Identification of the Critical Path

Question: What is the critical path? What problems can you identify? How can you improve on this plan? Answer: Activities Duration ID dates to be purged 1 Estimate Volume 7 Determine resources requirements 2 ID disposition of charts 30 Set budget 30 Gain Approval 3 Obtain resources 1 Purge files 14 Identification of the Critical Path PERT chart is a project monitoring tool which has been used for finding out the critical path of a project which is useful for finding out the shortest path for completing the project successfully. The network path with longest total duration should be the critical path. Critical path is the shortest path which needs to be followed by the project manager for completing the project in a successful way. According to this network diagram there are two paths in this network diagram which have been. The paths have been highlighted below Path 1 duration: 10 days (As duration plus Bs duration plus Cs duration) Path 2 duration: 78 days (Ds duration plus Es duration plus Fs duration plus Gs duration) In this case path 1 is the critical path as if there is any delay at all in the path 1 then the entire project will be delayed as the time taken for the predecessor activities is more, then the entire project will be late. From the network diagram which have been given in the pdf it has been seen that there are two paths and its direction has been given in this way. Path 1: A-B-C which is of 10 days Path 2: D-E-F-G-H which is of 78 days So the path 1 is the critical path for the entire project as the path 1 is the shortest path to be followed by the project manager for completing the project within time. Hence the critical path for this project is A-B-C. Problems identified in the chart The problem which has been identified in the chart is that the path 1 is not completed as the path is an incomplete path as the path as the start data but it does not have the end date. According to this network diagram the path should be completed as in this way like. It starts from the activity A joins with the activity B. After that it joins with the activity C and after that it should join with the last activity so the path does have that end, but there is a big problem as the slack time is not consistent for the path (Dennis et, al 2015). Improvement in the Plan There is only one improvement in the plan which is that if the activity B is to be connected with the last activity and activity C will be connected with the last activity then there would be three paths formed for the network diagram as a result the path for reaching the last activity becomes easier and the project takes a very lesser time to complete it (Pyron, 1994). References Dennis, A., Wixom, B., Roth, R. and Roth, R. (2015).Systems analysis and design. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Pyron, T. (1994).Using Microsoft Project 4 for Windows. Indianapolis, Ind.: Que Corporation.