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You are the project manager of the GHQ Project. You have to prioritize activities for the effective management of project. For this, you have created a network diagram to schedule a set of project activities as shown in the figure:
Based on this figure, what is the critical path of this project?
The activity nodes of path ACFGJ equals 26 days and is the longest path to completion - it is the
critical path.
ACFGJ= A(4)+C(8)+F(4)+G(6)+J(4)=26
What is a critical path?
A critical path is the sequence of project activities, which add up to the longest overall duration. This
determines the
shortest time possible to complete the project. Any delay of an activity on the critical path directly
impacts the planned
project completion date (i.e. there is no float on the critical path). A project can have several,
parallel, near critical paths. An
additional parallel path through the network with the total durations shorter than the critical path is
called a sub-critical or
non-critical path.
These results allow managers to prioritize activities for the effective management of project
completion, and to shorten the
planned critical path of a project by pruning critical path activities, by 'fast tracking' (i.e., performing
more activities in
parallel), and/or by 'crashing the critical path' (i.e., shortening the durations of critical path activities
by adding resources).
Answer option A is incorrect. ABEHJ takes only 22 days to complete; it is not the critical path.
ABEHJ=A(4)+B(5)+E(2)+H(7)+J(4)=22
Answer option C is incorrect. ADGJ takes only 15 days to complete; it is not the critical path.
ADGJ=A(4)+D(1)+G(6)+J(4)=15
Answer option B is incorrect. ACFIJ takes only 23 days to complete; it is not the critical path.
ACFIJ=A(4)+C(8)+F(4)+I(3)+J(4)=23