The Critical Path Method (CPM) is a popular scheduling technique used in project management. CPM helps you plan your project, analyze and control its progress effectively, and meet its deadline.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to use CPM for product management and take a closer look at how it can help improve your product development process.

What is the Critical Path Method?

Originally developed by DuPont in the 1950s, the Critical Path Method is used for planning, scheduling and controlling projects. It allows you to identify critical activities that must start and finish on time in order to complete a project on schedule.

In CPM, your project is represented as an interconnected graph of tasks that must be completed in a specific order. Activities are represented as nodes on the graph and have an estimated time required to finish them. Dependencies between activities are shown as lines that connect the nodes of the graph.

By analyzing this network diagram, you can calculate which activities will impact the overall duration of your project if they aren’t completed on time. You can also determine which activities are dependent on each other and the sequence they should be done in to avoid delays. This can give you a better understanding of how changes in one area of