Most explanations show you a finished network diagram and a red line through it. This one makes you build the diagram yourself, click by click — then hands you the sliders so you can break it, fix it, and finally get lead vs. lag straight.
Every Critical Path Method calculation is just these five numbers, computed for every task in a project. Once these click, the rest of this page is just watching them move.
The soonest this task can begin, given what has to finish before it.
The soonest this task can be done, working forward from day one.
The latest this task can start or finish without delaying the whole project — worked backward from the end date.
How many days this task can slip before it delays the project. Zero means no room at all.
The longest chain of zero-float tasks start to finish. It sets the project's minimum possible duration.
Design → Build → Ship (outlined in red) has zero float — that's the critical path. Polish has 2 days of float: it can start late or run long by up to 2 days without moving the ship date.
13 tasks, one marketing team, one launch date. Generic on purpose — the same logic applies whether you're launching a product, a campaign, or a process change. This exact task list drives the interactive diagram below.
| ID | Task | Duration | Depends on |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Market & Competitor Research | 5d | — |
| B | Positioning & Messaging | 3d | A |
| C | Creative Concept & Brand Assets | 6d | B |
| F | Media Plan & Ad Buying Setup | 4d | B |
| G | Influencer & PR Outreach | 5d | B +1d lag |
| H | Sales Enablement & Training | 4d | B |
| D | Website / Landing Page Build | 8d | C +2d lag |
| E | Content Production (Video & Copy) | 7d | C |
| I | Paid Campaign Assets Finalized | 3d | E, F |
| J | Launch Event Logistics | 6d | D −3d lead |
| K | Launch Readiness Review | 2d | D, G, I, J |
| L | Launch Day | 1d | K, H |
| M | Post-Launch Performance Review | 3d | L |
Three relationships are tagged with a lag or a lead — hold onto those, Section 4.0 is built around them.
Click through the build one task at a time, run the backward pass, light up the critical path — then drag durations and watch it move for real. Nothing here is pre-rendered; every number below recalculates live.
Try it — stretch Website Build (D) by 2 days. It's on the critical path, so it has zero room: the whole launch date slips.
Try it — stretch Content Production (E) by exactly 3 days. Nothing slips yet — but watch a second critical path appear through Paid Campaign Assets.
Try it — stretch Sales Enablement (H) by 10 days. Still nothing moves — it has 17 days of float, the most slack in the whole plan.
A project can have more than one critical path at the same time. The moment a second chain's float hits zero, it's just as critical as the first — miss that, and you'll keep watching the wrong path while the real risk slips past you.
The single most common CPM mistake: treating lag/lead as something a task has. It doesn't — it belongs to the arrow between two tasks. Drag the slider below and watch what that arrow is actually doing.
Three relationships in Project Nova already carry a lag or lead — look for the small pill on the arrows into G, D, and J. Each pill has its own +/− stepper. Try pushing the Website→Event Logistics arrow from its −3 day lead back to 0 — that overlap was quietly buying the project 3 days of schedule compression.
This page teaches the method. The Advanced Gantt Chart Toolkit is the working Excel file — critical path engine, baseline vs. actual tracking, and resource leveling, ready to run on a real schedule.
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