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Hi everybody .. Is it OK to choose certain activities and make them critical instead of just relying on P6 critical path calculation using total float or longest path? Why we should do this? and finally what is the best teqnique to do so?
Thanks in advance
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Rangarajan wrote:
"Critical activities as we commonly say are actually Critical path activities (standard term refer practise standard for scheduling) and Critical activities are those activites which may affect the project duration significantly even if they are not in the Critical Path."
The amount that an activity's work, dependency relationship, resource insufficiency or calendar constraint adds to the project duration is its critical path drag. If an activity which is not on the planned critical path affects the project duration, it is because due either to one of those factors OR to the planned critical path being compressed, it has migrated to the actual (or as-built) critical path and gained what we might call emergent drag.
It is crucial (critical?) to know:
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Hany, i completely agree with Mike you should not tamper the calculated critical path . However you have to understand the concept of critical path. Critical activities as we commonly say are actually Critical path activities (standard term refer practise standard for scheduling) and Critical activities are those activites which may affect the project duration significantly even if they are not in the Critical Path. Bite on it. So the best solution is to hilghlight those activities separately as possible risk.
The better solution (though often difficult or even impossible to actually achieve), is to educate the client as to why he is wrong to require 10% activities on critical path. -And the reason he is wrong to do so is because he is guaranteeing that the programme submitted to him is inacurate at best, and misleading at worst.
Another option is to calculate your critical path properly, and then:
a) If you have less than 10% crtical activities, then divide the critical activites into smaller parts with FS(0) links until you reach the magic 10% figure
b) If you have more than 10% critical activities, then add spurious short duration (or even zero duration) activities to you highest float path until you reach the magic 10% figure.
This is clearly still a fudge and a lie, but it at least allows you to maintain the correct float vlaues and critical path.
As to highlighting important activities that have high float, this again is an education excercise: all critical activities are important, but not all important activities are critical. There are other ways to highlight important activities other than to pretend they are critical. -Different colouring, wbs, activity codes, risk registers, activity description, etc.
Hi Hany
In that case do the usual thing and run two programmes.
1. What the Engineer wants to see.
2. The true programme with correct durations and logic.
Update progress on both but NEVER get them mixed up.
Best regards
Mike Testro
Thanks Mike & Jose .. Even me It's my first time to hear about that.
When I told my senior that he looked at me like I'm from Mars, and for that I made this post to hear from experts.
His idea is that this is normal tecnique because the client want to see at least 10% of activities critical and also for highlighting some important activities (Though it may have positive or big total float).
In other words:
If the plan is calculating the critical path but we do not agree, can we cheat and choose the activities we want instead of correcting the Plan ?
Yes you can.... then, good luck to the project and owner.
Later on if you are not satisfied with the activities choosen, you can always pick up others.
Its a good practice to generate impredictable results/impacts to the project.
Who cares about PMBOK or any other PM procedures.
BR
JMFrade
Hi Hany
Rigging the critical path is bad planning practice.
However if some task durations are obviously wrong they should be corrected and this should be done using the resource modelling section.
It is good planning practice to take the guesswork out of the task duration by using the resources from the cost plan / BoQ and sensible gang sizes.
Best regards
Mike Testro
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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