The Old New Thing

Microspeak: The long pole

August 5, 2008 Aug 5, 2008 08/5/08

Raymond Chen

The long pole is the part of the project that is on the critical path due to its length. For example, if you have a project that consists of three independent sub-projects, then the sub-project with the longest completion date is the long pole. The etymology of this term is simultaneously obvious yet hard to pin down. Intuitively, the long ...