CIMA E2 Syllabus C. Managing projects - Creating a Network Diagram - Notes ^{5 / 16}

The following information and network diagram will be used as an example to explain this whole concept. It will be referred to as the ‘Example Above’ (EA).

If we need to create a network diagram with the following information, here is how we would do it:

Here we have some activities A-H.

Some cannot be done without others being done, those are known as preceding activities.

The durations are also given for each activity.

We always start with an event (shown by a circle) and first we will do the activity without any preceding activities, which is activity A and this takes 5 weeks. The activity is written on top of the arrow and its duration is written below the arrow.

Once we have done activity A, we are at Event 2. Here we can either do event B, C or D as activity A is the preceding activity for all of these.

B takes 4 weeks.

C takes 5 weeks.

D takes 3 weeks.

This is what it would look like:

As activities B, C and D are done, we will have Event 3, 4 and 5 as three different activities need to be done after each preceding activity. (The activities which need to be done do not all have the same preceding activity, which is why there are three different events.

After B, E can be done which will take 5 weeks.

After C, F can be done which will take 6 weeks.

After D, G can be done which will take 7 weeks.

After E, F, and G are done, we have Event 6 and finish the project with the final activity H which takes 7 weeks and will lead us to the final Event 7.