Firstly, what exactly is “crashing” an activity? Put simply, crashing an activity is the act of shortening the overall project duration by reducing the time of a critical activity. A critical activity is an activity which must start and finish on time for the overall project to be completed on time.
There are many practical factors which a company should take into account before deciding to crash an activity. Also, depending on the type of company and project, these factors may vary.
The first consideration should be if crashing an activity will make you any money. Even if the money saved does not outweigh the cost of finishing early, crashing may still make you money by freeing up yours and your teams time to focus on other projects.
We also need to know if workers are available to do the overtime. If so, are these workers happy to do the overtime and will working this overtime makes them less productive in the following days of the project? If the project involved heavy manual labour for example, then working extra days may tire the workers out and make them less productive. Pushing the workers to do more may also increase the risk of injuries that could cause further delays. If you need to bring in extra resources to crash the project then they may not be familiar with the task at hand. Therefore you may need to train them and they may be less efficient than the current resources.
If an activity is crashed then there may be an increased risk of missing a deadline because of reduced slack. Missing deadlines may hamper client relations and so be detrimental to the business. Finishing a project on time may also be detrimental. For instance, if a company was running a stock audit for a retailer, then finishing early may make it appear as if they have cut corners in counting.
Another practical factor you would need to look at is if there are the materials available to crash an activity. If the materials will only be delivered at a certain time then crashing may not be an option.
If the company is working on multiple projects then will crashing one activity mean other projects are delayed. There may also be legal considerations to take into account, i.e. the maximum hours of the working week for staff.
Finally, before crashing an activity, a company should look at whether there are there other options to crashing which is more cost or time effective. Fast tracking is another viable option where you overlap tasks which were initially scheduled sequentially. You could also make other activities more efficient, by for example, splitting up a long task into smaller intervals as people may work harder in a short space of time than if they have to pace themselves to work a full day.
A World of Economics 