Critical Path only showing tail end

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Crtitical Path not working correctly.

alessandro

Mines are connected but the critical path only highlights the tail end, thoughts?

kowal

hi @alessandro,

the idea of critical path is that it shows only the tasks that if delayed will change the end date of the project.

so in your case it means that only delays in those 7 tasks will impact the end date as delays in the other tasks that are before will not impact the end date of entire project.

hope it helps.

alessandro

@kowal thanks for the explanation, but i don't think that logic is how "critical path" is understood to be in project management in general.

kowal

hi @alessandro i just replicated similar case to show why only the last task are impacting the end date and if you delay the first 2 are not part of critical path becuase if you delay those 2 they will not have impact at the end of the project.

but maybe there are different schools of critical path this is the one that I know as well.

alessandro

hi @kowal, thanks. But I still disagree with Smartsheet definition of critical path. I'm my opinion, and the PM community as a whole honestly, it should be end-to-end. In your example above task a and b should be part of the critical path too since if they get delayed it impacts the overall project deadline, because of the dependency.

kowal

hi @alessandro,

look I delayed the end date of the first two tasks and those have not impacted the remaining 4 that are in critical path: It's because there was no lag added like FS+5days if it was with lag it would be part of the critical path but because there was some buffer of it just moved and did not impact the moment it will go beyond the start date the 4 tasks it will be considered as a part of critical path.

Hope it explains the logic.

alessandro

hi @kowal , look i understand the logic in Smartsheet. I just disagree with it. If you delay task a or task b by 2 days, the whole projects shifts to the right. Critical path should be the longest end to end sequence of dependent activities required to complete a project.

"The critical path method is a technique that allows you to identify tasks that are necessary for project completion. The critical path in project management is the longest sequence of activities that must be finished on time to complete the entire project."

From: Critical path method - Wikipedia

kowal

hi @alessandro I am pretty sure only our egos are talking to each other now - but let's keep on :)

so to take this part from wiki

" longest sequence of activities that must be finished on time to complete the entire project"

my question: is task a and b (from my first screenshot) meeting this criteria ? i guess not because as you can see I did not finish them on time I delayed (in 2nd screenshot) them and nothing happened with entire project end date.

so in that case the longest sequence of activities that must be finished on time to complete the entire project are only tasks from c to f.

but now I made my task a much longer and look as it's end is impacting the end of the project it's also part of critical path now (removing task c and d )

now if any delays happen to task a or b it will impact the end of the project.

in other words now a, b, e, f is the longest sequence of activities that must be finished to complete the entire project.