The Critical Path is a talk show contemplating the causality of success and failure in the evolving story of mobile computing and related industries. CPM - Critical Path Method. Operations > CPMCPM - Critical Path Method. In 1. 95. 7, Du. Pont developed a project management method designed to address the challenge of shutting down chemical plants for maintenance and then restarting the plants once the maintenance had been completed. Given the complexity of the process, they developed the Critical Path Method (CPM) for managing such projects. CPM provides the following benefits: Provides a graphical view of the project. Predicts the time required to complete the project. Shows which activities are critical to maintaining the schedule and which are not. CPM models the activities and events of a project as a network. Activities are depicted as nodes on the network and events that signify the beginning or ending of activities are depicted as arcs or lines between the nodes. The following is an example of a CPM network diagram: Steps in CPM Project Planning. Specify the individual activities. Determine the sequence of those activities. Draw a network diagram. Estimate the completion time for each activity. Identify the critical path (longest path through the network)Update the CPM diagram as the project progresses. Specify the Individual Activities. From the work breakdown structure, a listing can be made of all the activities in the project. This listing can be used as the basis for adding sequence and duration information in later steps. Determine the Sequence of the Activities. Some activities are dependent on the completion of others. A listing of the immediate predecessors of each activity is useful for constructing the CPM network diagram. Draw the Network Diagram. Once the activities and their sequencing have been defined, the CPM diagram can be drawn. CPM originally was developed as an activity on node (AON) network, but some project planners prefer to specify the activities on the arcs. Estimate Activity Completion Time. The time required to complete each activity can be estimated using past experience or the estimates of knowledgeable persons. CPM is a deterministic model that does not take into account variation in the completion time, so only one number is used for an activity's time estimate. Identify the Critical Path. The critical path is the longest- duration path through the network. The significance of the critical path is that the activities that lie on it cannot be delayed without delaying the project. Because of its impact on the entire project, critical path analysis is an important aspect of project planning. The critical path can be identified by determining the following four parameters for each activity: ES - earliest start time: the earliest time at which the activity can start given that its precedent activities must be completed first. EF - earliest finish time, equal to the earliest start time for the activity plus the time required to complete the activity. LF - latest finish time: the latest time at which the activity can be completed without delaying the project. LS - latest start time, equal to the latest finish time minus the time required to complete the activity. The slack time for an activity is the time between its earliest and latest start time, or between its earliest and latest finish time. Slack is the amount of time that an activity can be delayed past its earliest start or earliest finish without delaying the project. The critical path is the path through the project network in which none of the activities have slack, that is, the path for which ES=LS and EF=LF for all activities in the path. A delay in the critical path delays the project. CPM - Critical Path Method. In 1957, DuPont developed a project management method designed to address the challenge of shutting down chemical plants. Australia's leading centre for choreographic research and dance development, Critical Path is located on the shores of Rushcutters Bay in Sydney. What is the critical path method (CPM)? This definition explains what CPM is, how it's used in project management and what its origins are. CRITICAL PATH is an ongoing documentary project exploring the art, technology, philosophy, politics, and psychology of video games, told from the perspective. Similarly, to accelerate the project it is necessary to reduce the total time required for the activities in the critical path. Update CPM Diagram. As the project progresses, the actual task completion times will be known and the network diagram can be updated to include this information. A new critical path may emerge, and structural changes may be made in the network if project requirements change. CPM Limitations. CPM was developed for complex but fairly routine projects with minimal uncertainty in the project completion times. For less routine projects there is more uncertainty in the completion times, and this uncertainty limits the usefulness of the deterministic CPM model. An alternative to CPM is the PERT project planning model, which allows a range of durations to be specified for each activity. Critical Path Project Management describes a methodology for managing and controlling a project using a distinct set of tools. Identification of the Critical Path. Operations > CPMCopyright . Critical Path Analysis and PERTPlanning and Scheduling More Complex Projects. Related variants: AOA or Activity- on- Arc Diagrams. As with Gantt Charts, Critical Path Analysis (CPA) or the Critical Path Method (CPM) helps you to plan all tasks that must be completed as part of a project. They act as the basis both for preparation of a schedule, and of resource planning. During management of a project, they allow you to monitor achievement of project goals. They help you to see where remedial action needs to be taken to get a project back on course. Within a project it is likely that you will display your final project plan as a Gantt Chart (using Microsoft Project or other software for projects of medium complexity or an excel spreadsheet for projects of low complexity). The benefit of using CPA within the planning process is to help you develop and test your plan to ensure that it is robust. Critical Path Analysis formally identifies tasks which must be completed on time for the whole project to be completed on time. It also identifies which tasks can be delayed if resource needs to be reallocated to catch up on missed or overrunning tasks. The disadvantage of CPA, if you use it as the technique by which your project plans are communicated and managed against, is that the relation of tasks to time is not as immediately obvious as with Gantt Charts. This can make them more difficult to understand. A further benefit of Critical Path Analysis is that it helps you to identify the minimum length of time needed to complete a project. Where you need to run an accelerated project, it helps you to identify which project steps you should accelerate to complete the project within the available time. How to Use the Tool. As with Gantt Charts, the essential concept behind Critical Path Analysis is that you cannot start some activities until others are finished. These activities need to be completed in a sequence, with each stage being more- or- less completed before the next stage can begin. These are 'sequential' activities. Other activities are not dependent on completion of any other tasks. You can do these at any time before or after a particular stage is reached. These are non- dependent or 'parallel' tasks. Drawing a Critical Path Analysis Chart. Use the following steps to draw a CPA Chart: Step 1. List all activities in the plan. For each activity, show the earliest start date, estimated length of time it will take, and whether it is parallel or sequential. If tasks are sequential, show which stage they depend on. For the project example used here, you will end up with the same task list as explained in the article on Gantt Charts (we will use the same example as with Gantt Charts to compare the two techniques). The chart is repeated in Figure 1 below: Figure 1. Task List: Planning a custom- written computer project. Task. Earliest start. Length. Type. Dependent on.. A. High level analysis. Week 0. 1 week. Sequential B. Selection of hardware platform. Week 1. 1 day. Sequential. AC. Installation and commissioning of hardware. Week 1. 2. 2 weeks. Parallel. BD. Detailed analysis of core modules. Week 1. 2 weeks. Sequential. AE. Detailed analysis of supporting modules. Week 3. 2 weeks. Sequential. DF. Programming of core modules. Week 3. 2 weeks. Sequential. DG. Programming of supporting modules. Week 5. 3 weeks. Sequential. EH. Quality assurance of core modules. Week 5. 1 week. Sequential. FI. Quality assurance of supporting modules. Week 8. 1 week. Sequential. GJ. Core module training. Week 6. 1 day. Parallel. C,HK. Development and QA of accounting reporting. Week 5. 1 week. Parallel. EL. Development and QA of management reporting. Week 5. 1 week. Parallel. EM. Development of Management Information System. Week 6. 1 week. Sequential. LN. Detailed training. Week 9. 1 week. Sequential. I, J, K, MStep 2. Plot the activities as a circle and arrow diagram. Critical Path Analyses are presented using circle and arrow diagrams. In these, circles show events within the project, such as the start and finish of tasks. The number shown in the left hand half of the circle allows you to identify each one easily. Circles are sometimes known as nodes. An arrow running between two event circles shows the activity needed to complete that task. A description of the task is written underneath the arrow. The length of the task is shown above it. By convention, all arrows run left to right. Arrows are also sometimes called arcs. An example of a very simple diagram is shown below: This shows the start event (circle 1), and the completion of the 'High Level Analysis' task (circle 2). The arrow between them shows the activity of carrying out the High Level Analysis. This activity should take 1 week. Where one activity cannot start until another has been completed, we start the arrow for the dependent activity at the completion event circle of the previous activity. An example of this is shown below: Here the activities of 'Select Hardware' and 'Core Module Analysis' cannot be started until 'High Level Analysis' has been completed. This diagram also brings out a number of other important points: Within Critical Path Analysis, we refer to activities by the numbers in the circles at each end. For example, the task 'Core Module Analysis' would be called activity 2 to 3. In the diagram above, activities are 1 week long, 2 weeks long, and 1 day long. Arrows in this case are all the same length. In the example above, you can see a second number in the top, right hand quadrant of each circle. This shows the earliest start time for the following activity. It is conventional to start at 0. Here units are whole weeks. A different case is shown below: Here activity 6 to 7 cannot start until the other four activities (1. Click the link below for the full circle and arrow diagram for the computer project we are using as an example. Figure 5: Full Critical Path Diagram. This shows all the activities that will take place as part of the project. Notice that each event circle also has a figure in the bottom, right hand quadrant. This shows the latest finish time that's permissible for the preceeding activity if the project is to be completed in the minimum time possible. You can calculate this by starting at the last event and working backwards. The latest finish time of the preceeding event and the earliest start time of the following even will be the same for ciircles on the critical path. You can see that event M can start any time between weeks 6 and 8. The timing of this event is not critical. Events 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 to 5, 5 to 6 and 6 to 7 must be started and completed on time if the project is to be completed in 1. This is the 'critical path' – these activities must be very closely managed to ensure that activities are completed on time. If jobs on the critical path slip, immediate action should be taken to get the project back on schedule. Otherwise completion of the whole project will slip.'Crash Action'You may find that you need to complete a project earlier than your Critical Path Analysis says is possible. In this case you need to re- plan your project. You have a number of options and would need to assess the impact of each on the project’s cost, quality and time required to complete it. For example, you could increase resource available for each project activity to bring down time spent on each but the impact of some of this would be insignificant and a more efficient way of doing this would be to look only at activities on the critical path. As an example, it may be necessary to complete the computer project in Figure 5 in 8 weeks rather than 1. In this case you could look at using two analysts in activities 2 to 3 and 3 to 4. This would shorten the project by two weeks, but may raise the project cost – doubling resources at any stage may only improve productivity by, say, 5. In some situations, shortening the original critical path of a project can lead to a different series of activities becoming the critical path. For example, if activity 4 to 5 were reduced to 1 week, activities 4 to 8 and 8 to 6 would come onto the critical path. As with Gantt Charts, in practice project managers use software tools like Microsoft Project to create CPA Charts. Not only do these ease make them easier to draw, they also make modification of plans easier and provide facilities for monitoring progress against plans. PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique)PERT is a variation on Critical Path Analysis that takes a slightly more skeptical view of time estimates made for each project stage. To use it, estimate the shortest possible time each activity will take, the most likely length of time, and the longest time that might be taken if the activity takes longer than expected. Use the formula below to calculate the time to use for each project stage: shortest time + 4 x likely time + longest time- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -6. This helps to bias time estimates away from the unrealistically short time- scales normally assumed. Key Points. Critical Path Analysis is an effective and powerful method of assessing: What tasks must be carried out. Where parallel activity can be performed. The shortest time in which you can complete a project. Resources needed to execute a project. The sequence of activities, scheduling and timings involved. Task priorities. The most efficient way of shortening time on urgent projects. An effective Critical Path Analysis can make the difference between success and failure on complex projects. It can be very useful for assessing the importance of problems faced during the implementation of the plan. PERT is a variant of Critical Path Analysis that takes a more skeptical view of the time needed to complete each project stage. This site teaches you the skills you need for a happy and successful career; and this is just one of many. Mind Tools. Subscribe to our. Mind Tools Club and really supercharge your career!
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