CHAPTER 7

Quantitative Project Scheduling Methods

The Critical Path Method

The critical path method provides a way to easily identify the fastest a project can be completed, given that the estimated durations of activities are accurate. Even though estimated durations are usually at variance with actual outcomes, the critical path method provides a useful analysis of which activities are time bottlenecks. The input to the critical path method is a list of each activity, its expected duration, and those activities that immediately precede this activity. “Immediately precede” in this case means that predecessor activities must be completed before the subject activity can begin, and there are no other activities between the predecessor and the activity ...

Get Information Systems Project Management now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.