Teaching project management using Excel

In this paper, we present an application of Excel spreadsheets in teaching the traditional Program Evaluation and Review Technique/Critical Path Method. This spreadsheet approach can be used in class with little cost in time or effort because it eliminates the need for tedious calculations and extensive algebraic manipulations, yet the students can understand and apply the algorithm without the black‐box features that characterise most of the commercial project management software. To maintain a direct relationship with the traditional method, the spreadsheet uses the same familiar forward and backward operations required in the traditional manual calculations to find the critical path. Similar spreadsheet models are combined with the Solver in Excel to perform cost analysis by linear programming.