Describe the Critical Path Method (CPM) as a tool used for schedule development.

      

Describe the Critical Path Method (CPM) as a tool used for schedule development.

  

Answers


Francis
- CPM uses the sequence and duration of activities to determine the total project duration
- A critical path for a project is the series of activities that determines the earliest time by which the project can be completed
- Produces two key pieces of information:
i. slack (or float) - is the amount of time an activity can be delayed before it delays the project.
ii. critical path - The longest path through the schedule (or the shortest time) the project can be completed.
- All activities that fall on this path are referred to as critical path activities.
- They have zero slack
- In most projects of any size, there is typically only one critical path which means that all of the other paths have tasks with slack but theoretically a project can have multiple critical paths.

- Using knowledge of the critical path and slack, a project manager can use two schedule compression techniques, called crashing and fast tracking.
(i). Crashing
- Involves identifying tasks on the critical path that would deliver the most compression for the least incremental cost.
- This is done by identifying tasks that could be done faster if more resources were added.
- Crashing a project often adds or removes critical path tasks. It's important to reevaluate your critical path schedule after each activity is completed.
(ii). Fast Tracking
- Compressing a project schedule by identifying activities that can be done in parallel if the resources are available.
francis1897 answered the question on March 14, 2023 at 07:20


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