Critical Path Method (CPM)

The Critical Path Method (CPM) is one of several related techniques for doing project planning. CPM is for projects that are made up of a number of individual "activities." If some of the activities require other activities to finish before they can start, then the project becomes a complex web of activities.

CPM provides the following benefits:
* Provides a graphical view of the project.
* Predicts the time required to complete the project.
* Shows which activities are critical to maintaining the schedule and which are not.
CPM models the activities and events of a project as a network. Activities are depicted as nodes on the network and events that signify the beginning or ending of activities are depicted as arcs or lines between the nodes.

STEPS IN CPM PROJECT PLANNING:
1. Specify the individual activities : From the work breakdown structure, a listing can be made of all the activities in the project. This listing can be used as the basis for adding sequence and duration information in later steps.
2. Determine the sequence of those activities : Some activities are dependent on the completion of others. A listing of the immediate predecessors of each activity is useful for constructing the CPM network diagram.
3. Draw a network diagram : Once the activities and their sequencing have been defined, the CPM diagram can be drawn. CPM originally was developed as an activity on node (AON) network, but some project planners prefer to specify the activities on the arcs.
4. Estimate the completion time for each activity : The time required to complete each activity can be estimated using past experience or the estimates of knowledgeable persons. CPM is a deterministic model that does not take into account variation in the completion time, so only one number is used for an activity's time estimate.
5. Identify the critical path : The critical path can be identified by determining the following four parameters for each activity:
* ES - earliest start time.
* EF - earliest finish time.
* LF - latest finish time.
* LS - latest start time.
6. Update the CPM diagram as the project progresses : As the project progresses, the actual task completion times will be known and the network diagram can be updated to include this information. A new critical path may emerge, and structural changes may be made in the network if project requirements change.

CPM LIMITATIONS :
CPM was developed for complex but fairly routine projects with minimal uncertainty in the project completion times. For less routine projects there is more uncertainty in the completion times, and this uncertainty limits the usefulness of the deterministic CPM model.