What is CPM Scheduling

CPM Scheduling stands for Critical Path Methodology and it is the primary method Primavera P6 uses to schedule projects. In this introductory lesson we'll explain the concept of "scheduling" and introduce you to the CPM Scheduling methodology.

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Today we're going to talk about perhaps the most important topic related to Primavera. The topic today is scheduling. It's essentially the foundation, it's what Primavera was built to do. Schedule. Now some folks think that what scheduling is and what a scheduling tool does is it allows me to schedule activities, but actually the reverse is true. The reverse is true and what happens is that we don't schedule the activities, we let Primavera schedule the activities. Ok. Important distinction.

Now, let's talk about definitions. What is scheduling? Well, in terms of what we're going to talk about today, scheduling is the process of assigning start and finish dates to activities in my schedule. Up to now we haven't done that in this course. We haven't actually assigned start and finish dates to activities and that's what scheduling does. When we invoke the schedule in Primavera, it goes off and it assigns appropriate start and finish dates to each activity in my schedule. So primavera is the tool that does the scheduling, we don't do it.

Alright, how does Primavera assign start and finish dates to our activities? Glad you asked. It does so using a very specific algorithm or a process. And what that algorithm does, by the way, it has a special name. It's called CPM scheduling. What that algorithm does is follow a preset process to look at the activities, relat...

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