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What Critical Path Technique is used for ?

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Question added by Ahmed Nour , Central Computer Services Operation Manager , Confidential Organization
Date Posted: 2014/04/14
Ahmed Montasser Hasan Ibraheem Farag
by Ahmed Montasser Hasan Ibraheem Farag , Project Manager , Rawafed Tech

it is used to determine the period of the project, and to determine the critical tasks to monitor it becuase any delay happened in these tasks will delay the project by the same period tese tasks delayed.

Mohammad Tohamy Hussein Hussein
by Mohammad Tohamy Hussein Hussein , Chief Executive Officer & ERP Architect , Egyptian Software Group

To identify the critical tasks for which any change in its duration affects the project's completion date.

Raafat Sallam
by Raafat Sallam , Organizational Development and Training Consultant , Training Centers, Marketing Organizations.

to adapt the end date of the project by making a metric as threshold of the time frame.

Abdel Fattah Ibrahim
by Abdel Fattah Ibrahim , CDT Director , Colgate Palmolive

The critical path method (CPM) is a step-by-step technique for process planning that defines critical and non-critical tasks with the goal of preventing time-frame problems and process bottlenecks.

The CPM is ideally suited to projects consisting of numerous activities that interact in a complex manner.

Muhammad Anzar
by Muhammad Anzar , DevOps/DevSecOps Architect , Confidential

The essential technique for using CPM [6][7] is to construct a model of the project that includes the following:

  1. A list of all activities required to complete the project (typically categorized within a work breakdown structure),
  2. The time (duration) that each activity will take to complete,
  3. The dependencies between the activities and,
  4. Logical end points such as milestones or deliverable items.

Using these values, CPM calculates the longest path of planned activities to logical end points or to the end of the project, and the earliest and latest that each activity can start and finish without making the project longer. This process determines which activities are "critical" (i.e., on the longest path) and which have "total float" (i.e., can be delayed without making the project longer). In project management, a critical path is the sequence of project network activities which add up to the longest overall duration. This determines the shortest time possible to complete the project. Any delay of an activity on the critical path directly impacts the planned project completion date (i.e. there is no float on the critical path). A project can have several, parallel, near critical paths. An additional parallel path through the network with the total durations shorter than the critical path is called a sub-critical or non-critical path.

CPM analysis tools allow a user to select a logical end point in a project and quickly identify its longest series of dependent activities (its longest path). These tools can display the critical path (and near critical path activities if desired) as a cascading waterfall that flows from the project's start (or current status date) to the selected logical end point.

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