Critical Path Analysis & PERT

Critical Path Analysis Charts &

PERT
• Critical Path Analysis and PERT are powerful tools that
help you to schedule and manage complex projects.
They were developed in the 1950s to control large
defense projects, and have been used routinely since
then.
•  
• As with Gantt Charts, Critical Path Analysis (CPA) helps
you to plan all tasks that must be completed as part of a
project. They act as the basis both for preparation of a
schedule, and of resource planning. During management
of a project, they allow you to monitor achievement of
project goals. They help you to see where remedial
action needs to be taken to get a project back on course.
 Critical Path Analysis & PERT
• The benefit of using CPA over Gantt Charts is that
Critical Path Analysis formally identifies tasks which must
be completed on time for the whole project to be
completed on time, and also identifies which tasks can
be delayed for a while if resource needs to be
reallocated to catch up on missed tasks.
• The disadvantage of CPA is that the relation of tasks to
time is not as immediately obvious as with Gantt Charts.
This can make them more difficult to understand for
someone who is not familiar with the technique.
• A further benefit of Critical Path Analysis is that it helps
you to identify the minimum length of time needed to
complete a project. Where you need to run an
accelerated project, it helps you to identify which project
steps you should accelerate to complete the project
within the available time. This helps you to minimize cost
while still achieving your objective.
 Critical Path Analysis -How to
use the tool:
• As with Gantt Charts, the essential concept
behind Critical Path Analysis is that you cannot
start some activities until others are finished.
These activities need to be completed in a
sequence, with each stage being more-or-less
completed before the next stage can begin.
These are 'sequential' activities.

• Other activities are not dependent on completion

of any other tasks. You can do these at any time
before or after a particular stage is reached.
These are non-dependent or 'parallel' tasks.
 Critical Path Analysis -How to
use the tool:
• Figure 1. Task List: Planning a custom-
written computer project
NB: The start week shows when resources
become available. Whether a task is
parallel or sequential depends largely on
context.
 Dependent
Figure 1 Task Possible start Length Type
on...
1. High level analysis week 1 5 days sequential
2. Selection of hardware platform week 1 1 day sequential 1
3. Installation and commissioning of week 3 2 weeks parallel 2
hardware
4. Detailed analysis of core modules week 1 2 weeks sequential 1
5. Detailed analysis of supporting week 1 2 weeks sequential 4
utilities
6. Programming of core modules week 4 3 weeks sequential 4
7. Programming of supporting week 4 3 weeks sequential 5
modules
8. Quality assurance of core modules week 5 1 week sequential 6
9. Quality assurance of supporting week 5 1 week sequential 7
modules
10.Core module training week 7 1 day parallel 6
11.Development of accounting week 6 1 week parallel 5
reporting
12.Development of management week 6 1 week parallel 5
reporting
13.Development of management week 6 2 weeks sequential 5
analysis
14.Detailed training week 7 1 week sequential 1-13
15.Documentation week 4 2 weeks parallel 13
 Critical Path Analysis
• Plot the activities as a circle and arrow diagram
Critical Path Analyses are presented using circle and
arrow diagrams.
•  
• In these, circles show events within the project, such as
the start and finish of tasks. Circles are normally
numbered to allow you to identify them.
•  
• An arrow running between two event circles shows the
activity needed to complete that task. A description of
the task is written underneath the arrow. The length of
the task is shown above it. By convention, all arrows run
left to right.
•  
 Critical Path Analysis
• An example of a very simple diagram is shown
below:
This shows the start event (circle 1), and the
completion of the 'High Level Analysis' task (circle
2). The arrow between them shows the activity of
carrying out the High Level Analysis. This activity
should take 1 week.
 Critical Path Analysis
• Where one activity cannot start until another has
been completed, we start the arrow for the
dependent activity at the completion event circle
of the previous activity. An example of this is
shown below:
 Critical Path Analysis
• Here the activities of 'Selecting Hardware' and 'Core
Module Analysis' cannot be started until 'High Level
Analysis' has been completed. This diagram also brings
out a number of other important points:
• Within Critical Path Analysis, we refer to activities by the
numbers in the circles at each end. For example, the
task 'Core Module Analysis' would be called 'activity 2 to
3'. 'Select Hardware' would be 'activity 2 to 4'.
• Activities are not drawn to scale. In the diagram above,
activities are 1 week long, 2 weeks long, and 1 day long.
Arrows in this case are all the same length.
• In the example above, you can see numbers above the
circles. These show the earliest possible time that this
stage in the project will be reached. Here units are whole
weeks.
 Critical Path Analysis
• A different case is shown below:
Here activity 6 to 7 cannot start until the other three activities (12 to 6, 5 to 6 and 9 to 6)
have been completed.
Full Critical path
 Critical Path Analysis
• This shows all the activities that will take place as part of
the project. Notice that each event circle has a figure
below it as well as a figure above. This shows the latest
time that it can be reached with the project still being
completed in the minimum time possible. You can
calculate this by starting at the last event (in this case
number 7), and working backwards.

• You can see that event 4 can be completed any time

between 1.2 weeks in and 7.8 weeks in. The timing of
this event is not critical. Events 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 to
5, 5 to 6 and 6 to 7 must be started and completed on
time if the project is to be completed in 10 weeks. This is
the 'critical path' - these activities must be very closely
managed to ensure that activities are completed on time.
If jobs on the critical path slip, immediate action should
be taken to get the project back on schedule. Otherwise
completion of the whole project will slip.
 Crash Analysis
• You may find that you need to complete a
project earlier than your Critical Path Analysis
says is possible. In this case you need to take
action to reduce the length of time spent on
project stages.
• You could pile resources into every project
activity to bring down time spent on each. This
would probably consume huge additional
resources.
• A more efficient way of doing this would be to
look only at activities on the critical path.
 Crash Analysis

• As an example, it may be necessary to complete the

computer project in figure 5 in 8 weeks rather than 10
weeks. In this case you could look at using two analysts
in steps '2 to 3' and '3 to 4', and two programmers
instead of one in step '4 to 5'. This would shorten the
project by two weeks, but would raise the project cost -
doubling resources at any stage often only improves
productivity by, say, 50%. This occurs as time spent on
coordinating the project consumes time gained by
increasing resource. 
• Note that in this example, shortening the project by two
weeks brings activities '3 to 11', '11 to 12' and '12 to 6'
onto the critical path as well. 
 Crash Action
• As with Gantt Charts, in practice project
managers tend to use software tools like
Microsoft Project to create CPA Charts.
Not only do these ease make them easier
to draw, they also make modification of
plans easier and provide facilities for
monitoring progress against plans.
Microsoft Project is reviewed at the top of
our left hand title bar.
 Gantt Chart
• A Gantt chart created using Microsoft Project (MSP). Note (1) the critical
path is in red, (2) the slack is the black lines connected to non-critical
activities, (3) when using MSP, you must use the task ID when labeling
predecessor activities, and (4) since Saturday and Sunday are not work
days (as described above) some bars on the Gantt chart are longer if they
cut through a weekend.
 PERT (Program Evaluation and Review
Technique )
• PERT is a variation on Critical Path Analysis that takes a slightly
more skeptical view of time estimates made for each project stage.
To use it, estimate the shortest possible time each activity will take,
the most likely length of time, and the longest time that might be
taken if the activity takes longer than expected.

• Use the formula below to calculate the time to use for each project
stage:

• shortest time + 4 x likely time + longest time

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6

• This helps to bias time estimates away from the unrealistically short
time-scales normally assumed.
•
Critical Path Analysis & PERT
• Key points:
• Critical Path Analysis is an effective and powerful method of
assessing:
• What tasks must be carried out
• Where parallel activity can be performed
• The shortest time in which you can complete a project
• Resources needed to execute a project
• The sequence of activities, scheduling and timings involved
• Task priorities
• The most efficient way of shortening time on urgent projects.
• An effective Critical Path Analysis can make the difference between
success and failure on complex projects. It can be very useful for
assessing the importance of problems faced during the
implementation of the plan.
•  
• PERT is a variant of Critical Path Analysis that takes a more
skeptical view of the time needed to complete each project stage.