Critical Path Method Quiz

What is the Critical Path Method (CPM) used for?

• Calculating total project costs

• Measuring progress against plans

• Managing day-to-day operations in all departments

• Analyzing, planning, and scheduling large, complex projects

Which of the following is an essential characteristic for analysis by CPM?

• Jobs that must be performed in technological sequence

• Continuous-flow process activities

• Jobs that cannot be started and stopped independently

• Jobs that do not have a well-defined collection

What is the critical path in a project?

• The path with the most number of jobs in a project

• The shortest path in time from Start to Finish

• The longest path in time from Start to Finish

• The path with the least number of jobs

What is the purpose of finding ways to shorten jobs along the critical path?

• To shift the critical path to include more jobs

• To reduce the over-all project time

• To increase the total project time

• To reduce the time required to perform noncritical jobs

What is the significance of total slack in the Critical Path Method?

• It indicates the minimum time necessary to complete the entire project

• It is the amount a job can be delayed without delaying the early start of any other job

• It is the difference between a job’s early start and its late start

• It represents the maximum amount of time a job can be delayed without delaying the project

What is the main advantage of using CPM for decision making?

• It provides a simple and direct way to display the interrelations in a project

• It eliminates the necessity of careful time studies for all jobs

• It enables the manager to quickly study the effects of 'crash' programs

• It focuses attention on the small subset of jobs that are critical to project completion time

What is the purpose of the SPAR program in CPM?

• To determine the critical path in a project

• To identify the jobs with positive free slack

• To schedule projects having limited resources

• To calculate the cost of carrying out a project

What is a recent version of PERT called?

• PERT/COST

• PERT II

• PERT III

• PEP

What is the purpose of including economic factors in the analysis of CPM?

• To select an optimum schedule based on total project costs

• To calculate the cost of carrying out a project

• To identify the jobs with positive free slack

• To determine the critical path in a project

What is the significance of free slack in the Critical Path Method?

• It represents the maximum amount of time a job can be delayed without delaying the project

• It indicates the minimum time necessary to complete the entire project

• It is the amount a job can be delayed without delaying the early start of any other job

• It is the difference between a job’s early start and its late start