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Vol. XI Issue V - May 2009
Project Management eJournal
VIEWPOINT
My World is a Square, so is my Critical Path!
By Peter Berndt de Souza Mello
I cannot understand the audacity of those who consider critical path to be a registered word. It is time for us to float! Give me some slack, for God’s Sake!
We are all aware of the importance of the Critical Path Method. That doesn’t give anyone the right to state that only if you find a sequence of activities with no float will you have the critical path for a project!
My project has a critical path the moment I even think of it for the first time! By establishing my desired initial date and my desired finish date, I already have a critical path. I simply don’t know yet what is in there.
Unfortunately, by searching the internet for a definition of “critical path”, I will find nine in ten references stating that “critical path is the sequence of activities with zero or no float”. Is that all? Will it always be true?
Read Complete Viewpoints Paper >>
About the Author
Mr. Peter Berndt de Souza Mello, PMI-SP, PMP, SpS is a Portfolio/Project Management consultant with X25 Treinamento e Consultoria, working within public and private sectors in Brazil, providing project management training and consulting services to governmental and industrial organizations, and presently working with a portfolio of 22 on-going projects in the Petroleum & Gas industry. His professional experience also includes project and risk management for large projects in the IT Industry and Government, and specialized activities for scheduling optimization based on critical chain and Success Driven Project Management concepts. He is responsible for bringing Spider Management Technologies to Brazil (a Russian PM company responsible for the development of methods and tools for the active simulation of scenarios and scheduling optimization). Peter actively participates in many events and activities of the PM community, with papers published and presented at PMI-DF (Brasilia/Brazil), PMI-SP (Sao Paolo/Brazil), PMI-ES (ES/Brazil), PMI Global 2007 (Mexico), PMI Global 2008 (Australia). He has also participated in other PMI initiatives, such as the Portfolio Role Delineation Study Group and the preparation for the PMBOK extension guide to Risk Management. He is on the board of directors of X25 Training and Consulting and Spider Management Technologies Brazil. It is possible to find seminars, papers and articles of Peter Mello at http://www.gestaoeprojetos.com; additional information can be found at www.x25.com.br/peter/index_us.htm (English) or www.spiderproject.com.br (Portuguese). Peter is also an International Correspondent for PMForum and PM World Today. Peter Mello can be contacted at peter.mello@gestaoeprojetos.com. |
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