Question

1. Develop a Gantt Chart based on Table below.
2. On the same Gantt chart, use a legend to show the project plan and the (actual) project progress.
3. Discuss the significance of the two paths or what they mean to the project.

Activity	immediate predecessors	normal time	budget	organizational unit	percent complete
A	-	4	$90	U1	100
B	A	2	$35	U2	100
C	A	6	$75	U2	40
D	B	3	$60	U1	80
E	C	10	$80	U1	0
F	-	2	$40	U2	100
G	F	5	$55	U1	50
H	F	7	$80	U2	100
I	D,E,G	1	$40	U2	0
J	H	10	$100	U1	0

Answer 1

Gantt chart is following:

Resource loading chart:

Actual progress is shown on the Gantt chart as below:

Completion status is indicated by green color bar.

Four alternative paths in the project and their respective duration are following:

A-B-D-I	10
A-C-E-I	21
F-G-I	8
F-H-J	19

The longest path is the critical path, which is A-C-E-I

Significance of the critical path is that, its duration is the duration of the entire project.

Another significance of the critical path is that all the activities on critical path have 0 slack. Therefore, any delay in any of the critical path activities results in a delay in overall project.

The other three paths are non-critical. Slack of any path is equal to the difference between the duration of the critical path and the duration of that path. Slack of any activity is equal to the difference between the duration of the critical path and the duration of the longest path on which that activity lies.

Significance of the non-critical path is that, resources from non-critical activities can be diverted to expedite critical activities, up to the limit of slack of non-critical activity. This may expedite the completion of critical activities and eventually the entire project may be completed on or before time.