Critical tasks

[Pooja]

I need to know, if a task is on schedule with the status, can it still be a
critical task.
I have a task that starts from 3/1/06 thru 3/28/06, and it's 50% comp. It's
on schedule but it's still showing critical (it's really not critical). Can
someone help me with this.

What I thought that tasks are late or not started are critical not the
future tasks of the one's that are on schedule.

Thanks

 

[John]

I need to know, if a task is on schedule with the status, can it still be a
critical task.
I have a task that starts from 3/1/06 thru 3/28/06, and it's 50% comp. It's
on schedule but it's still showing critical (it's really not critical). Can
someone help me with this.

What I thought that tasks are late or not started are critical not the
future tasks of the one's that are on schedule.

Thanks

Pooja,
In Project the definition of a critical path are those tasks that have a
Total Slack of "0" (or as otherwise defined under
Tools/Options/Calculation tab). With that definition, it doesn't matter
is a task is already started or not, if it has "0" Total Slack, it is on
the critical path.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Pooja]

Hello John
Thanks for your help.
I am a bit confused. Ex: I have a project with date of 2/1/06 thru
4/28/06.
there are multiple tasks with summary tasks that goes from period in
following way
1--summary 1----2/1/06 thru 3/1/06
2--summary 2----3/15/06 thru 3/31/06
3--summary 3----4/1/06 thru 4/28/06.

What I was thinking that Summary 3 should be critical since it has no slak
and will be affecting the project finish date. But not summary 1 and 2, even
when they are on schedule. They could be critical if they were delayed but
they are not.

Please help I need to have this report by this afternoon....Thanks for your
help

 

[John]

Hello John
Thanks for your help.
I am a bit confused. Ex: I have a project with date of 2/1/06 thru
4/28/06.
there are multiple tasks with summary tasks that goes from period in
following way
1--summary 1----2/1/06 thru 3/1/06
2--summary 2----3/15/06 thru 3/31/06
3--summary 3----4/1/06 thru 4/28/06.

What I was thinking that Summary 3 should be critical since it has no slak
and will be affecting the project finish date. But not summary 1 and 2, even
when they are on schedule. They could be critical if they were delayed but
they are not.

Please help I need to have this report by this afternoon....Thanks for your
help

Pooja,
OK, let me give you a little background. Summary tasks aren't really
tasks at all. In my opinion they shouldn't even be called "tasks" - I
prefer the term "Summary line". Summary lines should not be linked and
should not have any resources assigned (see FAQs 48 & 49 on our MVP
website at: http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm). Summary lines only
represent a "summary" of the data for the subtasks under them.

Since summaries are not tasks, they really can't be critical although
Project may identify them as such if the bar style is set up to do so.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[davegb]

John, I like your idea of calling Summary tasks lines instead. I never
thought of that. But with all the problems and misunderstandings they
cause, simply not referring to them as tasks might help. I'm going to
blatantly steal your idea to use in my classes

 

[BigFish311]

I was having issues with some activities in progress that were showing up as
critical. I found that the resources schedule and activity schedule for the
one task were different which was making my status numbers a little screwy
and making the activity critical. So if you select the task in the gant view
and bring up the resource schedule table on the bottom, you can view the
resource start and finish dates. Check to see if they're different from the
task's duration. I don't know if this will fix your problem but it helped
with me.

 

[Pooja]

Hi John,
Ok it's my fault, when I wrote summary tasks,,,it's was actually taks
itself.
To clarify more......
I have 4 tasks under each summary line within the date range I told you
about earlier. These tasks are critical even if they are not started (future
tasks) or not even close to the project finish date. The project finish date
is 4/28/06. So if any task is ending at 3/15/06, it's comes up as critical
tasks, but it's not critical to me.

The only tasks that are critical to me are the one that are late, behind
schedule or the ones that may affect slip the project finish date. Not the
on schedule or future tasks which finishes before the project finish date..

Please help, thanks..
Pooja

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Pooja,

Why try to use a vocabulary of your own? Call it late tasks, slipping tasks,
or whatever, but sorry, critical tasks is an idiom used throughout the whole
world of project management (not just MS project, read the PMIBOK or books
on TOC...) to indicate tasks that do not have slack, in other words, when
they are delayed, they influence directly the end of the project.

And in that definition, very often even the very first task of a project is
critical.
Hope this helps.

 

[John]

John, I like your idea of calling Summary tasks lines instead. I never
thought of that. But with all the problems and misunderstandings they
cause, simply not referring to them as tasks might help. I'm going to
blatantly steal your idea to use in my classes

Dave,
Now if we can get the developers of Project to also "steal" the
concept....

John

 

[John]

Hi John,
Ok it's my fault, when I wrote summary tasks,,,it's was actually taks
itself.
To clarify more......
I have 4 tasks under each summary line within the date range I told you
about earlier. These tasks are critical even if they are not started (future
tasks) or not even close to the project finish date. The project finish date
is 4/28/06. So if any task is ending at 3/15/06, it's comes up as critical
tasks, but it's not critical to me.

The only tasks that are critical to me are the one that are late, behind
schedule or the ones that may affect slip the project finish date. Not the
on schedule or future tasks which finishes before the project finish date..

Please help, thanks..
Pooja

Pooja,
I explained how Project defines the critical path. If that definition
doesn't fit your conceptual idea (and you may not be alone in your
thinking), then so be it.

It sounds like you are really only interested in tasks that are
currently behind schedule. There are various filters (e.g.
"late/overbudget tasks assigned to...", "slipped/late progress") that
might better suit your definition. However, you also note that you are
interested in tasks that may slip the project finish date and those are
exactly what the critical path shows. The purpose is to show the user
which tasks are on the total path. It may well be that it is not
possible to improve the schedule of current or near term tasks but it
may well be possible to make some changes in the future that can
alleviate the problem.

John
Project MVP

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Pooja,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Please see FAQ Item: 42. Guide to Network Analysis

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

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

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[davegb]

Dave,
Now if we can get the developers of Project to also "steal" the
concept....

John

Based on MS history, all we have to do is to convince them that someone
is making money by doing this.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I think you'r4e using the term "critical" to mean "really important" when
Project's definition is much more specific. In a nutshell, the basic
definition is that a task is critical if any delay of its finish will delay
the project completion. It derives from the notion that those are the tasks
you most need to keep an eye on to avoid a schedule slippping.