Mary is the project manager for her company. She’s working with the project team to compress the
project schedule as the project must be completed by December 30. For some of the project
activities, she and the project team have agreed to crash the project work. What must be true of

these project activities for crashing to be acceptable?

A.
The activities must be of fixed duration.

B.
The activities must be effort-drive.

C.
The activities must not be susceptible to the Law of Diminishing Returns.

D.
The activities must be risk-free.

Explanation:
Crashing is the addition of project resources to complete effort-driven activities in faster time. By
adding more labor the activity can be completed faster. Crashing is a schedule compression
technique to obtain the greatest amount of compression for the least incremental cost. Crashing
works for activities where additional resources will shorten the duration. Approving overtime,
bringing in additional resources, paying to expedite delivery to activities on the critical path are
examples of crashing.
Answer option A is incorrect. An activity of fixed duration, such as printing 100,000 brochures in a
printing press, won’t be completed faster by adding more effort.
Answer option D is incorrect. Activities need not be risk-free to use project crashing.
Answer option C is incorrect. All effort-driven activities are susceptible to the Law of Diminishing
Returns. By adding more labor the value of the yield of the work decreases because of the cost of
the labor added to the project work.