Schedule Network Analysis

Schedule technique · See it on the map

Runnable here

The general term for techniques that build a project schedule from its task dependencies.

When to use it

Reach for this framing when you need to talk about analyzing the schedule network as a category — choosing which specific technique(s) below fit the situation — rather than as a standalone technique with its own distinct steps.

When to avoid it

Don't cite "schedule network analysis" in place of naming the actual technique you used — it's a category label, and reporting it as the method obscures whether the real work was critical path method, resource optimization, or something else, each of which has different assumptions and different failure modes.

Steps

1. Build the dependency network (precedence diagramming method) with durations, leads and lags applied.
2. Choose the specific analysis the schedule needs: critical path method to find the driving sequence, resource optimization if resource contention is a factor, critical chain method if buffer-based tracking fits the project better, or a what-if scenario run to test the impact of a specific risk or assumption on the network.
3. Run that specific technique and read its output back into the schedule.
4. Repeat as the network changes — schedule network analysis is not a one-time pass, it's the ongoing discipline of re-deriving the schedule from the network whenever the network changes.

What it produces

• Whatever the chosen specific technique produces — a critical path, a resource-leveled schedule, a buffer-tracked chain, or a what-if comparison — read through this umbrella framing as "the current best schedule derived from the network".

Common pitfalls

• The umbrella term gets used as if it were itself a technique with a procedure, producing vague advice ("do schedule network analysis") that doesn't tell anyone what to actually do next.
• A what-if scenario run is performed once to answer a specific question and then treated as the ongoing schedule, rather than as a single scenario compared against the baseline.
• Analysis stops after the first pass even though the network keeps changing, so the schedule's "current" critical path or resource picture is quietly stale.

Worked example

Ahead of a board presentation, a program manager runs three separate schedule network analyses on the same dependency network: a straight critical path run for the base case, a resource-optimization run reflecting a hiring freeze, and a what-if run modeling a two-week permit delay — presenting all three as distinct scenarios rather than a single number.

Source

• PMBOK-6 §6.5.2.1

Where it comes from: this technique is named by the PMBOK Guide, 6th edition.