What exactly does one mean by Critical Path Analysis (CPA) ?
In the late 1950s, the Critical Path Method (CPM) was developed at Dupont for managing projects. The main focus of Critical Path Analysis (CPA) is to plan projects so they are completed on time within budget constraints. CPA uses a deterministic model, i.e. the duration of the activities and the cost are known with certainty. (While any practicing project manager may not agree with the deterministic nature of the tasks in a project, that is the way CPA functions.) The stepwise CPA approach to project planning is as follows: 1. Split the project into subproject’s and further split the subproject’s into activities or tasks. 2. Identify the duration taken to complete a task. 3. Identify the resources needed to complete a task. 4. Identify how this task depends on other tasks. 5. Once the tasks, their dependencies on other tasks and the duration is identified, the following parameters for every task needs to be arrived at: ยท The earliest start time for the task (EST). Starting from the ear
