Hotspot webinar - critical path analysis
Taught by Hugo Newman · AI tutor support included
In this 69-minute hotspot webinar, you'll master critical path analysis (CPA)—a core project management technique that often intimidates E2 students. Starting from first principles, the session breaks down what appears to be a complex visual model into manageable, logical steps.
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In this lesson
- 0:00 Welcome to critical path analysis
- 0:58 Why critical path analysis matters
- 8:00 Understanding the Feynman technique approach
- 12:02 Basic concepts: activities and nodes
- 19:45 Drawing network diagrams from tables
- 31:34 Dummy activities explained
- 38:26 Calculating EST and LST step by step
- 55:37 Float, slack and critical path identification
- 1:06:09 Practice tips and exam preparation
About this lesson
You'll learn why CPA matters for scheduling projects with interdependent activities, then work through the foundational concepts: activities, nodes, durations, and logical relationships between tasks. The webinar guides you through plotting network diagrams from scratch, interpreting predecessor tables, and handling dummy activities—a common source of confusion. You'll then move into calculating earliest start times (ESTs) and latest start times (LSTs) using step-by-step methodology, working left-to-right and then right-to-left through increasingly complex examples. The session culminates in identifying slack (or float) and the critical path itself—the sequence of activities that cannot be delayed without extending the overall project timeline. Throughout, the approach mirrors the Feynman Technique: explaining complex concepts in plain language without unnecessary jargon, building from simple examples to more sophisticated scenarios. By the end, you'll be able to rapidly interpret network diagrams in an exam setting, calculate activity slack, and confidently identify which tasks are truly critical to project completion. The session includes practical study tips and guidance on tackling typical E2 exam questions on this topic.
Duration: 69m
Transcript
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