Who can benefit from critical path analysis?

Critical path analysis (CPA) is particularly useful for businesses dealing with complex projects, such as in product development, or the construction industry. That’s because it essentially hones in on the project manager’s ‘critical path’.

This path is a series of linked parts of a project which must be completed in a particular order for the project to be successfully finished. They are critical as if there are any delays, or if certain parts are not completed, then it could potentially hold up the entire project, causing ‘bottlenecking’.

Some benefits include being able to complete projects in a timely manner, as well as helping to keep the project within budget. Project managers are usually responsible for using critical path analysis to organise a project. Some examples of projects which can benefit from CPA include:

• Construction and repair projects;
• Computer system design and troubleshooting;
• Designing and organising training and development for employees;
• Designing and launching products;
• Any complex projects that require a lot of time and financial investment.

What is critical path analysis?

If you want to keep costs down, and organise tasks into a coherent order, then critical path analysis can help you. The analysis process involves deciding which tasks are most related to each other, and which ones are independent of others. By organising tasks in terms of priority as well, you’re able to work out which of them require the most time and financial investment. Consider CPA as a kind of schedule, which helps you to meet deadlines while keeping your costs to a minimum.

Project managers may choose to rely on software in order to build their CPA visualisations, as this can enable them to create calculations on the fly – if they need to change a part of the project’s time or budget, it can recalculate this for the entire project. So, what does a CPA look like?

How to create a visualisation of critical path analysis

One of the most popular ways to create a visualisation of CPA is by using a Gantt chart. This helps to highlight and demonstrate what dependencies are prominent in your project. This means that you’re able to highlight which tasks are critical, and which are less critical.

Your CPA chart should demonstrate a flow between different tasks, showing which tasks need to be completed first before moving into the next. One strength of the CPA is that you can demonstrate which tasks need to be completed together before you are able to move onto the next task, or set of tasks.

Sequencing your critical path analysis

For your chart or project graph, you might begin by creating a different icon or symbol for each job that needs completing. This could be a letter or number. Each job is drawn as a circle, with the first job connected to a circle marked ‘start’ and a job with no successor linked to a circle marked ‘finish’. All other jobs are linked in a sequence with one another, in terms of the order that they need to be completed in.

Hence the name, a critical path analysis involves selecting the tasks which are most critical, and have the most dependencies (so are part of the longest chain of tasks in a project). Parts of the project which aren’t dependent on others, or those that aren’t critical do not usually add to your overall project’s duration.

Labelling time taken

You can also label each task with information about how long it will take to complete, specifying the time that you can allocate for each one. This can include:

• The earliest starting time;
• The latest starting time;
• The earliest finishing time;
• The latest finishing time;
• The float, or how long you’re able to postpone a project for without disrupting your overall timeline.

You can then decide on the overall duration time for the entire project, on the basis of how long these segments will take to complete.

How this can prevent bottlenecking

By visualising the time it takes to complete each project in the overall flow, this helps you to keep track of how quickly a project is developing. It also potentially helps to prevent bottlenecking – or congestion – during a project (one part of the project holds up the rest).

Bottlenecking can occur due to a lack of staffing, or budget, on a particular part of a project. By deciding what this should be from the start, you’re better equipped to manage this stage.

Pros and cons of using critical path analysis

One of the most clear benefits of CPA is that it can help you to prioritise different tasks, deciding on time and budget for each part of the project. Other pros of using this type of analysis is that it enables you to spot potential issues early in your project. This could be, for instance, if a project requires more time and budget than originally planned (such as if one task turns out to be particularly critical). Because of its flexibility, project managers can edit the path in order to change deadlines – CPA software available often allows its users to recalculate schedules on the fly.

However, there are some disadvantages to using this type of analysis, which may encourage you to look at other types of project management. As CPA focuses mainly on tasks which are most critical, this can potentially mean overlooking issues with tasks deemed to be less critical.

As CPAs are complex, there’s also room for human error in calculations. If one part of the path is inputted incorrectly, it would affect the entire outcome of the project. For example, if time required is inputted incorrectly, then it would lead to the entire time necessary for a project to be completed to be inaccurate. Because of their complexity, it can take time training staff in using this analysis technique for effective project management.

Critical path analysis is a useful tool for managing a project’s most critical components, factoring in the staffing, costs, and time needed to complete the entire chain of tasks. Another aspect of a CPA is that it allows you to prioritise crucial tasks while managing their dependencies. However, some weaknesses of CPA are its complexity, and its lack of focus on independent tasks.