Critical path method

Right.

And the mathematical engine that generates that baseline is the critical path method, or CPM.

Yes.

CPM.

You definitely don't.

So the second tool they rely on is CPM, which stands for the critical path method.

Right, CPM.

CPM is designed for massive, complex projects with interdependent tasks.

It Mathematically calculates the absolute longest sequence of critical tasks.

Meaning?

Meaning if you have ten departments working simultaneously, CPM tells you exactly which department's delay will cause the final launch date to slip.

So it allows you to prioritize resource allocation to those specific critical bottlenecks.

The lander has to actually work.

This is the critical path.

It's the critical path.

Everything else is downstream of it.

You could move Artemis IV to early 2028 on paper.

Human Lander Challenge 2027 opened in September for Lunar Communications Concepts.

Blue Origin has Blue Moon Pathfinder missions planned for 2027.

There's a huge amount of parallel work that's all feeding into the same critical path.

Yeah.

Second is mastery of management techniques, specifically the critical path method, which we are going to dive deep into.

Third is forward planning.

And fourth, crucially, people skills.

How do they scientifically guarantee they don't fall behind on day one? Because they can't just wing a highway bridge.

No, they rely on the science of project planning.

Specifically, the critical path method, or CPM.

So CPM is a three-phase procedure planning, scheduling, and time monitoring.

backing.

Critical path method, CPM, was developed in the late 1950s by Morgan Walker at DuPont and James Kelly at Remington Rand.

The work started in December 1956 at DuPont's Newark, Delaware complex.

They used a UNIVAC-1 computer to generate work schedules from task sequences and durations.

Then one operation runs late, a material release slips, or a resource becomes unavailable, and every promise downstream moves with it.

That’s where Critical Path Method becomes useful, because it helps you find the dependency chain that controls delivery right now—not the chain that looked sensible when someone first released the order.

Let’s follow one order through a disruption that looks completely normal at first.

A factory order isn’t a project plan until it is.

Yeah.

I always tell people if you're, if you're playing right with milestones and you're over 80%, you're beating all CPM schedules.

Period.

Yeah.

Yeah, the thing that breaks it, you're not wrong.

It's the, what do you take into that plan? If you don't have a process to create a planning horizon to bring in a sequentially grouped set of activities, then you're just lying to yourself.

It's hard to, it's easy to fall into that, but it's not really, the software doesn't do anything on its own, right? The way the industry evolved and the rules and the rituals that that evolved around using CPM in general, I think put the industry decades back.

Yeah, so tell me a little bit about your background.