Instructions:
1. Visit the Tech Republic website – https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/why-critical-path-is-critical-to-project-management/
2. Read the article: “Why critical path is critical to project management”
There are several additional topics on critical path. Please read them and answer the following questions in a page:
· Which of the articles gave what you believe to be the most value in relationship to critical path?
Explain why.
· Based on what you have read in the chapters (copied below)
and in the articles do you see a relevant critical path for your project forming, if so explain what it might look like and roughly how many tasks will your project include?
· Will all of your critical tasks be deemed critical and will they potentially have dependencies? Explain
· Explain which of your tasks on a critical path can present the most risk to a project, and explain what types of contingencies you need to put in place to protect the success of a project? Provide substantive details.
Book info on critical path:
The critical path method (CPM) was developed by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. as a way to schedule the start-up and shutdown of major plants. Since these plant activities were repeated frequently, the times were fairly well known. However, the time of any activity could be compressed by expending more money. Thus, CPM assumes a time-cost trade-off rather than the probabilistic times used in PERT. The CPM method of project scheduling uses a time-cost function of the type shown in Figure 14.9 for each activity. The activity can be completed in proportionally less time if more money is spent. To express this assumed linear time-cost relationship, four figures are given for each activity: normal time, normal cost, crash time, and crash cost. The following definitions are provided. Normal time: the planned activity duration. Normal cost: the budgeted cost for the normal time. Crash time: the minimum activity duration for additional cost. Crash cost: the cost needed to achieve the crash time. The project network is solved initially by using normal times and normal costs for all activities. If the resulting project completion time and cost are satisfactory, all activities will be scheduled at their normal times. If the project completion time is too long, the project can be completed in less time at greater cost by crashing (using less time) for certain activities.
Extra stuff- Youtube video explaining about critical paths if you need to learn more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF53ZZsP4ik&feature=emb_logo
