Project Schedule Management (Critical Path Method)

Learn the purposes of project scheduling—defining activities and durations, mapping finish-to-start dependencies, and assigning responsibilities—while exploring tools like to-do lists, bar charts, flow charts, and network analysis.

Learn network analysis for project scheduling, including building a work breakdown structure, estimating task durations, assigning predecessors, and drawing a network diagram to find total duration and critical activities.

Explore the critical path method in project scheduling by examining finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-finish relationships, plus positive and negative lag and legs.

Explore how the critical path method predicts total project duration, identifies critical activities, and compares arrow and node network diagrams to model task relationships and delays.

learn how to build an activity on arrow diagram for critical path method, where every activity is an arrow, finish-to-start relationships drive the network, and predecessors and successors guide schedule.

Learn how dummy activities with zero duration help draw network diagrams and align dependencies, such as C depends on A and B while D depends only on B.

Draw the activity on arrow network diagram by mapping activities A–H with immediate predecessors. Use dummy activities to show links and prepare to compute total project duration using activity durations.

Master how to determine total project duration and critical path by building an activity-on-arrow network diagram and calculating earliest and latest times (es, ef, ls, lf) for each activity.

Calculate earliest times (es/ef) by forward passes, selecting the highest options; compute latest times (ls/lf) by backward passes, selecting the lowest to obtain total duration and the critical path.

determine the critical path by calculating each activity's float and identifying zero-float activities on the network diagram, using early start and late finish to safeguard project duration.

Learn to apply the activity on arrow method to build a network diagram, compute earliest and latest times, assess float, identify critical activities, and determine total project duration.

Learn to build the network diagram with activity on nodes (AON) and compare it with activity on arrow (AOA), to determine the critical path, earliest/latest times, and total project duration.

draw the activity on node (AON) network diagram, with each activity as a box showing its name and duration, linked by predecessor arrows to reveal total duration and critical path.

Learn to calculate ES, EF, LS, and LF using forward and backward passes on a node-based network, identify floats, and determine the critical path.

Calculate the float of activities in critical path method using activity on nodes and activity on arrow to determine total float and free float; identify critical activities via zero float.

Learn to draw the activity-on-node network diagram with relationships (finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-finish), assign durations, and compute earliest and latest times to identify the critical path and total project duration.

Move forward from left to right in the network diagram to calculate earliest times (ES, EF) using durations from predecessors, considering finish-to-start and start-to-start relationships, and selecting the highest-option path.

Calculate the latest time, late start, and late finish by moving backward through the network diagram, then identify critical activities with zero total float to determine the critical path.