Project Management and Scheduling
Project Management and Scheduling
This domain tests whether you can build and read a network schedule, control it against a baseline, and report performance honestly.
Core rules and concepts
- The work breakdown structure defines scope; activities carry durations, logic, and resources.
- Critical path method: a forward pass gives early start and finish, a backward pass gives late start and finish. Total float = late start minus early start. The critical path has zero total float and sets project duration.
- Free float is the delay an activity can absorb without moving any successor's early start; total float is not the same thing.
- PERT applies three-point estimates to uncertainty; CPM is deterministic.
- Earned value: CPI = EV/AC, SPI = EV/PV, and EAC is commonly forecast as BAC/CPI. Metrics are only meaningful against an approved baseline.
- No change without an approved change order; update the schedule itself, not only the report.
- Resource levelling usually extends duration; crashing adds cost; fast-tracking adds risk.
Worked example
Activity A takes 5 days. B (4 days) and C (6 days) both follow A. D (3 days) follows both B and C. Path A-B-D = 12 days; A-C-D = 14 days, so the project is 14 days and A-C-D is critical. B carries 2 days of total float, so a 2-day slip on B costs nothing. C has zero float, so a 3-day slip on C delays completion to 17 days - day for day.
Traps
Calling the longest path critical without checking that every logic link is real; confusing total and free float; reporting SPI on a project with no earned-value baseline; accepting verbal schedule direction; assuming levelling shortens a schedule.