Critical Path in levelled projects

[Brian]

Hi

I have a project schedule which I have levelled. My question is how do
I generate a Critical Path for a levelled schedule in MSProj? Seems
that MS proj only calculates Critical Path when you have hard
dependancies!!! Any advice welcome. Thanks

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

If there are no dependencies the only task that is truly critical is the
last one. All of the others could be delayed without delaying the project
completion. Let's say you have tasks A, B, C, D, E and one resource, Fred.
You level and they are in sequence without dependencies. Now you need to
delay task B. When you do, it doesn't require C to also start later with
the delay rippling on down to the end. Instead, B gets delayed but C can
then move earlier to take its place in the sequence. Since there are no
hard dependencies, the sequence A, C, B ... is just as valid as the sequence
A, B, C... In this example, there truly is a one-task critical path and
nothing that comes before the last task is critical.

 

[davegb]

Hi

I have a project schedule which I have levelled. My question is how do
I generate a Critical Path for a levelled schedule in MSProj? Seems
that MS proj only calculates Critical Path when you have hard
dependancies!!! Any advice welcome. Thanks

It's a major flaw in Project that has never been fully corrected. The
Leveled project should be considered critical just as the un-leveled
one was. If you don't have enough resources to do all the tasks using
that resource simultaneously, that's just as real, and "critical" a
limitation as the links. The originator's of Project didn't understand
this, and I doubt anyone at MS understand it to this day. Not many end
users understand it either.
At the very least, it should be an option.

 

[Catfish Hunter]

First ask yourself what is CPM (Critical Path Method). It's the longest path
through the schedule. It's calculated through your logic ties. Without logic
ties you do not have a CPM schedule and do not have a critical path. If you
are going to resource level you first build your schedule with logic ties and
resource assignments. Then when you tell MS Projects to level it looks at
total float (slack) and resource availability. You can also throw in task
priority into the mix. It sounds like you thought you had an easy button on
the resource leveling. Good Luck.

 

[Brian]

Hi

I have a project schedule which I have levelled. My question is how do
I generate a Critical Path for a levelled schedule in MSProj? Seems
that MS proj only calculates Critical Path when you have hard
dependancies!!! Any advice welcome. Thanks

Thanks to Steve, Dave and "Catfish Hunter" for the feedback. OK -
without hard dependancies, project will not calculate critical path.
So what do you folks do if you have to determine the CP? I am thinking
- filter by resource and add hard dependancies??? I need to compress
the schedule and I want to look at adding resources to CP tasks to
achieve that... Again - any advice welcome. - Brian

 

[davegb]

Thanks to Steve, Dave and "Catfish Hunter" for the feedback. OK -
without hard dependancies, project will not calculate critical path.
So what do you folks do if you have to determine the CP? I am thinking
- filter by resource and add hard dependancies??? I need to compress
the schedule and I want to look at adding resources to CP tasks to
achieve that... Again - any advice welcome. - Brian

I've always done it "by guess and by golly". Trial and error until I
get what I want.
If you're willing to spend a few bucks, Google for "Critical Chain
Software", and check out what's available. There used to be some that
applied "Critical Chain" theory to an MS Project file.
Critical Chain is a theory advanced by Goldratt in the 90's. It
involves creating a resource leveled CP which Goldratt calls a Critical
Chain. It does somewhat more than what you're asking, but should solve
your problem. If you go this route, I'd be interested in hearing how it
went.
Hope this helps in your world.