The origins of CPM

a personal history

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ARTICLE Time Management , Methodology February 1989

PM Network
By Kelley, James E. | Walker, Morgan R. | Sayer, John S.
How to cite this article:
Kelley, J. E., Walker, M. R., & Sayer, J. S. (1989). The origins of CPM: a personal
history. PM Network, 3(2), 722.

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ACTIONS
We are indeed fortunate to have this contribution to the literature of project
management from Jim Kelley and Morgan Walker, the authors of one of the
seminal articles and major techniques for project planning and scheduling. As
they state in the article, they were at the right place at the right time but they
also accomplished the objectives of their project.
They state, also, that it is necessary to understand the environment that existed
at Du Pont and at Remington Rand Univac at the time of their efforts. Included in
this environment were two men who played significant roles in their respective
organizations, Granville Read, Chief Engineer at Du Pont and John Mauchly at
Univac. To help describe this environment, we are also fortunate to have an
addendum, Du Pont Engineering Department in the 1950's: An Environment for
New Ideas, from John Sayer, Manager of the Integrated Engineering Control
Group, a think tank group at Du Pont at that time. This was the group of which
Morgan Walker was a member and which nurtured the project which led to the
development of CPM.
It has been our pleasure to meet all three of these gentlemen in the past year.
They have all expressed their interest in PMI in our conversations and in the
profession that has grown with it.
A Personal History
By: James E. Kelley, Jr. and Morgan R. Walker
The Critical Path Method (CPM) is the real, honest-to-goodness, outgrowth of a
progressive management's active search for better ways to do things.
The first part of this history covers the development period, a period of 27
months, from December 1956 through February 1959.[1] During this time the
CPM development went through the five overlapping phases, priced out in Table
1.
The second part relates the events which followed the successful development
efforts and how the concepts were expanded and commercialized.
The last part is, perhaps, a postscript, sharing some feelings and reflections on
the impact of the project in a variety of human endeavors.
Follow these progressive investments as the authors relive their personal
experiences launching CPM, and reveal the effort it took to develop and
introduce the new product.

THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD

THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME

Morgan: It was coming on to Christmas, 1956, when I was asked to join the
Engineering Department's Integrated Engineering Control Group (IEC) at E.I.
duPont de Nemours, Newark, Delaware. This was really something of a plum
job. See what you can do about scheduling, is about all John Sayer had to say
to me. I must admit to being nervous about being able to do anything at all. It
didn't help that several friends advised me that nothing could be done and that I
had committed political suicide by accepting the assignment.
Sayer's small study group of senior engineers was the inspiration of the late
Granville M. Read, then Chief Engineer and perhaps the most dynamic leader
I've ever known personally. For many years Mr. Read operated a very large
engineering business at Du Pont over 3,000 permanent people plus a high
payroll for construction forces.[2] Annual operating budget -- about $90 million.
He was also responsible for an annual investment budget of over $500 million in
Du Pont facilities, plus projects for the U.S. Government. That's a lot of money in
1956 dollars.
That fall Mr. Read set up IEC under Sayer, to report directly to him and his staff,
with the very specific mission to take a fundamental look at better ways of doing
the engineering business. Sayer was particularly admonished not to come up
with incremental methods improvements. Since design and construction are the
 biggest part of Du Pont's engineering business, effort was concentrated on two
basic problem areas:

Information storage and retrieval, and

Planning, estimating and scheduling.
The objective of the first was to stop redesigning the wheel -- to solve the
engineering problem only once. Contributions by Du Pont people were perhaps
as significant to this work as they were to the development of CPM . It was a
technical information service, and a common language vehicle to communicate
cost and technical information among projects. Many Du Pont people who were
involved spun off into companies such as 3 Documentor Sciences.
However, it was the second problem that would be our major focus over the next
couple of years, and change the lives of a lot of people, particularly Jim Kelley's
and mine.
TABLE 1. CPM DEVELOPMENT COST ESTIMATE

DUPONT REMRAND

MANDAYS DOLLARS MANDAYS DOLLARS

ProblemRecognition 30 3,200 -- --

Seek Support & Develop Work Plan

Solicit Support 12 1,300 -- --

Math Model & Algorithm 23 2,500 60 6,500

Develop Work Plan 12 1,300 5 600

47 5,100 65 7,100

Initial Test of Theory

Develop Project Data for Test 40 4,400 -- --

Develop Computer Programs 45 5,000 120 13,000

Test Analysis & Recommendations 15 1,700 10 1,100

100 11,100 130 14,100

First Live Test

Arrangements Test 35 3,900 -- --

Orientations Course 40 4,000 -- --

Analyze & Network Project 280 31,000 -- --

Develop 1103A Program 20 1,900 50 11,600

Re-analyze Project 150 17,400 5 1,500

Analysis & Recommendations 40 4,400 -- --

565 52,600 55 13,100

Additional Tests & Developments

Continue updating first project 60 8,600 -- 3,000

Start two new projects 120 18,400 -- --

Promotion 270 29,800 -- --

Extensions of Theory 50 5,500 50 5,400

1105 Programs 75 8,300 100 15,000

Louisville Turnaround 125 14.700 -- 1.000

700 85.300 150 24.400

GRANDTOTAL 1,442 167,700 400 58,700

* Dollars reflect direct and indirect labor costs and, where relevant, costs for
computer usage, all pegged to the 1956 dollar. The actual CPM development
costs are not available. This reconstruction was made by re-estimating the work
using the authors' records and best recollection of what happened. If anything,
the estimates are probably low.
By the time I joined IEC, Philip Hayward and John A. Robinson, two
mathematicians from the Engineering Services Division, had already looked at
the construction scheduling problem. In their report of December 20, 1956 they
proposed that the UNIVAC I computer -- we had one at Newark -- be tied into Du
Pont's scheduling process for engineering and construction projects. They
indicated a reasonably feasible plan to accomplish the proposal, including some
mathematical tools needed. They estimated 20 man months ($40 to $50
thousand in 1956 dollars) would be needed to complete the detailed theory,
develop the computer programs, and apply the method to some test projects.[3]
It may seem puzzling that Hayward's and Robinson's work did not become the
basis of the CPM development. Jim thinks they were on the right track. They
certainly had the capability, and might have given the world a third model of
project scheduling, different from PERT's probability model or CPM's parametric
model. But their group at Du Pont was self-supporting. It seems silly when you
think about it today, but under Engineering Department policies they would have
had to find support outside the department in order to continue their
development work. Hayward and Robinson may have been only one of many
groups pondering the same scheduling problem. The fact that PERT was
developed independently of CPM, shows not only that the time was ripe for
CPM, but given the opportunity, any number of different people might have
invented it.
After some consideration I concluded that, in the long run, computers were the
only tools that could handle the massive amounts of design and construction
planning data, and that any system concept would ultimately depend on the
economics of computers. This was somewhat foreign to Engineering
Department thinking in 1956. But I was one of the few in the department
fortunate enough to have had direct experience not only in design and
construction, but with computers too. It was a certainty that we'd have to go
outside the department for ideas to make the breakthrough Mr. Read hoped for.
At that time John Mauchly had a group of clever computer applications people at
Remington Rand Univac in Philadelphia (currently absorbed into Unisys through
several mergers) who might have the capability of picking up where Hayward
and Robinson left off. We leased one of their computers, so they were always
glad to accommodate reasonable requests for help as a way of keeping
competition -- spelled IBM -- at bay.
MODELING THE PROBLEM
Jim: You don't often get the opportunity to do significant work on an important
problem. My chance came in early January, 1957, when John Mauchly called
me into his office to meet Morgan. John had formed our group, the Univac
Applications Research Center (UARC) a couple of years earlier. The initial thrust
-- develop Generalized Programming, an assembler/compiler for the UNIVAC.
Grace Hopper's group was across the hall doing similar things, but focused on
business instead of scientific stuff -- her work eventually evolved into COBOL.
But, with Mauchly's wider horizons we branched out into information retrieval
and operations research. The latter, my bailiwick, fell heir to Morgan's inquiry.
It happened that I was to give a paper on the road-grading problem at a Case
Institute operations research conference at the end of January. Road
construction had been expanding rapidly since the previous June, when the first
interstate highway bill was signed into law. We wanted a piece of the action. The
scheduling problem would broaden our potential market for computers if we
could but solve it. Morgan gave me a copy of the Hayward-Robinson memo
(sans figure and technical appendix), and hinted broadly that he expected to
give IBM a chance to solve the problem too.(Really, Morgan, I didn't need that
kind of motivation.)
To get additional mileage from the public exposure at Case, a simple linear
program formulation of the construction scheduling problem was added to the
published version of the paper.[4] This useful exercise suggested alternate ways
of looking at the problem. Thanks to Morgan's prodding, my project report of
March 5, 1957, could read A model of the Du Pont construction scheduling
problem has been formulated and a method of solution has been proposed.
Plans are being made to jointly develop the scheduling system with Du Pont.
No commitment had been made as yet on either side. But the pressure was
there to work out the details of the computer algorithm.
This mathematician was a pretty naive ivory tower type who looked at the world
through linear programming -- not at all concerned with the practical aspects of
construction. It was probably a good thing. Simplifying assumptions could be
made without any qualms of conscience. Morgan's quick course in construction
left the impression that any construction activity had an optimal, or normal,
way to be performed -- a preferred method of given crew, duration, cost, etc. If
one expedited the activity, the direct cost would increase -- at least it shouldn't
decrease. Each activity was assumed to have a minimum expedited time, its
crash duration, with a corresponding direct cost.[5]
Since changes in the variable direct costs were expected to dominate the
indirects, it was argued -- rightly or wrongly -- that the optimal way to do the
project was to perform all the activities according to the normal method. With
this plan there is a shortest project duration which equals the duration of the
most time consuming, connected chain of activities in the network. We called
this longest time chain the main chain of the network. The PERT developers
gave this concept the beautiful name of critical path.[6]
The problem of mathematical interest presents itself when you try to expedite
that project time at minimum increase in direct cost. Begin by expediting the
particular critical job that raises the project direct cost at the minimum rate. As
this job's duration is shortened, other jobs become critical too, and the choices
of which ones to expedite -- and by how much -- become more complex. The
trick -- treat the problem as a parametric linear program[7] -- the project duration
being the parameter -- to generate a series of minimum direct cost project
schedules, each with a shorter project duration than the previous one. Figure 1
shows the cost curve for a test run of the George Fisher Works, made
September 25, 1957. A detailed job schedule was computed for each dot on the
curve. Note how almost a month could be cut from the project at a trivial
increase in direct cost over the absolute minimum cost. The small slope at the
minimum turned out to be a typical characteristic of projects.

Figure 1. CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE SUMMARY

Figure 2. THE GEORGE FISHER WORKS, the test network used for the first
test of CPM.
It was totally impractical to solve the parametric model by general methods,
even on the largest computers of that era. Fortunately the model has special
properties, similar to those of the classical transportation problem. The latter had
been worked and reworked during the mid-1950's by many people in the linear
programming game. Some really neat tabular methods were devised to solve it.
The hope was to find a similar method to reduce computer processing to the
bare bones.
By April 25 a completed write-up of CPM was available. It provided a statement
of assumptions, and a nontrivial, worked example -- but no proofs .[8] Morgan
took an earlier draft to Newark and had Curt Berry help him make a work
estimate.[9] We, too, made tentative plans to put our programmer, Papken
Sassouni, and two others, Les Shaw and Sheila Quinn, from Sales Support, on
the job.
..it is necessary to take a strategic look at the entire job when planning, and to
firm up this strategy, in order to establish practical work sequences. Almost
everyone agreed this should be the initial planning step, but seldom was before
CPM. CPM forced the issue.
The big meeting came in Newark, Delaware, on May 7. We walked out smiling,
with a joint project in our hands. But everyone was pretty well pre-sold by
Morgan. (Thanks again ole buddy.) RemRand programmers would code the
algorithm,[10] coordinated by Du Pont's Mai Demurjian. Du Pont's engineers
would formulate a small project to use as the first test case. At the next
milestone, September 1, we were to be ready to test the initial system.
THE FIRST PROJECT NETWORK
Morgan: How does one start to draw the first project network? Jim's model
made us describe a project in a very precise mathematical way -- at least, with a
rigor never before attempted. Initially we thought that even large projects might
be described with but a few hundred activities. Contemporary bar charts seldom
got much larger. So when Les Shaw told us the capacity of the UNIVAC I
program would be about 200 activities we were not particularly concerned.
For a test case we selected a small mixing and packaging plant that IEC had
developed the previous year. Design gave us three drawings for analysis -- a
plot plan, an arrangement, and an elevation and section. One of our active
construction organizations furnished a Project Analysis. We called it the Fisher
Works, giving my administrative boss, George Fisher, a lit-tie playful notoriety.
Jim Sage and I tackled the job of developing the units of work and their
sequence.
We had two major sequence considerations. First, the general approach to the
job -- should we erect the tank farm simultaneously with the building? Because
the site was small and interference would be a problem if the tank farm was
started at the same time, we began the building work first and delayed the tank
farm until later.
In addition, the second floor reactor was larger than the second floor opening.
Should we leave a construction opening in the wall, or should we drop the
reactor through the roof? Design, for quite unrelated reasons, could not provide
a better design for construction. We elected to put the roof on after installing the
reactor so as to provide a smoother work flow.
These details are of interest because they showed us, right from the beginning,
that it is necessary to take a strategic look at the entire job when planning, and
to firm this strategy, in order to establish practical work sequences. Almost
everyone agreed this should be the initial planning step, but it seldom was
before CPM. CPM forced the issue.
Now came the details of developing two descriptions for each work unit -- the
normal and crash methods -- specifying crafts, construction materials and
equipment, drawings and major installed equipment, and determining delivery
restraints. At this point we called on the Estimating Group to extend the costs for
each work unit. These first efforts were completed July 24,1957. We had a
network of 61 jobs, 8 timing restraints and 16 dummies (required for logical
consistency), plus all the related data.
The programmers had made good progress, so, by the end of July, we were
able to schedule the Fisher Works on a UNIVAC I -- a good month ahead of
schedule. But, because of vacations and other business, we had to wait until
October 26 to present the results to Mr. Read, his staff, and the Division
Managers. We used the time to make a series of computer runs under various
hypothetical conditions, and to fine-tune the computer programs.[11]
It became quite clear from these early runs that the UNIVAC I did not have the
speed and capacity to handle the construction scheduling problems at Du Pont.
With 50 active projects, even restricting networks to 150300 arrows, updating
computation time would run to 350 hours a month. For each project this effort
would involve generating and choosing from among 50 or so schedules of
different cost and duration. Something had to be done about improving
computational efficiency.
Univac Sales seemed willing to help us by rewriting the programs for the
UNIVAC 1103A -- about 20 man months of programming work in Unicode, an
assembler/compiler.[12] With this assistance in the wings we went to our
meeting with Mr. Read with an optimistic outlook and a proposal to expand the
scheduling system. I well remember that session. Construction was interested in
the results. Design was fearful that Construction would use CPM as a club
against them. Mr. Read settled everybody's hash by authorizing the next step --
an actual project from which practical experience could be gained by involving
the Design, Construction and Control divisions. To mollify Design somewhat, he
restricted the test to construction activities. We committed to completing and
reporting on this live test by March 15, 1958.
TYPES OF PROJECT NETWORKS
Jim: Are you puzzled about the different types of project networks? The network
is possibly the most important practical concept to derive from CPM. The idea
was obvious to any mathematician of the 1950's. The way project steps are
sequenced is similar to graphical structures studied in courses of logic
(relations), set theory (partial orderings), modern algebra (lattices), game theory
(strategy trees), and, of course, graph theory itself.
However, as obvious as the project network idea might be, there is more than
one way to depict one. Which way to adopt often depends on how the project
data is organized for computation. Since the different methods are often
misunderstood it is worth contrasting them here.
Suppose the planning focus is on the jobs of a project, viewed as essentially
stand-alone work elements -- like subcontracts, related, but remote from one
another. (Don't subcontractors usually view themselves as pretty independent of
everyone else?) Write each job name, its estimated duration, cost, and other
resource requirements, on a 3x5 card, and distribute all the cards on a table.
Where the results of one subcontract are needed for another, draw an arrow
between the two, the arrow pointing in the direction of time flow. The result is
known as a precedence or activity-on-node project network. The cards (or boxes
drawn around them) are the nodes of the network. The connecting arrows define
the successor-follower relations between jobs. The arrows take no (i.e. zero)
time to perform, and consume no resources.
In contrast, suppose project tasks are seen in a more integrated and mutually
dependent light, less remote in their relationships, say, the way a sub-contractor
might view the jobs within his own contract. Instead of using a 3x5 card, draw an
arrow for each job and write its name, duration and resources on the convenient
line formed by the arrow's shaft. If one job is the direct predecessor of another,
connect the head of the first to the tail of the second. The end product of this
process is the type of project network generated for CPM.[13]
In the process of drawing a CPM network it is usually necessary to introduce
some dummy arrows just to define the sequence of work properly. At first we
did not recognize the need for dummies. I remember the day clearly (July 3,
1957) when Morgan unveiled the logic problems he was having with the Fisher
Works. We solved them then and there at a blackboard using dummies. He
wrote up the rules later on.[14]
The CPM network -- you might call it an activity-on-branch network -- is
mathematically equivalent to the activity-on-node network. To see that this is
true, simply replace each job oval (box) of an activity-on-node network by an
arrow, retaining the associated activity description. But erase any redundant
connector arrows so that, to the extent possible, job arrows connect directly to
job arrows. The connector arrows that remain are the dummies we'd have
introduced to solve particular sequencing problems.[15]
These two types of networks really did not come about as intimated. They really
derive from the algebra used to define the problems, and from the algorithms
used to solve them. The activity-on-node network was implied by the linear
programming model in my Case Institute paper mentioned earlier. The algebra
of the parametric linear program lead to the CPM-type network. There, a job was
denoted by a number pair, (i,j). That is, a job arrow running from network
junction numbered i to junction numbered j had a duration dij, a cost cij, and so
on, as is the common subscripting used for indexing two-way tables and
matrices. This notation was carried along in much of the CPM literature, and on
computer printouts, long afterward, where one speaks of the activity's I-J. I'll go
to my grave calling these index numbers I-J's. The terms predecessor or
start event and successor or finish event are such mouthsful to say.
The activity-on-node network was proposed later on by Fondahl, Wiest and
Levy, and others, as a superior form of project network.[16] [Ed. Note: See
Fondahl, PMJ, June 1987.] Personally, I find the clutter of connector arrows
confusing in large networks of this type. In these networks direct predecessor
and successor jobs tend not to be organized to be near to one another.
There's yet a third type of project network, not much in vogue in recent years.
The emphasis is put on project events or milestones instead of the project
activities. Start by defining certain key progress points to be used for overall
management control (e.g. design release complete, approved for captive test,
arrival of test vehicle at test site). Now write event descriptions on 3x5 cards,
and distribute them on the table. Two events are connected by an arrow if the
first must occur before the other. The arrow represents a whole complex of work,
perhaps by several contractors, which must be done to progress from the first
event to the second.
Although this type network may look like an activity-on-node network, it's really
an event-on-nodenetwork, very like a CPM- type network. It grew out of the
PERT development. The initial focus was on events because of the desire to
report on project progress via discernible management milestones. But, just as
we ran into sequencing problems and had to invent dummies, the original PERT
networking method sometimes leads to ambiguities, often requiring that large
scope activity complexes between two events be analyzed into smaller
component activities in order to estimate durations consistently.
THE FIRST LIVE TEST
Morgan: After the October, 1957, meeting with Mr. Read, steps were taken to
recruit and train six engineers from other Du Pont divisions to use CPM on an
on-going project in parallel with the existing planning group. These preparations
were completed by early December 1957 when the engineers arrived for an
orientation course. Then the real work began.
The project selected for this test was the construction of hydrogen and
anhydrous ammonia facilities at the Repauno Works in New Jersey. Ed Hyde
from Construction was put in charge of the planning and scheduling effort.[17]
Mai Demurjian and I gave them a workshop course to bring them on board.
Planning work began in late December, 1957. They were given the construction
cost estimate and work sheets, the drawings and specs file, scopes of work and
correspondence, M&E list and limiting equipment list with estimated deliveries,
the design schedule, anticipated changes in design, and information on contract
work involving field labor -- in short, all the available project information. The
construction work was divided into activities within work area and then
diagrammed in proper construction sequence.
Today it is a little difficult to appreciate the problems these men had. The effort it
took to analyze the project, diagram it, and develop data seems ludicrous now.
What would take a trained CPM'er two or three weeks today, took these men a
good two months. But consider that these pioneers not only had their
inexperience to contend with, they were not too popular going around asking so
many penetrating questions about the test projects. And any question they
asked in the design or construction division was an interference with regular
work. In these circumstances it was bound to be slow going.
In the end, an 846 arrow network of construction activity was produced, spread
out on the wall of their office. And, believe it or not, there was not a description
written on any arrow. Laugh, if you will, but Jim tells me that in 1968 he
consulted with Krupp on a steel plant construction project that involved a
network of over 15,000 arrows, drawn in ink mind you, on a couple of hundred
individual sheets, and not one arrow had a description on it. Apparently the
efficacy of placing descriptions on the arrows is not so obvious as one might
think, even with all the CPM literature available.
In February, 1958, Mai Demurjian took all our data tapes to Lockheed's large
UNIVAC 1103A computer at Palo Alto to work out a whole range of construction
schedules using the new program developed by Nathan Knoch of Univac Sales.
At the time we had a co-operative venture going with Lockheed Engineering at
Burbank. They were on a similar mission for their Chief Engineer. I'll never forget
the debugging session.
Poor Nathan's nerves started to go from the high pressure of the situation. We
even contacted RemRand's doctor to ensure it would be alright for him to
continue on this effort. Dick Castanias (DP Manager at Palo Alto), Mal, Al Fera
 and I were in daily, multi-hour, phone contact. Mai and Dick had their hands full.
Because Mai couldn't be sure just what Nathan was accomplishing, we tried
debugging at the desk in Delaware on a duplicate effort basis. All ended well.
The program worked and Nathan recovered fully.
That winter we also spent tortuous hours on 18 below nights in St. Paul, trying
to run on the UNIVAC 1105. The 1103A was fine for the cost curve algorithm.
But it lacked tape buffering needed for the level of input and output editing,
sorting, etc. that we required. In one sense, the computation went smoothly
enough -- so fast we couldn't believe it. In another sense it was a nightmare
working on the Serial No. 1 machine (destined for the Census Bureau) while it
was still in manufacturing. The real problem was the output from Lyle Langdon's
editing routines. It was garbage. Back to the motel we went searching for errors.
After a few nights of this, Univac personnel finally identified the problem. The
output tape drive had the read/write heads installed backwards. After that was
fixed, Lyle's program worked as planned.
Within two months we had to update the project -- this time on the Air Force's
1105 at Rome, N.Y. Enough of half-built equipment. Some 30% of the original
design and equipment delivery dates had changed, and a new construction
strategy was decided upon. This exercise gave a realistic idea what the
maintenance of schedules would require in time, effort and dollars.
It was on this project where we first worked out the form of the output to be given
to the different organizational levels concerned. The principal outputs for
management were the various cost curves and analyses, in which evaluations of
things like the question of time on site versus unit startup to meet market
demand are treated. For supervision, we generated area schedules by pulling
the appropriate event times from the printouts. And, of course, detailed job lists,
sorted appropriately, were produced for field engineers and area supervisors.
We also worked out the force curves for several schedules -- manually. We
could no longer ignore the manpower leveling problem.
On May 19, 1958 we had another major departmental presentation to bring Mr.
Read and all the department managers up to speed with our developments and
the great success we had with scheduling Repauno. The meeting resulted in
authorization to:

Complete the Repauno evaluation,

Let the 5-man task force apply the methodology to two additional projects,
Translate the remaining manual steps to computer,
Continue the program to reduce computer costs (jointly with Rem-Rand), and
Begin development of inter-project scheduling techniques using Du Pont's
systems engineers and mathematicians.
THE SYNERGY OF IMAGINATIVE DOINGS
Jim: The project network captured the imagination of everyone who saw it, and
lots of private experiments were done by many engineers to adapt the
networking idea to other applications. Du Pont's Maintenance Engineering had
one particularly successful application the winter of 195758 in determining the
over-all process system reliability of the Houston Herbicide project. The resulting
network was more like a flow diagram -- it had loops. But in the hands of the
engineers it showed that existing plant equipment slated to be part of the
integrated new process were not reliable enough to permit the project to achieve
design capacity. Without this little breakthrough in problem definition the plant
would probably have gone through with the project and suffered a long and
costly startup period.
COMPUTERS IN THE EARLY DAYS
Morgan: In addition to reprogramming the UNIVAC I programs for the UNIVAC
1103A and 1105, the scope of the computations was enlarged to include two
more projects in order to determine how to extend CPM to the design and
procurement functions. For this, rather involved experimentation was proposed
for finding the point at which CPM could or should be introduced into the project
planning process. The apparent cost and effort seemed overwhelming. Today,
with the low cost, high capacity, and speed of computers -- and enlightened
attitudes -- the issue would not even be raised.
The logistics of generating schedules in those early days is especially
interesting. Magnetic tape input was prepared on the UNIVAC I in Newark,
Delaware, and flown to Palo Alto, St. Paul or Rome, N.Y. for computation on the
appropriate available 1103A or 1105. The results were then returned for printing
the output on the UNIVAC I. Initially there was some concern about this
processing strategy. It required considerable fine tuning to get interchangeability
between tape drives within a computer system. We were taking the fine tuning
problem two steps further -- not only between two systems, but between
systems of entirely different design.
There was also the concern that tapes might be degaussed by rotating aircraft
equipment or something else -- this was before airport X-ray security checks.
Today, many organizations wrap their tapes and floppies in aluminum foil, which
is just what we did then. You have to have lived through the period when there
were very few computers around to really appreciate how fantastic it is to have
the equivalent power on one's own desk these days.
DID WE SOLVE THE CORRECT PROBLEM?
Jim: I have been asked on occasion if we really solved the correct problem in
those early days. It can be argued that developing a whole series of schedules is
overkill. It certainly complicated the computer programming requirements. But
this parameterizing of the problem was intended to give planners opportunities
for time-cost trade-offs. Though the model has a lot of mathematical interest, it
may not fit the practical planning and scheduling environment.
What emerged as fundamental were the output edit programs that produced the
early and late start and finish times, the total float (slack) for each activity, and
the need to sort this output in a variety of ways for different project people to
use. If one does no more than intelligently draw the network and calculate the
early and late times and float, one has 90% of the value to be gained from using
network methods for project planning and scheduling. Often the sophistications
beyond this are no more than bells and whistles, or substitutes -- often poor
ones -- for in-place accounting systems.
It was Morgan who defined the now classic schedule reports so familiar to
CPM'ers. He was the first to recognize the importance of various kinds of float.
Among his inventions is free float, still seen sometimes on computer printouts,
to support some of the early approaches to manpower leveling.[18] In the early
days there was some controversy among subcontractors over who owns the
total float. A concept of scheduled float was proposed as a mathematical
answer to this problem.[19]
..by cutting average turnaround downtime by some 25% through CPM,
production to sales was increased enough in the first year to more than
underwrite the CPM development.
One of the cleverest uses of total float is the float trend chart, a device for
estimating project completion based on monthly changes in the amount of float
in the network.[20] I became sold on this technique in 1974 after using a variant
to show that a certain North Sea oil development project was slipping by one
third of a month per month. At that rate the project would come in six months
late. The projection, and the rationale for it, were not taken seriously. It was no
surprise to learn that the project came in one year late.
I have been accused of letting my education get in the way of my perception by
not recognizing the simpler concept of CPM that emerged from our output edit
programs right from the start. This may well be true -- the calculation of the early
and late times and float is trivial mathematically. Certainly if we had restricted
our thinking at an early time, the development costs and time period might have
been considerably reduced, all other things being equal. In particular, all the
needed computer calculations and edit runs could have been done in Newark,
Delaware, on the UNIVAC I.
But I am also inclined to believe that our CPM might not have come to be at all
without this parametric time/cost model. It added that extra something which
heightened interest at the critical moment by setting everyone's sights a little
above the attainable. It had the psychological effect of enhancing credibility.
I think the same thing may have happened in the PERT development with its
probability-based model. This is also a model with great mathematical interest.
But as with the CPM parametric time/cost model, the original PERT model does
not completely fit the existing environment. In consequence PERT evolved into
something similar to CPM as generally practiced some 10 to 15 years after their
conceptions.
I really wonder if the simpler evolved form would have been credible enough at
PERT's inception to demand the required development funds and management
support.
THERE'S A ROLE FOR THE PARAMETRIC MODEL
Morgan: I tend to agree with Jim on this point. The original CPM parametric
time/cost model and the results derived from it served a very useful purpose. In
the first live tests it showed, but did not convince others, that very significant
improvements in time could be obtained at very minor increases in cost -- a
variant of Pareto's Law. People like me were brought up in an environment
where a suspected slippage was dealt with by beating the project to death with
manpower. This across-the-board expenditure was commonplace and stupid.
Until Jim's parametric model, we could never prove it. The late Harry Goode
(University of Michigan) arrived at the same conclusion when he was consulting
with us at Du Pont.
TABLE 2. CPM DEVELOPMENT TEAM

from Du Pont

C.A. Baxter Design Division participant in live tests.

W.N. Church Control Division (Estimating) participant in live tests.

M.S. Manager of UNIVAC I installation; Computer program supervision.

Demurjian

Geo. J. Fisher Engineering supervision.

J.W. Greene Resident Engineer at Louisville; TA test.

P. Hayward Mathematician who worked on the preliminary analysis of the construction scheduling problem

E.R. Hyde Project leader on live tests (Construction Division).

H.B. Mundy Construction Division participant in live tests.

W.G. Ranson Construction Division participant in live tests.

J.A. Robinson Mathematician who worked on the preliminary analysis of the construction scheduling problem

James E. Sage Networked Fisher Works and developed time and cost data.

D.D. Sanford Engineer participant in live tests.

John S. Sayer Engineering Manager responsible for the project.

H. Silon Resident Engineer at Lousiville; TA test.

M.E. Smith Initial ideas for manpower leveling; TA test.

Morgan R. Technical coordination/promotion; Networked Fisher Works and developed time and cost da
Walker Developed float concepts & manpower leveling methods; participated in all phases of the
project.

E.W. Webb Construction Division participant in live tests.

E.A. Project leader for design work on live tests.

Wienman

from Remington Rand Univac

C.F. Berry Sales Support programmer.

Al Fera Account Representative; promotion.

J.E. Kelley, Develop math model and computer algorithms; consultant to the project.
Jr.

Nathan Knoch Univac 1103A/1105 programmer.

Lyle Langdon Univac 1103A/1105 programmer.

John W. Technical supervision.

Mauchly

M.S. Quinn Univac I programmer.

P. Sassouni Univac I programmer.

Les Shaw Univac I programmer.

deceased

Even today, in certain applications, I would recommend its use. In lieu of

developing slopes, I would probably arbitrarily assign a value -- a sort of
intuitive sensitivity index. This would reduce the data preparation work. The
same thing could be done to generate crash times.
The CPM development was capped with the results of applying it to turnarounds
at Du Pont's Louisville plant. This important case is well-known.[21] It suffices to
say that by cutting average turnaround downtime by some 25% through CPM,
production to sales was increased enough in the first year to more than
underwrite the CPM development.
In March 1959, CPM was presented to the public at large. [22] Since then the
few who participated in this important first step have gone on to other things.
Table 2 brings them back together again just for a bow.
CPM AND PERT -- CHICKEN AND EGG?
Jim: How did CPM's development relate to PERT's? We surely can't leave this
avenue unexplored, considering the major impact PERT's developers have had
on the theory and practice of project management. But, there's really nothing to
say about a connection between the two developments. Neither Morgan nor I
ever heard of PERT, nor of the Special Projects Office, before early 1959 when
Tony Astrachan mentioned it while preparing his Business Week article.[23]
A story is circulating that the Special Projects Office had contacts with Du Pont
as early as April 1957, and learned about main chain scheduling. We have
absolutely no knowledge of any such contacts. The earliest meeting we can
document is April 2, 1959, when Morgan, Sayer and Fisher visited the Special
Projects Office to exchange views.[24] It is possible, I suppose, that earlier
contacts might have been made through Haywood and Robinson, or their
associates. But there are more reasons to doubt such a contact than to believe it
could have been made without our knowledge.[25] If the PERT people built on
the Du Pont work, it was outside channels Morgan and I had access to, say
through contacts at Lockheed, Palo Alto, where Du Pont had a cooperative
venture in scheduling, and where we did some of our calculations. But as far as
Morgan and I are concerned, PERT was built independently from whole cloth.

THE COMMERCIALIZATION PERIOD

Given man's built-in resistance to change, there's a good chance CPM and
PERT would have been relegated to oblivion had it not been for the Polaris
Missile Program, and John W. Mauchly's insistence on bringing CPM to the
commercial marketplace. One indicator -- upon Chief Engineer Read's
retirement, interest so waned at Du Pont's engineering department that it took
until 1968 for them to adopt CPM as standard practice. Here's how CPM's
developers overcame this resistance to change in the early days of Mauchly
Associates, Inc.
JOHN MAUCHLY AND HIS NEW COMPANY
Jim: For various reasons, Mauchly's group at RemRand was disbanded in early
1959. There was little incentive to stay on. The sudden movement of talent
prompted Mauchly to start -- probably prematurely -- a new company to provide
experienced consultation and services covering the entire range of possible EDP
applications. Mauchly's real interests at the time ran the gamut from
educational devices for computer trainees to logical analysis and design of
specialized computer systems to solve specific applications problems.
Ultimately, investments in hardware development would destroy the company.
But with this charter, we moved into offices above a boutique in Ambler,
Pennsylvania, on April 9, 1959. Morgan started in July. Rocky Martino of
RemRand, Canada, joined later in the year.
Much has been written of the life and genius of John W. Mauchly. How his
interest in weather prediction moved him, in the late 1930's, to invent electronic
devices essential to the computers needed to solve the problem. How WWII, the
U.S. Government, and the University of Pennsylvania, provided him the
opportunity to realize his ideas in the ENIAC, the first electronic computer.[26]
How he and J. Presper Eckert, his partner in the ENIAC development, went on
to build BINAC and UNIVAC, the first electronic computers built commercially.
How, in 1973, in a dispute between RemRand and Honeywell over payment of
royalties, a federal court invalidated his and Eckert's computer patents,[27] and
raised doubts in the public mind over their priority in inventing the electronic
computer.[28] John viewed this as the greatest tragedy to befall him.
What is not so well-known is how John took chances on people he thought had
interesting ideas and superior talent, who might compliment his wide range of
interests. CPM was but one creation of his intellectual family. Many others were
given the opportunity to develop with his encouragement and guidance, from the
humble genius who generated large-order magic squares to help John with
imaginative ways to design computers, to renowned figures like Grace Murray
Hopper, the grandame of high-level programming languages. Incidently, John's
ShortCode for the BINAC -- the first compiler for programming in a mathematical
shorthand -- was a conceptual forerunner of FORTRAN.
John had a great knack for inventing new and imaginative solutions to pressing
real-world problems. My own professional skills matured enormously by
watching him do this again and again, and by trying to emulate him. It was the
continuation of this type of creative participation that I so looked forward to on
joining Mauchly Associates.
ECKERT-MAUCHLY, REMINGTON RAND, AND THE ELECTRONIC
COMPUTER
The development of CPM owes much to the computer, its inventors, and the
company that nurtured it through the early years. Historically, Remington Rand
was an amalgam of many companies, some founded over 100 years ago. Two
paths in its evolution are of interest to the story.
The first began in 1873, when Christopher Sholes, editor, printer and inventor,
teamed up with E. Remington & Sons to manufacture and market the first
commercial typewriter. As the typewriter business flourished, a parallel success
story began in 1890 when James H. Rand, Sr., developed the first visible index
equipment. Rand's enterprise grew by acquiring other office equipment
companies. In 1927, the two companies merged to form Remington Rand, Inc.,
and continued on the acquisition trail to become an important multi-national. In
1955, Remington Rand merged with Sperry Gyroscope to become the Sperry
Rand Corporation, which finally merged with the Burroughs Corporation a few
years ago to become UniSys.
The second path begins in 1946 when John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
started the Electronic Control Company (renamed the Eckert-Mauchly Computer
Corporation) of Philadelphia. Their goal: commercialize their wartime success
with the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). This first
electronic computer, which they designed and built at the University of
Pennsylvania under contract with the U.S. Army, filled a room with about 18,000
vacuum tubes. ENIAC was actively used at the Aberdeen Proving Ground until
1955, when it was put on exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1949, Remington Rand had completed a magnificent Laboratory for Advanced
Research on the shore of Long Island Sound. It was put under the direction of
General Leslie R. Groves of atomic bomb fame. They tried, without success, to
hire away some of the Eckert-Mauchly engineers, indicating their intention of
entering the computer field. Sadly, Eckert- Mauchly's principal benefactor, Henry
L. Strauss of American Totalizator, was killed in a light plane crash about the
same time, forcing the fledgling company to sell out to Remington Rand the
following year. 1950, the year of the sale, saw the company deliver its first
commercial computer, the Binac -- to Northrup Aircraft.
The next year, 1951, Eckert-Mauchly delivered the first UNIVAC -- to the Census
Bureau. This machine was actually operated at the factory by the Bureau for
over a year before being moved to Suitland, Maryland. Serial #2, for the U.S. Air
Force, and serial #3, for the U.S. Army Map Service, were undergoing final
assembly and test, and were delivered the next year. The Air Force stationed
Jim Kelley at the Eckert-Mauchly factory that winter of 195152, to learn to
program and operate UNIVAC serial #2. He had the opportunity to work on all
three UNIVAC machines. It was a machine like those that were used in the
development of CPM at Du Pont.
In 1952 Remington Rand acquired another young computer firm, Engineering
Research Associates of St. Paul, Minnesota. They had built special purpose
digital computers for the U.S. government. Jim Kelley got to work with two of
these machines at The George Washington University under an Office of Naval
Research contract -- the so-called Logistics Computer, and an old electro-
mechanical relay device rumored to have been used by one of the intelligence
agencies. Both machines had big drum memories. These machines were the
grandad-dies of the UNIVAC 1100 series computers used at St. Paul and
elsewhere for generating schedules for the various real-project tests of CPM.
BUILDING THE CPM TRAINING BUSINESS
Morgan: After two years of concentrated effort on the CPM development, more
CPM was the last thing Jim and I wanted to do. But after trying to market
everything else we had to offer, CPM turned out to be the only product we really
had to sell -- at least in the short term. Even so, it was an undeveloped market.
The recommendations of a core group of CPM users was going to be essential.
Perhaps this core could be developed from a public CPM workshop course.
Preparations for the workshop took the better part of September and October
1959. It was down to the wire compiling a mailing list and distributing course
announcements. The mailing was about to go out when a misprint in the date
was discovered. With no leadtime there was nought but to hand-correct each
announcement.
The 5-day workshop took place at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, November
1620, 1959. All the CPM fundamentals were covered, even the cost curve
computational details, and early manpower leveling schemes. By Tuesday
afternoon teams of participants were networking small pilot projects. Cost curves
and schedules were calculated and printed, and the results of each critiqued by
the whole class. RemRand was more than eager to have us use the UNIVAC I
programs at the Institute's Data Center.
The week before the course only five people had signed up -- 20 were hoped
for. Either cancel or beat the bushes. A good bit of the expected profit went into
frantic long distance phone calls to engineering departments of the Fortune 500.
By Friday afternoon 15 had signed up and we were in business.
Ironically, we had a man from Du Pont and another from RemRand in the first
CPM course. The head of IBM's facilities planning group also came. His
application was much debated. At the time we had a proposal outstanding to put
IBM into the CPM business -- training, manuals, computer programs -- the whole
nine-yards -- a real giveaway. To be sure, IBM's man went home a CPM
convert. He became the first, outside government, to make CPM a contract
requirement on construction jobs.
You guessed it -- IBM took the longest time to indicate their noninterest. By then
their LESS program was well developed. Mathematician Ray Fulkerson of The
Rand Corporation was even contracted to crack the cost curve algorithm.[29]
Was it bad breath, Eckert-Mauchly selling out to RemRand, or the gag: IBM =
Invented By Mauchly, that turned them off?
.(The) best (plan) can only be gauged relative to the planner's ability
and experience, and to his view of the project objectives and environment.
..This example also underscored the bad habit of planning work
sequences and scheduling work simultaneously.
The insight of a simple class project -- a pipeline renewal -- underscored the fact
that no one can consistently construct the best schedule for a project. From a
list of 16 jobs and their durations a typical class of 2030 would produce 910
different networks, ranging in duration from 270 to 380 hours. Indeed, best can
only be gauged relative to the planner's ability and experience, and to his view of
the project objectives and environment. This example also underscored the bad
habit of planning work sequences and scheduling work simultaneously.
The first workshop was a big success. Most participants went home and tried to
apply some level of CPM. Some, like Walter Cosinuke and Herbert Berman[30]
of Catalytic, got a lot of mileage from their exposure. Just drawing a network was
to improve project planning many-fold. Some called us in to help on specific
projects and to train their people. One thing led to another in quick succession
and we found ourselves in the project management training and consulting
game for keeps. From that workshop on for a couple of years our workshops,
both public and private, were generally oversubscribed. By the end of 1962
Mauchly Associates had trained close to 1,000 people, and were in competition
with a dozen or more other consulting groups doing much the same thing. Such
was the growth of interest in CPM and PERT!
The workshops introduced us to Montreal's postwar rebuilding cycle, among
other things. We helped Anglin-Norcross with CIL House, Perini, Ltd. with the
Bank of Commerce Building, Webb & Knapp with Place de la Concorde, and
Perini Pacific with the Frazier River Bridge piers and bents. A bit later the
Montreal Expo was planned and scheduled using CPM. They would never have
made opening day without it. Materials and debris had to be scheduled by the
minute on two access bridges to the island, using a dedicated computer.
I'll always remember the Tidewater Refinery cat cracker shutdown. It was
notable as the first major third party maintenance contract. We did only the
calculations. The network was drawn on a sheet of paper 150'x4', rolled up like a
Torah on two cranks mounted at either side of a drawing table -- an exaggerated
piping drawing. Fortunately we had a loft where we could stretch the drawing up
one side and down the other while half a dozen people, on hands and knees,
made takeoffs on data sheets for the keypunch operators. Lots of sore backs,
knees and elbows that weekend.
THE EASTERN JOINT COMPUTER CONFERENCE
Jim: In addition to the the first CPM workshop, we tried other ways to focus
public attention on our capabilities. With a heavy computer orientation, what
could be more natural than to announce our wares at the 1959 Eastern Joint
Computer Conference (EJCC) in Boston, December 13.
By the time the idea dawned the deadline for papers had passed. A little
politicking put us on the program. The conference planners offered an award for
the best paper -- an attempt to improve the usual careless or obtuse
presentations. A well-prepared slide show could win the award and focus
attention on CPM. We went too far in perfecting our act, were classed as
professionals, and were disqualified for the award. But, at least we had reprints
to distribute.
MANPOWER LEVELING
Jim: The EJCC did lead to an important consulting contract with Dow Chemical,
during which the basis for our manpower leveling algorithms were conceived.
This was perhaps the key unsolved technical problem when we started up
Mauchly Associates. By manpower leveling problem people referred to the
objective of operating with a fairly stable force over the mid-die 50% to 75% of
the project's life. However, the numbers of variables that can be involved is
extremely high. Their interrelations are complex. And the criteria for a good or
optimal solution are often incompatible. Every mathematical formulation of this
problem that I have ever seen is a mess, and totally intractable. One must resort
to heuristic methods, using a computer, to get useful results.[31]
Perhaps the simplest, most successful and long-lived approach to this problem
was devised in February/March I960 by Morgan, Charles W. Bachman and Jack
Westley of the Dow Chemical Company. The early time schedule for Dow's
project peaked near 150 boilermakers -- there were only about 50 in the area.
An ad hoc IBM 650 computer code was written just to take care of this problem.
We called the algorithm the J-priority method -- project activities were
processed in successor or J-event order.[32] We made proposals to Du Pont
and the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships to expand on these ideas. At Du Pont we
lost the competition to CEIR, who proceeded to develop RAMPS (Resources
Allocation and Multi Project Scheduling).
But starting in August, I960, we did extensive experimenting with our method
under a BuShips contract.[33l Figure 3 shows the results of one of the early
experiments. This project involved the rehabilitation and maintenance of a WWII
submarine. The total force requirements peaked at 259 men during the period
the vessel was scheduled in drydock. Because of space restrictions and other
considerations, such a peak was impractical. The experiment involved
determining the sensitivity of the project end date to reductions in peak force. In
fact, a 25% reduction in peak was possible with virtually no delay. As Figure 3
shows, a 34% reduction would cause a 7% delay; 42% reduction, a 14% delay;
50% redution, a 19% delay.
By studying the details of the computation it was seen that better results could
be obtained by artifically delaying the start time of pivotal jobs with large total
float to their late start -- essentially scheduling them after the peak. The result
was that a reduction in peak of some 40% was possible with under a 4% delay
in the project.
The most important thing to come out of these experiments was the philsophical
conviction that there is no objectively best schedule. There are so many
competing factors involved (e.g. the project duration, force levels, both total and
by craft, craft work continuity considerations, facility and heavy equipment
availability, etc.) that it is essential to be able to select from a variety of explicit
possibilities one which can be lived with.
To provide a simple, effective tool for testing the sensitivity of these factors and
for producing schedules, we generalized the J-priority method to permit the user
to vary many of the factors involved, particularly the order in which jobs were
processed. The so-called late start sort priority order became basic to the
method. It generalizes the idea of delaying floaters around peaks, but does it in
a more flexible way than can be done with restraints. The resulting algorithm
was named RPSM (Resources Planning and Scheduling Method). We used it for
years, especially on overhaul work.[34] We even expanded it to multi-project
scheduling and workload forecasting on a subsequent contract with BuShips.
There seem to be essentially two algorithmic approaches to the manpower
problem:
 The serial approach (schedule the activities individually in precedence or serial
order), and
The parallel approach (schedule all active jobs as a group on a time unit basis,
i.e. in parallel with each other).
RPSM is a serial method. The parallel method seems, a priori, to offer much
greater flexibility. This is probably the reason most early scheduling systems
were based on parallel methods. They generally run slower than serial
algorithms. They are also more complex, making it difficult for the user to
interpret why he gets the results produced. And if one is not careful, jobs with
lots of float may be rescheduled excessively earlier or later than in the previous
schedule. This effect is quite upsetting to field planners.[35]

Figure 3. RESOURCE LEVELING EXPERIMENTS Fleet Submarine Overhaul

THE SKEDUFLO COMPUTER
Jim: Mauchly always had an active interest in education, particularly in
techniques and devices for teaching people about computers or their
applications. Morgan worked with him on a game or computer model which used
marbles for bits. A.C. Gilbert (erector sets, American Flyer trains, etc.) was
interested. They were being clobbered by competitors like Ideal, and wanted to
change their image by introducing scientific toys. Morgan spent considerable
time completing the missing circuits (gates) and making engineering drawings
from which A.C. Gilbert could prototype. Ownership differences squelched the
deal.
One day John and I were talking about electric-analog methods, exploring for
more efficient algorithms and devices for capturing the imaginations of potential
CPM clients. Some step function problems halted the discussion. But next
morning, Mauchly was back with a circuit and a voltmeter to show me his new
invention -- the electric analog of a job with its normal and crash times and
costs, programmed using potentiometers. We were now developers of computer
hardware, with special interests in hybrid computers, i.e., combined analog-
digital computers.
Before long we moved into larger quarters, geared up to do electrical
engineering, and hoped to develop another UNIVAC. Fortunately the CPM
business was booming enough to underwrite some of this expansion. But the
only product to emerge was the SkeduFlo Computer, a transportable device --
the network portion alone was suitcase sized and weighed 75 pounds -- that
could solve a 30-arrow network. The connections between arrows were
programmed in a patchboard. The cost curve and job durations were plotted on
an analog plotter. Much larger devices, with digital input and output, were
planned, but, to my knowledge, never designed.[36]
Charles Clark, of PERT fame, addressed a problem similar to the parametric
cost model with a mechanical analog similar to one Mauchly showed me before
his SkeduFlo design.[37] But these analog models don't seem very well adapted
to digital computation. I don't think we ever sold a single unit.
GROWTH OF THE CPM/PERT BUSINESS
Morgan: The promotion of PERT by the Navy and its imposition on Polaris
contractors was the principal cause of a phenomenal short-term growth in the
use of network methods. Of course, the parallel and competitive promotion of
CPM contributed. This interest can be seen in Figure 4, where annual counts of
articles in periodicals, technical papers and manuals, and books about CPM and
PERT are plotted over time. As is often the case with new fashions, more was
promised than could be delivered. Predictably, a sharp peak of interest was
reached early on, which gradually fell off. By the late 1960's interest reached a
low ebb, in part because of the depression in the aerospace business just after
the middle of the decade. The downward trend had already set in! However,
interest quickened again in the early 1970's, especially in Europe.

A POSTSCRIPT

TAKE A BOW
Jim: It is one thing to have an idea, quite another to make it work. It is yet a third
thing to persuade anyone else to use your workable idea. As in many other
endeavors, the success of CPM in all three of these phases has resulted from
the work of many people. The basic ideas for CPM, and the techniques for
dealing with it preceded our efforts in the works of many other people.
Making CPM work was a team effort of considerable magnitude that needed the
foresight and approval of a Granville Read (see Table 2). Although Morgan
Walker once told Read he was interlocutor, dictator, huckster, teacher and other
equally useless functions", the team could not have functioned and CPM would
never have been made to work without his efforts.
Credit for much of what CPM has become belongs to John W. Mauchly, who not
only provided the environment in which CPM originally developed, but had the
foresight to see its potential, and had interest in promoting it.

Figure 4. CPM/PERT: The First Decade Patterns of Interest as Indicated by

Total Articles and Books
OUT OF THE MAIN STREAM
Morgan: The proliferation of CPM has been a great wonder to Jim and me.
There's a sense of pride to find one's children studying it in the university -- and
in a diatetics course, too? And it seems to pop up in rather unlikely places. How
about Richard Schweickert of Purdue's Department of Psychological Sciences
applying CPM to mental processes. And several medical procedures have been
given serious CPM treatment -- the spoof by Loren J. Saindon of a hernia
operation is not one of those. Saindon went on to compile numerous culinary
recipes in the form of arrow diagrams, each arrow a quantity of a food
component, or a cooking action (dice, simmer, boil, etc.)and duration, the whole
showing the order in whichtodothings. lt seems easier to follow his recipes than
those in the wife's cookbooks. She may have a different opinion.
CPM is also worth a laugh or two. Read Mike Berger's If Noah Built the Ark
Today (Management Review, July 1969, pp. 28), a spoof of network planning,
computers, and other technology spinoffs. [Ed. Note: See the September issue
of the PM NETwork.] Sometimes the virtues of thriller heros includes expertise in
CPM (e.g. in The Quiller Memorandum). Many people have been inspired to
draw networks of rather outlandish projects, like the faculty of Nederlandse
Economische Hogeschool's analysis of England's Great Train Robbery. It is
alledged that the robbers used CPM to plan the heist, and that Scotland Yard
used it, in turn, to solve the case. This robbery has been made into a movie.
Sometimes artistry is the objective, as with the clever network to plan Christmas
preparations shaped in the form of a Christmas tree. But by far the most artful,
and incomprehensible, network we've ever seen is a winding Japanese creation
that looks like a connect the dots puzzle of a kabuki mask, with job descriptions
in kanji.
ENDNOTES

1. Also see Willard Fazar. The Origin of PERT. The Controller, Dec. 1962.
pp.598621.
2. Granville Read headed up Du Pont's contribution to the Manhattan Project,
and most of his staff at this time were on that project, too.
3. Hayward, P. and J.A. Robinson. 1956. E.S.D. - Business computations -
300001. Preliminary Analysis of the Construction Scheduling Problem. Memo to
T.L. Leininger, December 20, 1956. Engineering Department. E.I. du Pont de
Nemours & Company, Wilmington, Delaware.
4. Kelley, J.E., Jr. 1957. Computers and Operations Research in Road
Building. Proceedings of the Conference on Operations Research, Computers,
and Management Decisions, 5863. Cleveland: Case Institute of Technology.
5. The direct costs were primarily the resources applied to the activity, the
variable components of which were labor and equipment. Supervision and other
overheads were the indirects.
6. We adopted this term for marketing purposes about May 1959, christening our
product the Critical-Path Method (CPM).
7. Kelley (1957) op. cit. Also see Kelley, J.E., Jr. Critical-Path Planning and
Scheduling: Mathematical Basis, Operations Research, 3(1961)296320.
8. Kelley, James E., Jr. The Construction Scheduling Problem (A Progress
Report). UNIVAC Applications Research Center, Remington Rand Univac,
Philadelphia, Penna. April 25, 1957. 21p.
9. Berry, C.F., Computer Scheduling (Job List & Sequence), program module
flow sheet, dated April 24, 1957.
10. Coding was done using the Generalized Programming compiler. It allowed
the programmer to use symbolic addresses, subroutines, and other
programming facilities within the UNIVAC C-10 machine code, which was
mnemonic and easy to use compared to other computers of the time. Fortran
was not made public until 1957, and was certainly not available for the Univac
for our project.
11. We still have the computer output for IEC Test No. 3 - Project Scheduling,
dated September 25, 1957.
12. Computer programming was tougher in those early days when high-level
languages like Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, etc. were either in the future or only just
getting off the drawing boards.
13. The type network implied by the Haywood and Robinson proposal is not at
all clear to me since their ditto report came without figures and technical
appendix. The only hint -- they refer to the immediate predecessors of a job as
its roots and to its immediate successors as its branches.
14. Walker, Morgan R. Project Scheduling Rules for Sequencing, Engineering
Department, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. August 28, 1957. 5p.
15. In one sample of 15 CPM networks I once calculated there were (25 10)%
dummy activities. There were also (1.6 1 0.2)% activities per event. These
statistics seem to have held up over the years.
16. Fondahl, John W. 1961. A Non-Computer Approach to the Critical-Path
Method for the Construction Industry, Department of Civil Engineering, Stanford
University. Nov. 1961. Also: Wiest, J.D. and F.K. Levy. 1969. A Management
Guide to PERT/CPM. Prentice Hall, Inc. Some (if not all) commercial packages
which support activity-on-node networks convert the project network to the CPM
format, i.e. the activity-on-branch form, before proceeding with the calculations.
17. Hyde, E.R. Integrated Engineering Control Study of Engineering
Department Project Scheduling, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Engineering
Department, Wilmington Delaware, January, 1959.
18. J.E. Kelley, Jr. and Morgan R. Walker. Critical-Path Planning and
Scheduling, Proceedings of the Eastern Joint Computer Conference, Boston,
Dec. 13, 1959. pp.160173.
19. Kelley, J.E., Jr. 1961. Planning and Scheduling Overhaul Shipwork in Naval
Shipyards. Final Report, Bu-Ships Contract NObs78951, April 1961. 65p. + 16
figs.
20. Kilpatrick, D.C. 1972. Float Trend Charts. Congress Book 1:191199. Third
International Congress on Project Planning by Network Techniques. Stockholm,
Sweden: Internet 72.21. Kelley and Walker (1959) op. cit.
22. Astrachan, A. 1959. Better Plans Come From Study of Anatomy of an
Engineering Job. Business Week, March 21, 1959. pp.6066. One of the finest
presentations of early CPM is: Walker, Morgan R., Project Planning and
Scheduling, Engineering Department, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.,
Wilmington, Del., 123p.
23. Charles E. Clark was the principal author of PERT. It is to my sorrow that I
never had the opportunity to meet him. The early key documents are:
 PERT Summary Report Phase 1, Bureau of Naval Weapons, Department of the
Navy, Washington, July 1958;
PERT Summary Report Phase 2, Bureau of Naval Weapons, Department of the
Navy, Washington, September 1958.
Fazar (op. cit. 1962) reports that he gave the technique its name, and that formal
work on it began February 6, 1958. Within a week Clark presented the outlines
of the method.
24. Fisher, George. Trip Report - Navy Department - PERT System. Memo to
E.O. Dean, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, Wilmington, Delaware. April 6,
1959 Fisher writes, Arrangements have been made to follow up on this first
contact., further indicating no earlier contact with Special Projects had been
made by IEC.
25. Curiously, some of the basic concepts of PERT are to be found in Haywood
and Robinson's report. Terminology: immediate predecessor, immediate
successor. Recognition of the possibility that job durations may not be known
with practical certainty: If, as is true in practice, the [job] completion times have
probability distributions about their mean values, the question of what is the best
course of action to take in meeting a delay becomes considerably more
complicated, leading into the realm of game theory.
26. The first ENIAC calculations were a mathematical simulation of the hydrogen
bomb. Its prime mission, for which it was used for many years, was to calculate
firing tables for new weapon systems.
27. Assigned to RemRand when they bought out Eckert-Mauchly years earlier.
28. In actuality, the court decision states that Eckert and Mauchly were the only
inventors of ENIAC, but that their patent was invalid because they delayed too
long in making application, and this contrary to the decisions of two earlier courts
which upheld the validity of the patent.
Much has been made of a red herring introduced at the trial to discredit Eckert
and Mauchly -- the experiments with computational equipment of Dr. John V.
Atanasoff, of Iowa, in the late 1930's. The court ruled that Mauchly had learned
about electronic digital computing from Atanasoff, despite clear evidence that
Mauchly had been building electronic computing devices for at least four years
before he met Atanasoff, and despite the fact that electronic ENIAC was in no
way related to Atanasoff's electro-mechanical device.
Since billions of dollars are at stake, it is a forgone conclusion that Eckert and
Mauchly, like Columbus, will never get their due. Had the Spanish crown not
welshed on its deal with Columbus, he and his descendents would have owned
a good part of the New World, and America, instead of being named for a self-
serving Florentian, might be named Columbia instead.
29. Fulkerson, D.R. A Network Flow Computation for Project Cost Curves, Rand
Paper P-1947, The Rand Corporation, SantaMonica, California, March 18, I960.
(Also published in Management Science.) To our knowledge, only Ford Motor
Company programmed Fulkerson's algorithm in those early days -- GM
programmed ours.
30. Berman attended our second workshop.
31. Theoretically, integer programming formulations of the problem can be
solved exactly. But I suspect they are still impractical for large applications.
32. In the early days events were numbered so that the tail-event was
numerically less than the head-event, which made it so no activity preceded a
successor activity in the sorted input list. This event numbering limitation was
quickly eliminated by better algorithms.
33. Kelley (1961) op. cit.
34. The details and this and other early resource scheduling methods are
described in Kelley, J.E., Jr. 1963. The Critical Path Method: Resources
Planning and Scheduling, Chapter 21 in Industrial Scheduling. Eds. J.F. Muth
and G.L. Thompson. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
35. I have been told that the original RPSM method forms the basis for the
manpower programs in the PREMIS system, being an evolutionary outgrowth of
the IBM 1620 programs we developed at Mauchly Associates in the early
1960's. I have heard it was even being marketed as the Kelley Algorithm,
though the real credits go to Walker, Bachman and Westley.
36. For more on SkeduFlo see: John W. Mauchly. Critical-Path
Scheduling. Chemical Engineering, April 16, 1962; and, Plotting time-cost
schedule. Business Week, February 17, 1962.37. Clark, C.E. The Optimum
Allocation of Resources Among the Activities of a Network, System
Development Corporation, I960. Others have probably had similar ideas. We
may cite K. Shankar and K.P.K. Nair, On Electrical Analogy of Critical Path
Method, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, 1968.
pmi
JAMES E. KELLEY, JR.
Jim Kelley hails from New Haven, Connecticut, where he attended the local
public and parochial schools. He took degrees in mathematics from Providence
College and The American University. In the early 1950's the U.S. Air Force
trained him in the emerging fields of computers and management science, fields
in which he has spent most of his professional life. For some eight years he
worked for John W. Mauchly, co-inventor of the electronic computer, first at
Remington Rand, then at Mauchly Associates.
Following 10 years of work in military logistics and operations research, Jim
embarked on a 20-year career as an engineering and project management
consultant, including partnerships in CPM Engineers and Kelley Schwartz.
Throughout his career, Jim has published numerous articles on computers,
mathematics and project management. More recently he has taken up writing,
and has published five books for users of personal computers.
Jim's best known achievement is his work with Morgan Walker to develop CPM.
For this pioneering effort he received honorary mention for the Lanchester Prize
in Operations Research, the American Association of Cost Engineers' 1965
National Award of Merit, and elevation to Honorary Membership in the Society
for the Advancement of Management.
Over the past 25 years Jim has used much of his free time while traveling on
assignment to poke in museums and libraries studying the technology of late
medieval cartography and navigation. He is a frequent speaker on topics ranging
from manuscript marine charts, to the astronomy and weather lore of 15th
century mariners, to late medieval weights and measures, much of which he has
published. He has done significant computer studies of Columbus's navigation
and of early marine charts of the New World, and has recently published (jointly
with Oliver Dunn) a new Spanish transcription, English translation, and
concordance of Columbus' Journal of his first voyage to America.
Jim lives in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Peg, where he writes,
plays the piano, and enjoys the visits of their nine children and seven
grandchildren.

MORGAN R. WALKER
Morgan Walker grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. His studies in aeronautical
engineering were interrupted by WWII, during which he served with the U.S.
Army in the Philippines. On his return to the University of Michigan, with
technology outpacing the curricula, and a surplus of unemployed aero
engineers, Morgan augmented his education with courses in Business
Administration and Industrial Engineering before taking his B.S.E. in
Aeronautical Engineering. He went on to graduate work in applied statistics at
Carnegie-Mellon, and to positions in industrial and management engineering,
first with U.S. Steel's National Tube Division, and then with the Engineering
Department of E.I. du-Pont.
It is at Du Pont where Morgan was introduced to project management and
computers, participating in AEC plant design and construction, and in the
installation of the company's first computer system, and the study of where it
might be used. This experience prepared him well for his role as co-developer,
with Jim Kelley, of CPM. Subsequently, he joined Mauchly and Kelley to
establish Mauchly Associates as a major purveyor of CPM educational and
consulting services. He was honored with the American Association of Cost
Engineers' 1965 National Award of Merit for his work on CPM.
After Mauchly Associates, Morgan went on to a career of marketing and sales of
computer peripherals, mostly of rigid disk files and printers. In this field he held
top management positions, principally with new venture start-ups. More recently
Morgan has been in engineering, administrative and financial planning at a
computer aided engineering software firm. Currently he is is Product Marketing
Manager for Microscience International, a Winchester disk drive manufacturer.
Morgan is a former member of ASQC, SAM and ACM. He and his lovely wife,
Vivian, a well-known portrait artist and teacher, reside in San Mateo, California.
Between them they track five grownup children.
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February 1989 pm network