CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera

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Scheduling Works
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NOVEMBER 15, 2013 BY MICHAEL LEPAGE — 9 COMMENTS

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You’ve probably heard of CPM

Scheduling at some point. While you
may feel like you don’t need to
concern yourself with it, there’s
decent likelihood that you’ll be up to
your armpits in the Critical Path
Method once that big project gets
rolling. Yes, Primavera P6 does run
all sorts of fancy algorithms when you
hit F9 – but having at least a fundamental knowledge of how CPM Scheduling
works is going to help you go far as a planner/scheduler.

What is CPM Scheduling?

First things first: CPM stands for Critical Path Methodology. The Critical Path
Methodology is a mathematical algorithm for scheduling project activities.

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

In simpler terms, I like to say that “CPM scheduling assigns dates to activities.” But
it does a bit more than that as well.

CPM Scheduling produces 3 distinct pieces of information:

CPM assigns dates to project activities

CPM calculates your project’s Finish Date
CPM reveals your project’s Critical Path

That’s some good stuff you’ll want to know about your project.

Primavera P6 uses the Critical Path Method to schedule work activities. Here’s
how.

Essentials and Foundation

As I mentioned, CPM Scheduling is a mathematical process and being so, it has a
list of pre-requisites to meet before it can work it’s magic.

Before you can perform the Critical Path Method (or run the scheduler in Primavera
P6), here’s what you need:

an Activity list
Duration estimates for each activity in the list
linkages between activities that describe the order of execution

The first 2 items are fairly obvious. But it’s those linkages that play a very important
part in the process. It’s linkages that transform your list of activities into a network
of inter-dependent nodes that can have many paths through from the start to the
finish.

Just Model it

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

To help you better understand your project’s network, you can see at it as a PERT
diagram.

Pert Diagram courtesy Wikipedia Commons

A PERT diagram uses arrows and nodes to model your project’s activities in a
network – a series of activities linked to each other.

The Scheduling Process

So how does the whole scheduling thing work, right?

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

The Critical Path Methodology process goes through your project activity by activity
twice.

It starts with the first activity and moves forward – this is called the Forward Pass.
For each activity, it assigns or calculates that activity’s Early Dates.

Early Dates the most optimistic start and finish dates for your project’s work
activities.

The Backward Pass comes next. This time you start at the last activity in your
network, and move backward assigning dates to each activity, until you reach the
first activity in the network. These dates are called – you guessed it – the Late
Dates.

Late Dates define the latest your activities can start and finish without extending the
project finish date.

It sounds confusing, but you NEED 2 sets of Dates – both Early and Late – to come
up with a project’s Critical Path.

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

Finding Your Critical Path

To find a project’s Critical Path, we need to calculate Total Float for each activity.
Total Float is the difference between the Late and Early Dates.

Total Float = Late Start – Early Start (or Late Finish – Early Finish), Total Float is a
measure of how much scheduling flexibility an activity has.

After Total Float is calculated for each activity, you will find that many activity have
Total Float = 0d. And it’s those 0d-Float activities that define your project’s Critical
Path. Simply follow the path of activities where Total Float = 0d and your Critical
Path will show itself.

Flight Chart image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Applying CPM Scheduling

We all know that knowledge is power. Well, I like to say that applied knowledge is
power.

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

Although the details of CPM Scheduling seems like it’s only for academics, arming
yourself with it will ensure you’re not caught off-guard when a clients asks you for
early dates or why an activity is critical. Then, you can dazzle them with your own
backward pass calculations.

Filed Under: CPM Scheduling in Primavera P6, P6 EPPM, P6 Professional Tagged With: CPM scheduling

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About Michael Lepage

Michael is an avid project controls blogger and is the Chief Learning
Officer here at Plan Academy. Michael has taught 1000s professionals how to
use project controls software like Primavera P6 over the past 10 years through
his online courses and tutorials. Michael is a member of AACE, the Guild of
Project Controls and holds his PMP certification from PMI.

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

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Comments

Raphael M. Dua says:

November 17, 2013 at 8:16 pm
Michael, the diagram you show from Wikipedia is not a PERT diagram, is
a standard Arrow diagram as we invented with Kelly and Walker back in 1956/7

A PERT diagram was created by Booz Allen Hamilton , based on an Arrow

network, with the addition of Three Time Estimates (as it was called then, now
Three Point)
The Wiki diagram clearly only show one time for the activity duration. The
estimated duration was a + 4b + c / 6

P6 and most products (except Micro Planner X-Pert) cannot run arrow diagrams
they use Precedence

Sorry to be picky, but we must keep to the correct technology

Raf

Reply

de jong says:
May 13, 2017 at 7:15 am
Raf,

Activity on arrow, Activity on Node, Precedence , PERT are nowadays

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

hardly known anymore. Computer Scheduling has taken over without

realising were it all came from.

jef

Reply

Michael Lepage says:

November 19, 2013 at 9:42 pm
Hi Raf,
Thanks for the correction – Interesting that I took it right from Wikipedia’s PERT
page. I don’t mind the pickiness.
Michael

Reply

Raj Kishore Amatya says:

February 18, 2014 at 6:58 am
I am a civil engineer, have a great interest in project planning. I will
definitely take advantage of all the available resources. Will be in contract in
future. Thank you.

RKA

Reply

Yantisa says:
August 14, 2014 at 8:50 am

https://www.planacademy.com/cpm-scheduling-101-primavera-scheduling-works/[10/1/2017 5:36:52 PM]

CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

hello,
can you help me?
I need tutorial primavera 6 R8.3 using constraint (ES,EF,LS,LF),
because, I try ,but always failed…
can you send to my email
okta.child1@gmail.com

Thanks

Reply

prashant singh says:

July 23, 2015 at 12:10 am
Dear Sir,

For finding critical path only relation ship and duration to be fixed in a schedule or
we must put a “must finish by constraint ” at the last activity of schedule?
Kindly reply.
Also if we want to put 2 or three acitivities to be on critical path from the satrt of
the project in primavera, how to put it?
your reply will immense help for me
regards

Prashant

Reply

Michael Lepage says:

July 23, 2015 at 1:24 pm
Prashant,
There’s no need to put a must finish by constraint on the last activity of a
schedule to find the critical path. You can apply the Critical Path filter (or

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CPM Scheduling 101: How Primavera Scheduling Works

preferably the Longest Path filter) to show only the critical path. Or if your
project has a deadline, apply it in the Must Finish By date field – on the
Projects screen, highlight your project, and view the Dates tab to apply
the Must Finish By date here. This is preferable to putting a constraint on
the last activity in the schedule.

Also, it’s not recommended to force activities to the critical path – in fact
it’s pretty much a sin. Read this post on why –
https://www.planacademy.com/can-force-activity-onto-projects-critical-
path/
Michael

Reply

Busani Khubone says:

March 24, 2017 at 4:42 am
I went for the interview about Primevare scheduling and I only knew a bit
of MS Project .I would need an advise how to answer questions.

Reply

Busani Khubone says:

March 24, 2017 at 4:43 am
How to answer Premavera interview questions

Reply

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