critical path

It is a wise and generally accepted management principle to put a focus on the constraining or limiting factor of a system that determines the system’s goal. In project management and scheduling, the scheduling objective is the objective during the construction of a project baseline schedule.

The Project Scheduling Game (PSG) is an IT-supported simulation game that illustrates the characteristics of scheduling a real-life project with discrete time/cost trade-offs in the project activities as described in this article. The project is based on a sequence of activities for a large real-life project at a Belgian company. The participant (manager) of the game has to construct a dynamic project schedule for the discrete time/cost trade-off critical path method. By allocating nonrenewable resources (i.e. money) to a particular activity, the manager decides about the duration and corresponding cost of each network activity. The manager schedules the project with the negotiated project deadline in mind, focusing on the minimization of the total project cost. 

The Critical Path Method (CPM) is a project scheduling technique to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project. It incorporates a trade-off between an activity’s duration and cost and relies on concepts similar to the program evaluation and review technique (PERT, see “The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT): Incorporating activity time variability in a project schedule”).

The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a project scheduling technique to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project. It incorporates activity duration variability and relies on similar concepts as the critical path method (CPM, see “The Critical Path Method (CPM): Incorporating activity time/cost trade-offs in a project schedule”).

The critical path is a series of project activities with a zero slack value connected by precedence relations (see “Scheduling projects: How to determine the critical path using activity slack calculations?”). It contains all activities that are critical for the project duration and results in the generally accepted critical path rule: