported throughout, crashing bought incrementally and the path rechecked at each step, in 24 to 48 hours. The first is free.
BUS-660 Topic 8 questions, answered
Why compute the critical path instead of looking for it?
Because on any realistic network the longest path is not obvious and parallel chains can differ by a day. Computing early and late start times gives you slack for every activity, and the critical path falls out as the activities with none. It also gives you the slack figures you need afterward, so the computation produces two useful outputs rather than one.
Which activities should I crash?
Only ones on the critical path, and among those the cheapest per day saved. Compressing an activity with slack changes nothing about the finish date and wastes the money entirely. Buy one increment at a time and recompute, because as soon as the critical path shortens enough, another path becomes critical and the cheapest useful purchase changes.
When should I stop crashing?
When the next day costs more than finishing a day earlier is worth. That requires knowing the value of early completion, whether it is a contractual bonus, avoided overhead or a market window, and comparing it against the marginal crash cost. Crashing until the schedule cannot compress further is an engineering answer; stopping where the value runs out is the business one.