The Critical Path to a Successful Battleship Project

Every complicated project is in fact a relay race. You can't start your part until the person before you finishes or at least gets close enough that you can do what you need to do. The critical path works like this: There are certain steps in the project that will slow down the entire project and everyone is waiting on before it can be completed. But there are other tasks, for example, getting the steel delivered that drive the entire project. One day's delay on delivering the steel equals at least one day’s delay on the whole project. That path, the path that you cannot make up for, the irreducible minimum, that's the critical path.