Critical Path: The Chain That Sets Your Deadline

Lesson notes

Key points

• The Critical Path Method models a project as a network of activities linked by precedence, meaning which tasks must finish first.
• A forward pass finds each activity's earliest start, and a backward pass finds the latest start that keeps the deadline.
• Total float, or slack, is latest start minus earliest start; activities with zero float form the critical path.
• The critical path is the longest path through the network, so its length equals the minimum project duration.

Takeaway: Zero-float activities form the longest path and set the deadline.

Activity networkForward & backward passTotal floatLongest path