Abstract: To address the engineering dilemma in strength prediction of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates, where conventional first-ply failure (FPF) methods are overly conservative whereas progressive damage methods (PDM) are computationally demanding and often yield non-conservative predictions, this study proposes a progressive damage analysis framework based on first-ply fiber failure. The proposed approach couples a first-ply failure concept with a progressive damage framework under the fundamental assumption that laminate failure is essentially governed by fiber failure, while matrix damage only causes stiffness degradation. On this basis, the Yamada-Sun criterion and a simplified Puck criterion are combined to formulate safety-margin-based evaluation conditions for fiber and matrix, and the entire procedure is implemented in ABAQUS via a user material subroutine (UMAT). The method is validated through tensile and compressive tests on both undamaged and perforated laminates, and its predictions are benchmarked against two additional failure analysis methods. The results demonstrate that, under both tensile and compressive loading, adjusting the shear coupling factor \alpha in the Yamada-Sun criterion enables the proposed method to provide a failure-load prediction interval covering 25.8%~99.2% of the experimental failure load, thereby satisfying different safety-margin requirements and achieving the best trade-off among prediction accuracy, computational efficiency, and engineering applicability.