HomeBlogProject ManagementCritical Path Method in Project Management: How To Use It?
You can better visualize what steps need to be taken to accomplish your objective by creating a project plan. You're aided in doing it via the critical path method in project management. It is a method of project management that entails outlining the crucial actions that must be carried out to finish a project. By utilizing this method, you may manage work dependencies and establish reasonable deadlines. Learn how the critical route approach functions and how you can apply it to projects with your team by reading it.
The Critical Path Method (CPM) in project management is a straightforward but effective method for planning, scheduling, and assessing big, complicated projects. It is used to identify a project's critical path or the longest list of tasks that must be done before the entire project can be considered finished.
Critical Path Analysis (CPA), another name for CPM, demonstrates how interdependent tasks are and which tasks are essential to a project.
One of the key ideas in project management, and undoubtedly one of the most enduring, is the Critical Path Method (CPM). You may learn about the Critical Path Method and use it in your projects with the aid of this user-friendly technical project manager certification.
CPM was created in the late 1950s to address the problem of rising costs brought on by ineffective scheduling. Since then, CPM in project management has gained popularity as a tool for organizing work and planning projects. It enables you to deconstruct challenging projects into manageable jobs and improves your comprehension of the project's flexibility.
No matter how big or how expensive a project is, it must always complete a few fundamental duties. A task is deemed crucial if postponing it may delay the project's completion. Consider something basic like preparing pasta.
The following would be a brief recipe for preparing pasta:
There are several other tasks you need to perform to make good pasta. Maybe add some vegetables and some cheese. Perhaps you could flip it on the other side, so the pasta is fully cooked through.
But in addition to the recipe's three essential steps, these actions are also involved. You'll still have pasta even if you choose not to perform them. Even though it's not very excellent, pasta.
The only thing you'll have, though, is a cold pan and raw pasta if you forget to boil the pasta or heat the pan. In other words, the three steps in the recipe outline the essential duties required to complete the project successfully and produce pasta.
By comparing the lengths of critical and non-critical tasks, one can identify the critical path. Examples of each stage are shown below.
A work breakdown structure can be used to compile a list of all the project activities and tasks necessary to create the deliverables. The remainder of the CPM is built upon the list of activities in the WBS.
As an illustration, suppose the education department is creating a fresh interactive blog article. These are some of the tasks that might be included in the WBS:
| Task ID | Task | Duration (in days) |
|---|---|---|
| A | Draw up a plan | 1 |
| B | Create a draft | 3 |
| C | Edit the draft before submitting it. | 2 |
| D | Graphics for design posts | 5 |
| E | Visuals can be animated | 2 |
| F | Put up articles | 1 |
Starting to identify task dependencies is possible once you have a general understanding of everything that needs to be done.
Select the jobs that are interdependent based on your work breakdown structure. You can use this to find any job that can be completed concurrently with other tasks.
Following the example from above, these job dependencies are:
The critical path will be established using the list of dependent tasks, also known as an activity sequence.
The process of creating a network diagram, a flowchart that shows the sequence of events, using the work breakdown structure, is the next step. To show the dependencies between tasks, make a box for each one and add arrows to it.
Prior to determining the overall project schedule, you will add additional time-bound components to the network diagram.
You must first determine how long each activity will take to compute the critical path, which is the longest series of critical tasks.
Try the following to gauge the time:
You could also attempt the forward pass and backwards pass method.
Even while it is possible to determine the critical path manually, it is faster to use a critical path algorithm.
To determine the critical path manually, follow these steps:
Step 1: For each activity, note the beginning and ending times.
Step 2: To calculate the length of the complete sequence, look at the final activity's end time.
Step 3: The critical path is the set of tasks that take the longest to complete.
Here is how the critical path diagram may appear using the same example as above:
The real project schedule can be constructed around the critical path after it has been identified.
A task's slack sometimes referred to as float, indicates how adaptable it is. It illustrates the amount of time that can be added to the task without influencing other tasks or the project's deadline for completion.
Determining the float helps determine how flexible the project is. Use the resource known as a float to cover project risks or unforeseen problems.
Since critical jobs have 0% float, their due dates are fixed. Positive float values designate tasks that belong on the non-critical path, where their postponement won't have an impact on when the project will be finished. Non-essential tasks could be skipped if time or resources are limited.
It is possible to manually calculate the float or use an algorithm. To figure out the total float and free float, use the formulae from the section below.
Total float vs. Free Float
| Total Float | Free Float |
|---|---|
| This is the length of time that can pass since the early start date of activity without postponing the project's completion date or going against a schedule constraint. | This refers to the maximum amount of time one activity can be postponed without negatively affecting the one after it. Free float is only possible when two or more actions have a single successor. This is where activities come together on a network diagram. |
| Total float = LS-ES or LF-EF. | Free float = ES (next task) - EF (current task) |
Project managers gain from having a thorough understanding of float for the following reasons:
CPM model in project management gives you insight into the status of your project and enables you to keep track of activities and their turnaround times. Here are some additional uses for CPM.
Project deadlines might occasionally be pushed forwards, which is not ideal. The schedule compression methods of fast-tracking and crashing are both applicable under certain circumstances.
Having the critical path diagram can aid in selecting the best tactic to fulfil revised deadlines.
Remember that the CPM method in project management does not account for resource availability. You can employ resource leveling approaches to address resource issues, such as a team member who is overbooked or lacks equipment.
These strategies are meant to address resource overallocation problems and guarantee that a project can be finished with the resources that are currently on hand.
Resource levelling affects project start and end dates, thus you might need to modify the critical route or use this method for activities that have floated.
Since you're working with informed estimations for activity durations, the schedule generated by CPM in software project management is liable to alter. As the project progresses, you can contrast the original critical path with the current critical path.
Future studies can utilize this information as a guide to predict work durations more precisely.
Critical path method example:
It’s important to understand and get up-to-speed with the terms that are used by project managers who are working on this method. Here’s a ready reckoner:
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Critical Path Method is a tried and tested way of managing projects. It has been in use for over 60 years, and has been proven to help project managers to smoothen workflows, ironing out any obstacles to progress. helps project managers to:
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There are a few tools or methods that are popularly used to find the Critical Path in a project.
Is a method that represents activities in a diagram to show interdependencies between them. Once durations, early start date, and early finish date are assigned, the critical path can be mapped by using the earliest start date for each activity. This technique is called Forward Pass.
Using the Latest Start date and Latest Finish Date and starting from project completion, you can calculate the critical path through a similar technique called Backward pass.
Charts are used for simpler projects where activities are represented in a bar chart format instead of a network chart. This is an alternate method of finding the critical path in a project.
Works based on a similar principle to other methods. It dismisses the notion that there is a fixed amount of time for an activity to be completed. Instead, it estimates a best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, and an ordinary scenario to estimate the amount of time each activity takes. It calculates variance and standard deviation to see which activities are likely to risk delaying the project by exceeding the time they are estimated to take.
PERT is a more dynamic method that is more suitable to make flexible project plans as it accounts for the fact that time taken for activities cannot be estimated or predicted accurately.
The calculations can seem complex and if done manually it may end up being a time-consuming exercise. Thankfully, project management software come with options to calculate the critical path.
MS Project, Wrike, Capterra, Mavenlink, Buildertrend, and WorkflowMax, among others, have features that help the user to identify and monitor the critical path in their projects and keep an eye on activities that are nearing the maximum delay, threatening to derail the project deliveries.
Planning activities and managing resources are two areas where CPM can be an advantage in project management. You will find it simple to make timetables and keep track of tasks with the aid of project planning tools. You can learn more on PMP certification course online and get certified through KnowledgeHut project management trainings.
CPM project management example:
For instance, if you were building a house, there would be multiple task sequences like these:
When managing a project, using the critical path technique is crucial because it helps you identify all the tasks that are required to finish the project, establish which ones must be completed by a certain date, which ones may wait if necessary, and how much float or slack you have.
The purpose of critical path in project management is:
The longest path from Start to Finish in terms of time is known as the critical path and it shows how long the project must last to be completed.
When planning their time and resource allocation, project managers can count on the critical route method. The benefits of CPM include increased scheduling flexibility and accuracy, greater stakeholder and project manager communication, and simpler work prioritization.
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