How to force the critical path through a milestone

[Kurt S]

I have a project with a few long duration non-critical task which define the
ultimate duration of the entire project. However, I have a few critical
intermediate milestones which are critical. Does anyone know if there is a
way to force the critical path through specific milestones without date
constraining them?

Many Thanks.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

What you're doing doesn't sound like good practice. Basically, you have long
tasks which don't define the duration of the project but short tasks that do?
Sounds like you've turned Critical Path scheduling on its head.

That disclaimer aside, it sounds like your best bet is to use either the
Marked field or some custom flag field, then define the Critical Path however
you would like using those. You can then tie text formatting to the Market
field and bar chart formatting to either the flag field or the Marked field,
and calculate the Critical Path however you would like.

The challenge there would be of course that when the schedule changes,
you'll have to manually flag/unflag tasks from your CP - which kind of
defeats the point of a scheduling tool.

Another option to try is to set a Deadline on those milestones. I don't
have a copy of MS Project in front of me and haven't tried this specifically,
but that may flip them to Critical if the Deadline is on the same date as the
Milestone Start. Add the Critical and Deadline fields to your view, and try
it out.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Kurt,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

The critical path is a mathematical calculation made by Project in accordance with Critical Path Method criteria, you can't just make a task critical (and a milestone is treated as a zero duration task). If you're not sure of this, click on the Network Analysis button on the left on this web page: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm . What you need to do is to link all tasks finishing to the milestone and then link from the milestone to the subsequent tasks. This will do what you're asking for. Incidentally, try Tools/Options.../View tab and at the bottom, select Project Summary Task.

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

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials



I have a project with a few long duration non-critical task which define the
ultimate duration of the entire project. However, I have a few critical
intermediate milestones which are critical. Does anyone know if there is a
way to force the critical path through specific milestones without date
constraining them?

Many Thanks.

 

[salgud]

I have a project with a few long duration non-critical task which define the
ultimate duration of the entire project. However, I have a few critical
intermediate milestones which are critical. Does anyone know if there is a
way to force the critical path through specific milestones without date
constraining them?

Many Thanks.

You are making a fairly common mistake. You're using the term "Critical" in
it's common English definition, something very important to the success of
the project, and it's scientific definition, that it has zero Total Slack.
Your milestone may well be the most important thing in the project, but it
isn't on the Critical Path, nor should it be.

Understand that CPM scheduling is basically a tool to set priorities
between the many tasks in a project. However, there are other criteria for
setting priorities that are just as valid. So in this case, you might make
the path to your Very Important Milestone more important than the critical
path. That decision is up to the Project Team (or Project Manager if you're
not doing the "team" thing).

HTH

 

[Mike Glen]

There's no reason why a milestone shouldn't be on the critical path - viz a start or finish milestone. But I agree that a very important milestone may not necessarily be on the critical path - it depends on the logic and not the importance to management.

Mike Glen
Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials


Your milestone may well be the most important thing in the project, but it
isn't on the Critical Path, nor should it be.