Schedule Compression

Schedule compression refers to techniques that shorten a project's end date without reducing its scope or removing deliverables. When a deadline moves earlier, a project slips behind plan, or a sponsor demands earlier delivery, compression is the tool set for responding — without descoping the work. The two primary techniques are crashing and fast-tracking, and both target the critical path exclusively. Compressing non-critical tasks does not move the end date.

Crashing

Crashing adds resources to a critical task to shorten its duration. The additional resources — more people, extended working hours, additional equipment — reduce the time required to complete the work.

Crashing works when more resources genuinely reduce time. It does not work when a task is inherently sequential: nine women cannot produce a baby in one month. It always increases cost. The practical approach is to identify which critical task delivers the most schedule compression per unit of additional cost — and crash that task first.

Fast-Tracking

Fast-tracking overlaps tasks that were originally planned as sequential, starting a successor task before its predecessor finishes. For example, beginning construction on Phase 1 while Phase 1 design is still in progress.

Fast-tracking does not increase cost directly, but it increases risk. If the predecessor's late deliverables change something the successor already acted on, rework follows. Fast-tracking is most viable when the downstream task has a portion that is genuinely independent of what remains to be done in the upstream task.

Choosing Between Them

Crashing is the safer choice when cost budget exists and the work is parallelizable. Fast-tracking is preferable when budget is fixed and the tasks have independent segments that can safely overlap. Often a project uses both: fast-track where overlap is low-risk, crash where duration reduction requires more resources.

Schedule Compression in Maverick

Maverick's AI chat makes compression analysis faster. Ask: "Which critical path tasks can be shortened, and what would be the effect on the end date?" The AI identifies candidates based on float and task structure. You can also ask it to simulate adding a lead time to a dependency link to model fast-tracking before committing the change to the schedule.

Related Terms

Critical Path  ·  Float  ·  Task Dependency  ·  Project Baseline  ·  Resource Allocation