Duration and Stack of Each Activity

D.

The network scheduling techniques listed in the question are commonly used in project management to help plan and schedule project activities. Each of these techniques has its unique features, advantages, and disadvantages. Let's discuss each one of them:

A) Program evaluation review technique (PERT):

PERT is a project management technique used to estimate the time it will take to complete a project. It is designed to help managers identify the critical path of a project and estimate the time required to complete each activity. PERT uses a probabilistic approach to estimate activity durations, which means that the duration of each activity is estimated as a range of possible values, rather than a single value. The three estimates used in PERT are optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely.

B) Precedence diagramming method (PDM):

PDM is a project management technique that uses boxes, also known as nodes, to represent project activities and arrows to show the dependencies between them. The arrows represent the logical relationships between the activities, which means that an activity cannot start until its predecessor activity is completed. The PDM diagram shows the sequence of events and the dependencies among the project activities.

C) Arrow diagramming method (ADM):

ADM is a project management technique that uses arrows to represent the activities and nodes to show the dependencies between them. In ADM, the activities are represented by arrows, and the nodes represent the starting and ending points of the activities. The arrows show the flow of activities from the beginning of the project to the end. ADM is also known as activity on arrow (AOA) or activity network diagram.

D) Critical path method (CPM):

CPM is a project management technique used to identify the critical path of a project. The critical path is the longest sequence of activities in a project that must be completed on time to ensure that the project is completed on schedule. CPM uses a network diagram to represent the project activities, and it calculates the early start, early finish, late start, and late finish times for each activity. The critical path is the sequence of activities with zero slack, which means that any delay in these activities will delay the entire project.

To answer the question, the network scheduling technique that is focused mainly on the duration and stack of each activity is D) Critical path method (CPM). CPM determines the critical path, which shows the longest sequence of activities that must be completed on time to ensure that the project is completed on schedule. CPM calculates the early start, early finish, late start, and late finish times for each activity, which helps project managers to identify the critical path and allocate resources and time accordingly.