3. The Critical Path Method

This chapter makes an effort to tighten the gap between the project scheduling literature and the needs of project managers and schedulers through the use of a practical computerized simulation game. Project managers are constantly confronted with the intricacy of scheduling a complex real-life problem in an efficient way when they often have little knowledge of the state-of-the-art in the algorithmic developments or inherent characteristics of the scheduling problem they solve. A game has been developed that serves as a training tool to help practitioners gain insight in project scheduling. The well-known critical path method (CPM) with activity time/cost trade-offs is introduced to the reader, and used as a project scheduling technique in the game.