Bad critical path

[Bohus]

I have 34 entries in my project and project duration is 24 days. I assigned
resources and tried what is what in menu and since then I have one problem.
If I select 'Project/Filter by critical' from menu I see only 2 tasks which
take 3 days and it is absolutely bad. MSP doesn't show my correct critical
path.
What's wrong ?

(Until that I had 12 entries in critical path. Everything looks O.K. until I
select critical from menu.)

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

I'm not sure what you mean by "bad." It is certainly possible to have 34
tasks in a project and only have 2 of them be critical. A common cause
would be a "Start No Earlier Than" constraint on a task late in the project.

As an example, assume for the moment a simple straight line sequence of
tasks. Let's say that task #33 *could* start on 01 Feb according to its
predecessor links but you've entered the date 05 Feb in the Start column and
thereby set a constraint. That means that there is 4 days of slack time in
all of the tasks before 33 and only tasks 33 and 34 are critical since they
are the only tasks where any delay at all in them will cause the project's
finish. Any of the other tasks could be delayed for as much as a total of 4
days without delaying the project end and so none of them are critical.

Without more information about your plan it's hard to say just what is the
cause of the behavior you're seeing but its far from unusual to see that
sort of thing.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Bohus,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Have you levelled? If so, you will almost certainly lose your critical path
through the SNET constraints that Project will insert when delaying tasks
until resources become available.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on )

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Solution]

Thanks for reply.
I solved my problem by deleting all my entries I made in "Tools/Change
Working time" and then I defined agian working times. And now MSP shows me 12
entries in my critical path as it should. So it's O.K.


„Mike Glen" napísal (napísala):

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

There is something strange going on here. But of even more concern is you
have a notion of what the critical path "should" be. How did you arrive at
the conclusion that certain tasks were critical so that you consider it an
error if Project doesn't reflect the same? There is a very exact
mathematical definition that determines whether a task is critical or not
.... I wonder if you are using some other criterion?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs