Project Management

A critical path for a project is the series of activities that determines the most primitive time ( the longest path through the schedule or the shortest time) by which the project can be accomplished. Critical path is a term that most PM knows but do not fully understand it. It is the sequence of activities that must be started and completed on time for the project to be completed on time. Activities that are not on the critical path can be started earlier or completed later without jeopardizing the final completion date for the project. If one activity on the critical path is delayed by one day, the entire project will complete one day later (if only other activity on the critical path can be completed a day earlier). For e.g. If you have to shorten the overall schedule then you must speed up on the critical path. So it is critical to the success of the project to understand critical path.

Also, The critical path is simply all the tasks that determine the end date in project schedule. If one of those tasks is late by one day, then project end date will be extended by one day. Oftentimes, there will be tasks that are not on the critical path; this is due to the slack in the project schedule. We always can examine the Gantt chart and quickly identify the tasks that have some float compared to the tasks that have no slack.