Critical Path The author of this response is asked to look at a project management scenario. There are two questions posed with that scenario that the author of this response is expected to answer. The first question is what the critical path is for RockFest and how long the project will take given the paths involved. The second question asks the author what activities the author of crash if step B ends up taking five weeks instead of the currently projected three weeks.

Questions Answered

The critical path of the project is A-B-D-E-F-G-O. The duration of the project under that critical path would be 34 weeks. There are other project arcs that are fairly close to the critical path in terms of length, but the one listed above is at least four weeks longer than all of the others. The second closest project arc is A-B-P, which comes to 30 weeks. A-T-U-X is 27 weeks, A-B-H-I-J is 28 weeks and A-B-D-L-m is 26 weeks....

Everything else is 22 weeks or less. As long as the critical path does not lag, the overall project should take a tad less than eight months.
The other question asks the author what can or should be crashed if step B takes five weeks instead of three. Since B. is in the critical path, as noted above, this would cause the project to from 34 weeks to 36 weeks if nothing is done to compensate. Obviously, if B. lags too long, something after (or before) that in the critical path would have to be shortened by 2 weeks to compensate.

Crashing step A is a non-starter since one cannot have a concert without a site finalized. The event not go on if the site is not completely in order. The author of this report will come back to the website (step D) in just a second. The TV deal really needs to be in order so step E is not really optional. Step F has to happen since having a director is not optional. Step G is also needed…