Project manager use many techniques to schedule their project activities in order of timely completion of the project and avoid any timeline delays. The critical path method is one of the most widely used technique for this purpose.
Key Points to Remember for Critical Path Method
- The Critical Path Method or CPM is apt for the projects which are recurring in nature, activity duration is fixed and certain. The process differentiates the critical and non-critical activities to reduce the time and avoid the queue generation in the process. The reason for the identification of critical activities is that, if any activity is delayed, it will cause the whole process to suffer. That is why it is named as Critical Path Method.
- Critical path is the longest path on the network diagram because you cannot complete your project before finishing all the activities on this path. Also, critical path can be referred to as the shortest duration in which you can complete the project.
- Focused on time and cost tradeoff (cost optimization)
- Manages well defined activities of a project
- Activity oriented
- Focuses on repetitive activities. Eg: construction, maintenance
- CPM is used to compute the earliest and latest possible start time for each activity
