Fast Tracking
Fast tracking is a schedule compression technique that accelerates project completion by overlapping two or more project activities. Activities that were planned to be carried out sequentially are now performed simultaneously. This allows a team to reduce the project duration to meet a constraint or recover from a delay. A typical consequence of fast tracking is an increased risk to the project.
For example, imagine you need to plant a set of trees in a garden. In your planning, you decided to dig the holes first and then plant the trees. If you apply the fast tracking technique, you would dig the holes while simultaneously planting the trees. As a result, the total duration of the project reduces.
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However, it is important to note that fast tracking can only applied to tasks that can be performed concurrently. Returning to our example, the team must dug the hole before planted the tree. In other words, you can dig the second hole while planting a tree in the first hole, but you cannot dig the hole and plant the tree at the same time. Therefore, if you only had one tree to plant, you could not use the fast tracking technique to reduce the project duration.
Another important consideration is that the activities must be completely independent. In our example, digging a hole and planting trees are completely independent tasks. However, for instance, planting the tree and buying the trees it is not possible to do at the same time. If you haven’t purchased the trees and they are not on-site, planting the tree becomes impossible.
Fast tracking is one of the most popular techniques for reducing project timelines. Another technique for schedule compression is crashing.
Advantages of Fast Tracking
The team uses the fast tracking technique when there is a need to accelerate the project timeline or recover from a delay. Let’s explore the advantages of using fast tracking in projects:
- Accelerating Project Completion: The most evident advantage of fast tracking is reducing the project timeline. If the project is behind schedule or needs to align with a constraint, this is one of the options available.
- Releasing Team Members Early: If there is a need to free the team for another project, this is a way to achieve that.
- Increasing Customer Satisfaction: Completing the project ahead of schedule will leave the customer satisfied.