In CPM scheduling, what defines the critical path?

In CPM scheduling, what defines the critical path?

• A. The sequence of activities with zero total float that determines project duration.
• B. The path with the most resources assigned to it.
• C. The longest continuous path in calendar time regardless of float.
• D. The path that has the greatest number of activities.

Answer: (A)

In CPM scheduling, the critical path is the sequence of activities with zero total float that determines the project duration. Total float is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the project's finish. Activities on this path have no slack, so any delay pushes the finish date. The concept comes from performing a forward pass to find earliest start/finish and a backward pass to find latest start/finish; the difference between these times for each activity is the total float. If a path has zero float along all its activities, that path fixes the project duration and is the critical path. If multiple paths share zero float, there are multiple critical paths. The other options don’t define criticality: resource loading isn’t what makes a path critical, a long calendar-time path can still have slack, and having many activities doesn’t by itself determine criticality.

In CPM scheduling, the critical path is the sequence of activities with zero total float that determines the project duration. Total float is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the project's finish. Activities on this path have no slack, so any delay pushes the finish date. The concept comes from performing a forward pass to find earliest start/finish and a backward pass to find latest start/finish; the difference between these times for each activity is the total float. If a path has zero float along all its activities, that path fixes the project duration and is the critical path. If multiple paths share zero float, there are multiple critical paths. The other options don’t define criticality: resource loading isn’t what makes a path critical, a long calendar-time path can still have slack, and having many activities doesn’t by itself determine criticality.