Network Diagram: An Important Tool for Effective Time Management

When you start a project, you might be confused about how to prioritize the activities. The main confusion usually centers on figuring out the relationships among the activities.

You should set a logical connection among the activities so that everyone understands the nature and sequence of the project. It's also essential for your core project team to quantify dependencies among projects to work efficiently and accomplish their goals faster. 

Remember that some mandatory dependencies need to be considered during the planning stages—that's why we have network diagrams! There are three types of networks: activity on a node, activity on an arc, and precedence graph. 

Before getting started on one, we need to know how to prepare a network diagram and familiarize ourselves with its contents.

Network Diagram in Project Management

A Network diagram is a way of picturing what a project is and how the different steps relate to each other. Network diagrams represent a set of connected arrows and boxes describing the interrelationships between project activities.

 Boxes or nodes represent activity descriptions, and arrows show relationships among activities. The start and finish of each activity must be indicated, along with all other activities falling within these parameters.

There are many different ways to draw network diagrams; most project managers today use the precedence diagramming process (PDM) to mark their network diagram.

Types of Network Diagrams in Project management

The two primary network diagrams used in project management are the precedence diagram method and the arrow diagram method. Let's take a closer look at each one.

Precedence diagram method: The Precedence Diagram Method is a method for arranging activities on a timeline for use in scheduling and project management. 

The method is considered more efficient than other activity-based methods, such as the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). 

Each box in the diagram represents an activity, while arrows connecting them symbolize logical relationships between activities. There are four types of logical connections:

Finish-to-start: This is the most common form of dependency. It means you must wait until the predecessor's activity is finished before starting a successor's activity. 

For example, you can't begin the successor's training before ending the predecessor's unless your project employs a schedule compression technique. Likewise, you cannot start the following process in most cases until all predecessor activities are completed first.

Start-to-start: The activities of one person cannot begin until the predecessor's training is completed. 

For example, suppose A and B are both independent people. In that case, their activities might co-occur one after the other. However, if A and B are related to each other in some way—for example, they are both students or they work together at a company—their activities can depend on one another.

Finish-to-finish: The predecessor activity must finish before the successor activity can start. This relationship between activities is now used rarely in project management.

Start-to-finish: In this case, the previous activity will begin when the successor's movement finishes.

Arrow diagram method- it is a way to show the dependencies between tasks and tasks within a project. It helps show how changes in one job affect other tasks.

To draw an arrow diagram:

• Start by drawing each task on a separate paper sheet and connecting them using lines.
• Click these lines to the next job on the next sheet of paper.
• Continue until you have completed all of your tasks and connections.

This diagram shows how one task affects another: if Task A needs Task B to be done before it can start, then that means Task B needs to be completed first (and vice versa).

Advantages of Network Diagram

A network diagram visually represents the relationships between individuals, groups, and organizations. It provides information about the structure of an organization for decision-making purposes.

A network diagram often shows how this structure relates to other organizations. The goal of a network diagram is to provide visibility into the relationships within an organization so that decisions can be made based on this information.

Network diagrams have several advantages over other forms of organizational charts:

• They better understand how things work as they relate to each other.
• They are easier to read and understand than traditional organizational charts because they are not as complex.
• They are more effective at communicating relationships between individuals, groups, and organizations than traditional organizational charts because no hierarchy is involved. Instead, each person is represented as an individual node on the diagram with connections (lines) connecting them all.

Conclusion

The project management process is essential to every project, as it creates a transparent chain of tasks and events that need to occur to complete the project.

A simple network diagram can help planners see the big picture of what needs to be done and when. The application of the network diagram is broad and diverse.

For example, business process modeling, mapping business processes, and procedures relating organizational structure with interdepartmental relationships in the supply chain can be implemented using a project management network diagram.

The network diagram has a long history in both business and project management.

 Problems can occur, however, when the technique is misused or taken too literally. Many people and other networks need to be involved in accomplishing the goal.

 Misunderstanding this can lead to problems and failures. Instead, keep clear communication lines open on all levels, have reasonable expectations, and work with other members of your network toward a common goal. You will experience success in your network diagram over time.