The Critical Path in Project Management

After putting a lot of effort into project planning, suddenly you observed that one of your tasks took much longer than expected, and during that time a new assignment pop-up.

Also, in such a situation one of the important team members took leave for a few days.

Source: Projectmanager

But you shouldn’t let those events frustrate you, with the Critical Path analysis you can address all these issues.

“A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder.” — D. Meyer, Illinois Construction Law

If something comes in the team’s way, you can look for the alterations without causing any delay in the milestones or missing any deadlines.

What is a critical path in Project Management?

A critical analysis is a method of project management.

It creates the shortest timeline for your project, looking at the tasks needed to complete the deliverables, along with the estimated time needed for each step, dependency of the task, and the final milestones.

It is a methodology planned to handle your project in an intelligent way.

With a Critical path, you get the idea about the tasks which can be a reason for the project fall.

Source: Planacademy

It will show you the timeline of the Gantt chart, and the task in the critical path turns red. The tasks that are not on the critical path remain in their original color.

“No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we’re not solving the right problem, the project fails.” – Woody Williams

How do you find the Critical Path?

It’s time to find the critical path in your projects, but how?

To help you identify the critical path in your projects here is a step by step description:

1. Outline the Project scope

As you start finding your critical path, you need to break down what’s involved in the projects.

Breakdown the project structure into:

• Identify the task: Figure out the details of the project, have a discussion with the stakeholders, and identify the tasks that are necessary for the project.
• Put the task in order: As you get the idea about the task that needs to be included in the project. The next thing you need to do is put them in order. This will help to identify the dependent task.
• Duration for task: To find out the critical path in your project, you need to figure a duration for each task. This will help to identify the longest path.

2. Identify the potential path

After identifying the project scope, it’s time to know the paths and strings. A project holds many connected and dependency tasks. So you need to identify these tasks.

It might look like a lot of work to be done.

But it can be done easily with Project Management Tools like “Orangescrum”.

3. Identify the critical path

To find out the critical path, you need to identify the task with the longest sequence. The longest sequence in your project management is the critical path in your project.

Can the Critical Path change During the Project?

A project has many series of interrelated tasks. The team tries to complete the tasks, so as to reduce the stress of critical paths.

The development in the project reduces the critical path in a task or it might bring a new critical path in your task. So, the critical path in the task changes with the development of the projects.

The project scope either reduces or you might need to assign more people to your task. You can get more than one critical path in a task. It usually changes with the progress in the work.

How can a Critical Path help in Project Management?

In the present era, we handle many important projects. These projects are not easy to handle. It needs a lot of planning and execution.

But your planning fails because of some of the difficulties in the tasks, now these difficulties can become a crucial point for the fallback of your project.

But thanks to the project management systems that provide the critical path methods.

The critical path method helps you to measure the critical path in a project. You can identify the potential obstacles within the project timeline.

After identifying, analyze the components of the project that need to be completed and create solutions to resolve those issues.

What are the benefits of using a critical path?

Using the critical path methods helps the project managers to successfully deliver the projects before deadlines.

With Critical path analysis, you are getting many benefits such as:

• It helps you to demonstrate the graphical representation of your project
• You can identify the most important tasks that you need to manage
• By using Critical Path methods you can compare the plan and the actual progress
• All the critical activities can be identified that needs more focus
• You can plan, schedule, and manage your project

So, with Critical Path Methods, you can get these numerous benefits. By following these methods you can get more engagement that adds value to your project management.

FAQ:

What is Critical Path Analysis?

The Critical Path Method is a step-by-step technique used by the management for project planning.

With critical path methods, you can identify the most critical and non-critical tasks to evaluate the problems in the task and analyze them.

What are the benefits of Critical Path Analysis?

Using Critical path analysis you can get numerous benefits such as:

1. You can demonstrate the graphical representation of data
2. Identify the critical activities in the task and put more focus.
3. Identify the important task you needs to manage

Is Critical Path Analysis and Critical Path Method the same?

Yes, Critical Path Analysis and Critical Path Methods are the same used in project management.

Why does the Project manager use Critical Path Methods?

By using CPM or Critical Project Methods, the project manager gets all the important information in a project like:

1. Add limited resources to the objectives of the project and evaluate the value of the critical path.
2. You can manage the task which needs to be controlled.
3. The reason for the failure of the project can be identified and quickly put an effort into it.

Conclusion

The Critical Path is an incredible benefit to your project. It is key to get your project delivered successfully within the deadlines.

With Critical Project management, you can calculate the critical path in the project.

It helps you to identify the obstacles visible in the project timeline. Once you identify you can work on it to make the project successful.