Skills for delivering with certainty

Introducing

Critical Path Method

Agenda

• Recap.. 5 mins• Dependencies• Activity Box• WBS with estimate• Forward Pass• Reverse Pass• CPM and float

Can you tell when the project will get over

Dependency

Project value versus cost

Project value versus cost

Project value versus cost

Critical Path method

History

• CPM is a project modeling technique developed in the late 1950s by Morgan R. Walker of DuPont and James E. Kelley, Jr. of Remington Rand.[2]

• ”Critical path" coined by Booz Allen Hamilton and the U.S. Navy.[4] during Manhattan Project.

• CPM used with all forms of projects, including construction, aerospace and defense, software development, research projects, product development, engineering, and plant maintenance, among others. Any project with interdependent activities can apply this method of mathematical analysis.

Manhattan Test The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory that designed the actual bombs

Project : Secure a plot

An activity Block

Early Start

Late FinishLate Start

Early Finish

Activity Name

Duration = 8 days

Float = ?

3 kinds of dependencies and reasons:

Causal (logical)It is impossible to edit a text before it is writtenIt is illogical to pour concrete before you dig the foundations of a building

Resource constraintsIt is logically possible to paint four walls in a room simultaneously but there is only one painter

Discretionary (preferential)I want to paint the living room before painting the dining room, although I could do it the other way round, too

Some Definitions

Float : The amount durational flexibility in any activity without affecting the overall duration of the project. Its computed as a difference between Early Finish and Late Finish or Early start and late start = EF-LF= ES-LS

Some Definitions

Drag : It is the maximum amount of time that one can shorten the activity before it is no longer on the critical path or before its duration becomes zero. Its computed by : Least float of a parallel activity

Some Definitions

Lead : How much duration before end of predecessors can we begin an activity

Lag : How much of gap we have after end of predecessor for us to start the task

A typical solution

What’s Your Message?CPM is the algo for project mgt software