Question

In the Critical Path Method network diagram, what is unique about the early start and early finish date of each node on the critical path?

Answer 1

First we will need to understand what is critical path method by a brief explanation to give answer of your questions:

Critical Path Method is a techqnique to plan schedules timeline of various kinds of projects belonging to construction, IT, research etc. In this we have sequence of activities which has to be done one after another from start to end of the project which form a network path.

Critical Path : In the network of activities ,the longest duration of a path is known as critical path. Any delay in this path will lead to the delay in whole project.

Early Start and Early Finish

We use forward pass to find early start and early finish and start from beginning to the end. The formula is given by :

• Early Start of the activity = Early Finish of predecessor activity + 1
• Early Finish of the activity = Activity duration + Early Start of activity – 1

Now we will understand what is unique about early start and early finish:

To know how much freedom we have in our schedule we calculate early start and early finish. After calculating this you will get to know about how much you can move your start dates for an activity without causing delay. For example if early start and finish for an activity is 7 and 15 respectively while late start and late finish for an activity is 12 and 20 respectively, now you can see that even if you start after 7 but before 12, you can still be on time to complete the activity.