Which technique identifies the longest sequence of dependent tasks that determines the project duration?

Which technique identifies the longest sequence of dependent tasks that determines the project duration?

• A. Program Evaluation and Review Technique
• B. Critical Path Method
• C. Waterfall method
• D. Chaos engineering

Answer: (B)

The idea this question tests is identifying the sequence of dependent tasks that determines how long the project will take. This is exactly what the Critical Path Method does. You map all activities with their durations and how they depend on each other, then analyze the project as a network. Through a forward pass you find the earliest start and finish times; through a backward pass you find the latest start and finish times without delaying the project. The total slack for each task comes from the difference between its latest and earliest times, and the path with zero slack—the critical path—is the longest chain of dependent tasks. Since there’s no room to delay any task on that path, it sets the minimum project duration. If any task on this path slips, the whole project is delayed. The other options relate to different ideas or contexts (Waterfall as a linear development model, chaos engineering as resilience testing, and PERT as a probabilistic variant), but the technique that explicitly identifies the longest dependent sequence that fixes the project duration is the Critical Path Method.

The idea this question tests is identifying the sequence of dependent tasks that determines how long the project will take. This is exactly what the Critical Path Method does. You map all activities with their durations and how they depend on each other, then analyze the project as a network. Through a forward pass you find the earliest start and finish times; through a backward pass you find the latest start and finish times without delaying the project. The total slack for each task comes from the difference between its latest and earliest times, and the path with zero slack—the critical path—is the longest chain of dependent tasks. Since there’s no room to delay any task on that path, it sets the minimum project duration. If any task on this path slips, the whole project is delayed. The other options relate to different ideas or contexts (Waterfall as a linear development model, chaos engineering as resilience testing, and PERT as a probabilistic variant), but the technique that explicitly identifies the longest dependent sequence that fixes the project duration is the Critical Path Method.