Fundamentals of Project Management, 4th Edition

CHAPTER 8Producing a Workable Schedule

Once a suitable network has been drawn, with durations assigned to all activities, it is necessary to determine where the longest path is in the network and to see whether it will meet the target completion date. Since the longest path through the project determines minimum project duration, any activity on that path that takes longer than planned will cause the end date to slip accordingly, so that path is called the critical path.

Schedule Computations

Normally, you would let a computer do these computations for you, so you may wonder why it is necessary to know how to do them manually. My belief is that unless you know how the computations are done, you do not fully understand the meanings of float, early ...