BASICS OF CPM & PERT

TOOLS FOR
PROJECT MANAGEMENT

 CPM: A NETWORK ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE USED TO

PREDICT PROJECT DURATION BY ANALYSING
WHICH SEQUENCE OF ACTIVITIES HAS THE LEAST
AMOUNT OF SCHEDULING FLEXIBILITY (LEAST
FLOAT). EARLY DATES ARE CALCULATED BY
FORWARD PASS USING A SPECIFIED START DATE.
LATE DATES ARE CALCULATED BY MEANS OF A
BACKWARD PASS STARTING FROM A SPECIFIED
COMPLETION DATE (PROJECTS EARLY FINISH DATE )

PERT: PROGRAM EVALUATION & REVIEW TECHNIQUE:

AN EVENT ORIENTED NETWORK ANALYSIS
TECHNIQUE USED TO ESTIMATE PROJECT
DURATION WHEN THERE IS HIGH DEGREE OF
UNCERTAINTY WITH INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY
DURATION ESTIMATES.

PHASES OF PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
PLANNING
SCHEDULING
CONTROLLING

Importance of Planning

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,

For want of a shoe, the horse was lost,
For want of a horse, the rider was lost,
For want of a rider, the battle was lost,
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for want of a horse-shoe nail.
If man does not know to what port he is
steering, no wind is favourable to him

PLANNING
Setting the objectives of the project and
the assumptions to be made.
SWOT Analysis.
Development of Work Breakdown
Structure (W.B.S.)
Estimating the activity durations, their
resources requirements and costs.
Establishing the interdependence
relationships between the activities.

SCHEDULING
Start and finish times for each activity
Critical path on which the activities require
special attention
Slack and float for the non-critical paths.

CONTROLLING
Make periodical progress reports.
Reviewing the progress.
Analysing the status of the project.
Management decisions regarding
updating, crashing and resource allocation

NETWORK LOGIC & TERMINOLOGY

Activity: It is a physically identifiable part
of a project which consumes time and
resources. Activities are obtained by the
work breakdown into smaller work
contents.
Event: The beginning and end points of an
activity are called events or nodes.
Event is a point in time and does not
consume any resources.
Activity
i
j

PATH:
An unbroken chain of activities
connecting the initial event to some other
event is called a path.
NETWORK:
It is graphical representation of logically
and sequentially connected arrows and
nodes representing activities and events
of a project. Networks are also called
arrow diagrams.

NETWORK CONSTRUCTION
Firstly the project is split into activities.
Start and end events of the project are then
decided.
After deciding the precedence order, the
activities are put in a logical sequence by
using graphical notations.

Logical sequence checked through:

(1) What activities must be completed
before a particular activity starts?
(2) What activities follow this?
(3) What activities must be performed
concurrently with this?
Predecessor Activities: Activities which
must be completed before a particular
activity starts.
Successor Activities: Activities which must
follow a particular activity

 Time flows from left to right . Arrows pointing in

opposite directionare to be avoided.
Dummy: An activity which only determines
the dependency of one activity over the other,
but does not consume any time is called a
dummy activity.
Partial Dependency: In certain situations the
starting of an activity depends upon the partial
completion of a predecessor activity. In such
cases the predecessor activityis further broken
into two parts and dummy is used to make the
connection.
Looping and dangling cases are not permitted.

 CPM is deterministic in nature and activity

oriented with single time estimate.
PERT is probabilistic in Nature and event
oriented with three time estimates.
TIME ESTIMATES:
OPTIMISTIC TIME ESTIMATE (to): The shortest
possible time required for the completion of an
activity, if all goes extremely well.
PESSIMISTIC TIME ESTIMATE (tp): The maximum
possible time the activity will take if everything
goes bad.
MOST LIKELY TIME ESTIMATE (tm): It is the time
an activity will take if executed under normal
conditions.

SOME PROBABILITY RELATIONS

Mean,(u)

: (to + 4tm+tp) / 6

Standard deviation,

: ( tp-to)/6
2

Varience,(V)

Expected time = Mean

(tp-to/6)

CRITICAL PATH
The path which takes place the maximum
of time is called the critical path and
activities on the critical path are called
critical activities.
The Critical path calculation consists of:
Forward Pass Calculations &
Backward Pass Calculations.

 CRITICAL PATH INTRACANCIES: IN A PROJECT

NETWORK THE SERIES OF ACTIVITIES WHICH
DETERMINES THE EARLIEST COMPLETION OF
THE PROJECT. CRITICAL PATH WILL GENERALLY
CHANGE FROM TIME TO TIME AS ACTIVITIES
ARE COMPLETED AHEAD OF OR BEHIND
SCHEDULE. ALTHOUGH NORMALLY
CALCULATED FOR ENTIRE PROJECT , CRITICAL
PATH CAN ALSO BE DETERMINED FOR A
MILESTONE OR SUBPROJECT. THERE CAN BE
MORE THAN ONE CRITICAL PATHS IN A
NETWORK. CRITICAL PATH IS USUALLY DEFINED
AS THOSE ACTIVITIES WITH FLOAT LESS THAN
OR EQUAL TO A SPECIFIED VALUE OFTEN ZERO.

Activity on Arrow: Activity and duration of the activity are shown

in arrow
5

A
1
0/0

is

2
10

10/10

B
25

20

F 48/9
10 3
7
G
15 53/93
4

Activity

38/38

58/93

D
60

3
35/35

58/93

Event

I
9
98/98

10

10

J
11

2
108/108

110/110

The Critical Path for this network is: A-B-C-D-I-J.

The events on the critical path have zero slack.
Dummy activity has no duration
The total duration for the completion of the project
110 days based on the critical path.