Introduction to CPM network diagrams

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Project Management Tutorial: Introduction to CPM network diagrams.
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[@WHY70122]

you just don't know how awesome you are in explaining all these things :) thank you for making all these tutorials.

[@Engineer4Free]

WHY70122 Thanks for the nice feedback! Always glad to hear when things are working!

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[@azharhamza6654]

Your playlist has helped me to prepare for an upcoming exam, being a practitioner I recalled all my work on Gantt charts and now it's too easy for me to process and make a logical understanding from the lecture.

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[@muthuteepikham6138]

You really helped like God for me.. I'm making notes for my husband to help him in preparing for pmp exam. Your tutorials are really awesome😊

[@supersakib62]

Thanks a lot. Critical path, total and free float - these concepts are clear to me now because of you.

[@halletatube1981]

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[@DSharma2011]

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[@Engineer4Free]

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[@sumankc3046]

thank you for making this series of video

[@aliabdulrazaq512]

VERY GOOD IN EXPLAINING , GLAD IN ALL.

[@gh5030]

Thank you so much, all your videos are amazing,simple and clear explanation..

[@Engineer4Free]

Thanks Ghazwan!!! =)

[@hanial7720]

I think there is a confusion about the concepts. AON & AOA are both diagraming networks of CPM. CPM is the technique used to analyze the networks. PDM is an advanced version of the AON.

[@d.a.7892]

I'm new, haven't even taken my exam yet. It's scheduled, I'm studying. I went through over 70hrs of courses, and never once had CPM diagram shown to me. I'm looking at this and the advantage of this over PDM is escaping me. Can anyone explain the material advantage of using a CPM over a PDM diagram? All the CPM appears to do, to me, is add complexity and confusion. What advantages are worth all this?

[@aliabdulrazaq512]

US-FULL, THANK YOU

[@WHY70122]

I have a question about the very last example please. you mention that activities A, B and C would have to converge into one single node. So the way I think about it is that we would have to add more activities to make that happen?

[@Engineer4Free]

WHY70122 Hey, I should have actually drawn it out... Look in the video at the 3 horizontal arrows that I scribble out at the end. According to CPM network diagram conventions, I need to end the project on one single node. If I was to draw a final single node to the right, Node 4 is the point in time when activity A is done, Node 5 is the point in time when activity B is done, Node 6 is the point in time when activity C is done. But all I really care about the point in time when all of them are done, so I would have to draw one more node to the right and connect them all to it. If I used normal arrows, this would mean I have just added 3 new activities, which is wrong, so I would have to use "dummy arrows" to represent the logic only and not create activities that don't exist. By doing this I would now have 3 extra dummy arrows, but another thing we try to do with CPM diagrams is use the minimal amount of dummy arrows. Instead of drawing activity A, B, C as horizontal arrows going to their own nodes, then connecting al those to one final node to show the end of the project, we can just simply make the A, B, C converge to the single final node and not bother drawing an node for the end of each one individually. Basically it would just by 3 nodes stacked vertically, with arrows pointing into one node, like the opposite of what I drew to for the proper way to start a project with 3 commencing activities. Please look at this video: www.engineer4free.com/4/how-to-draw-a-cpm-network-diagram The second example in the video is exactly the case that I am attempting to explain here... It's much easier to show in a video than to type with no images!

[@kabbashirley2607]

I don't understand the last demonstration where you finally diverge the activities from one source, which is (1) such that it is distributed to (2,3 and 4) mean while in its previous representation activities (2,3 and 4) don't start from (1)

[@Engineer4Free]

The left side projects are drawn as Activity on Node (AON) and the right side projects are the equivalent drawn as Activity on Arrow (AOA). In the AOA, the numbers are not activities. Only the letters are activities. The numbers are points in time, before and after activities. With AOA (I call it CPM in this video, but AOA is technically more correct). The numbers are called nodes, and in AOA, each arrow (activity) must have a unique start and finish node. No two arrows can point from the same start to the same finish, so we need to introduce dummy arrows (dummy activities) that do nothing other than allow for no two arrows to have the same start and finish node. Watch videos 10, 11, 12 here: engineer4free.com/project-management for a few more examples and explanations. Also note that on the left side (AON), there are no numbers, that style doesn't require them.

[@kabbashirley2607]

Thanks very much for your clarification.

[@maramhumaid4973]

Thank you.. it is helpful

[@Engineer4Free]

You're welcome Maram!

[@Ladylee942]

I love your videos, I am battling to understand AOA :(

[@Engineer4Free]

Hey Cornelia, yeah sorry when I made these videos I used the terms PDM and CPM, rather than AON and AOA. It was a relic of the vocabulary that was used when I first learned, but basically any time I say PDM, you can replace it with AON, and any time I say CPM, you can replace it with AOA. To clarify, AON = Activity on Node, and AOA = Activity on Arrow. Sorry for any confusion that has caused.

[@Ladylee942]

ok, so to understand properly, does AON and AOA calculate to the same critical path total ?

[@tusharrana2129]

I would like to ask you, how to identify which method should we use by observing question?

[@Engineer4Free]

If your professor does not specify what kind of network diagram to use, I would go with a PDM Activity on Node diagram.

[@salifuahmed2991]

How to the L.S.T, L.F.T AND E.S.T in the forward and backward pass

[@motivation_hubPJ]

Hi thanks a lot you saved a ton of work for my exam you are really great please continue this work

[@Engineer4Free]

You're welcome! The rest of the PM videos are here: engineer4free.com/project-management 🙂

[@abdoullahboye3444]

CPM uses AON whereas PERT AOA ; also PDM shouldn’t be presented as an alternative of CPM but PERT yes ; your explanation may confuse people I think ; thanks anyways for the great effort !

[@Engineer4Free]

Yeah better to purely use AON and AOA rather than CPM and PDM. I wish I could change the wording in this video without re-doing it, but it will have to suffice as is.

[@annaraihana6858]

I luv him

[@xXxSkyViperxXx]

wait a minute. why does my prof's slides say that cpm is the activity on node while pert is activity on arrow, but this one is the complete opposite

[@Engineer4Free]

Hey, there is a lot of confusion around this, and I could have been more clear when I made the video. Ultimately there are two styles of network diagram: Activity on Arrow (AOA) and Activity on Node (AON). Just clarify explicitly with your prof if they are expecting AOA or AON for any given problem, and ignore the rest of the jargon like CPM and PERT, as many people throw those words around differently. Once you know for sure if your prof is looking for AOA or AON then just proceed as normal.

[@kaandogan2888]

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[@lucutes2936]

Where is the slack tutorial

[@Engineer4Free]

engineer4free.com/project-management videos # 13,14,15

[@lucutes2936]

2023

[@techforhad]

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[@Engineer4Free]

Thanks for the positive vibes Creative Logo Maker =) =)

[@techforhad]

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