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CMA Intermediate · Operations Management and Strategic Management · Project Management, Monitoring and Control

In PERT analysis, why is the probability of completion by a given date calculated using only the critical path's mean and variance?

PERT uses only the critical path because the longest path determines the project's completion time. Its summed expected times and variances are taken as the project's distribution. Non-critical activities have slack and are ignored in this approximation.

  1. ACritical path activities always have the smallest variance
  2. BThe project duration is governed by the longest path, so its distribution is taken to represent the projectCorrect
  3. CNon-critical activities have no time estimates
  4. DVariance of non-critical activities is always negative

Explanation

Project completion time is determined by the longest (critical) path, so PERT approximates the project duration by the sum of its activity means and variances. Critical activities need not have the smallest variance, and non-critical activities do have estimates; variance cannot be negative.

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