Project Title: A Tool for Automatic Generation/Validation of PERT Diagrams
Student: Jackson (Chi) Wong
Course: BSc Hons Computer Science
	
Abstract:
The A-o-A PERT diagram could be play a major row in project planning 
but throughout the writer's research the diagram seems not used very 
often out in the business world's projects. But a variation of the 
diagram, the activity-on-node version, seems to have better fortune 
playing a slightly larger role. However, the comparison between the 
A-o-A and A-o-N cannot be written off in such a simple manner by 
only observing there frequency of use in the real world. In the 
writer's opinion, there are several advantages that the A-o-A has 
over the A-o-N. As a small example, although the A-o-N does appear 
to display tasks and predecessor relationships in a slightly 
simpler to visually understand format, the CPM (critical path method) 
calculations would seem difficult to be also shown in such a format. 
In contrary, A-o-A in its design has purpose given room for the 
display of CPM, assisting project followers not to miss out important 
deadlines, and informing them of which tasks could in theory be 
given more time to work on until the point where they would become 
the critical tasks. A-o-A PERT diagrams are capable of keeping a 
project on time and displaying tasks precedence relationships 
clearly at the same instance. In the writers opinion of why the 
A-o-A are used less often outside academic areas though, is because 
of the complication that A-o-As have over A-o-N that they need 
slightly more time to be drawn to provide the amount of details 
it contain about a project. And to this point, such complications 
could be avoided if a tool was made specifically to generate an 
A-o-A PERT diagram automatically from a list of tasks, and carried 
the function to validate if custom drawn A-o-A diagrams are in 
their correct from and check if calculations were correct. Readers 
are also recommended to take further reading on Chris Roddis-Ferrari's 
dissertation named "A Tool for Automatic Generation and Validation 
of PERT Diagrams" (Roddis-Ferrari C., 2006, School of Computer 
Science & IT, University of Nottingham). One of the original 
purpose of this dissertation project was to take up tasks that 
Roddis-Ferrari have left incomplete and to combine them with new 
ideas to create a successful tool that is able to dynamically 
generate A-o-A PERT diagrams.