critical path

Ronald,



I know you would never get into tampering with P3; my point is that probably it would have been easier to do within the software itself, especially when activities competing for resources are "moved" into the path based upon the particular algorithm. Shouldn’t the constraining algorithm tell you about the drivers of your path and about resource critical activities?



About total float reflecting contract requirements here I do not agree, it hides the understanding of the paths and because of this many schedulers remove constraints that tie the backward computations to a constraint. Milestones should reflect contract requirements. P3’s constraints that affect backward computations should never be accepted as a mandatory contractual requirement, is unnecessary, does not make any sense to me.



I could live with a functionality that toggles on and off those constraints that fix dates for backward computations and giving back your constraint dates at a click of the mouse. Until then would avoid using such P3 constraints, obviously unless at gunpoint it is a contractual requirement. I consider P3 handling of must finish constraint self serving to the Owner at the expense of the Contractor needs.



Best regards,

Rafael

There is no copyright infringement issue with Longest Path Software. The Schedule Analyzer module computes longest path values for every activity and then inserts them as P3 Custom Data Items. The P3 user than just sorts their schedule based on that Custom Data Field. There is no tampering with the P3 software.



Also, Longest Path Software did not ‘fail’ to consider constraints; it rejects their effects when locating the schedule longest path. It would have been simpler to create Longest Path Value if we just accepted P3’s constraints. Total Float considers things like the effects of constraints when it makes it calculations. The Longest Path by Primavera’s definition should be the longest string of activities starting from the data date and proceeding to the end of the project. Constraints can cause the P3’s longest path to start in the middle (or end) of the schedule.



Let’s let Total Float reflect constraints and the Longest Path reflect the longest logical train of activities necessary to complete the work. Both have their place. Total Float should reflect contract requirements. Longest Path should reflect the work to be completed.

About Longest Path:



Although the teory on longest path as defined by Ron Winter might be adapted to take into account constraints it might be that Schedule Analyzer and third party software cannot do so as they can only work only with database values and cannot re-engineer the software because of copyright issues.



Best regards,

Rafael

Dear harzelli,



This is a good size project. The critical activities might be 30-40 pages at the start of the project and it will increase with time as more activities become critical.



You also need to filter the activities with 1, 2, and 3 days of floats, because chances are that few will become critical in the upcoming reporting cycles.



Remember that your analysis is as good as your review, so engage the teams working on the project and let them know what is happening on first hand basis.



With kind regards,



Samer

Year 2012 is nearing, the end of days for Primavera P3 is closing but if you have the resources you can buy Schedule Analyzer for P3, available also for P6.



Because P6 does not fit my needs I would like to have Schedule Analyzer available for Spider Project. The functionality in Spider Project to filter all predecessors to an activity and export to a new job leaves out those activities not linked but that still have or might eventually have an effect on the longest path. Such as, those activities not linked by logic but that still compete for resources.

Dear harzelli,



What do you mean manual method? Do you want to actually calculate the critical path by hand. It will take you a lot of time to cover a small project of 20-30 activities?



What kind of project are you working on if you do not mind us asking? And how many activities do you have in your Program of Works.



With kind regards,



Samer

I would define subproject critical path as the chain of events that determines the duration of the Subproject, similar to critical path, the path that defines the project duration.



Therefore subproject critical path should be the “Longest Path” of the last activity in the subproject as defined in the following reference:



http://scheduleanalyzer.com/sa_long.htm



Most probably is dependent on links to the main project and other subprojects as well as on other constraints and availability of resources so it might include activities and resources from the other group members, even if non linked by precedence logic. It is variable with schedule progress and its computation should never be isolated from the ever changing effect of the others.

harzelli, sbah el kheir and happy new year

I am not sure you have another way that to export the sub-project activities in a new schedule to isolate them from the other activities of the main project; filtering the main project activities to display only the so called sub-project activities still displays the global critical path

I hope this will help you

Alexandre

Hi



In addition, the critical path of sub projects remains highlighted in main project ,is it correct?

harzelli,



Keep in mind that some software does fool the CPM computations by setting a Finish-No-Later-Than constraint equal to the late finish in their backward computation; therefore you might have negative slack/float.



http://www.warnercon.com/articles/Article%207%20-%20Use%20of%20Mileston…



It is an invention of someone who occurred this as to satisfy the need of low IQ owners by reminding them that if you they see negative slack the job is falling behind schedule when all they need is to compare milestone activities target dates versus early dates.



Most of the software that fool the backward pass cannot override these unless you erase the constraints to follow the logic and then replace them back to satisfy this ridiculous requirement. Some schedulers resort to all kind of tricks to get back the true late dates as defined under traditional CPM theory, the most common is to use global change to erase the constraints but to get them back is not that easy.



Superior software let you define a Finish-No-Later-Than constraint without fooling the backward pass and still providing the functionality to spot delays. I would not mind if you could toggle between one and the other (Superior and Inferior) but unfortunately none that I know has provided this functionality as of today.



To me, Samer definition should be the only one as negative float is an aberration.



Best regards,

Rafael

Dear harzelli,



You have to search for Activities with zero float. These are on the critical path. You might have more than one critical path.



With kind regards,



Samer

hello harzelli,

how do you define a sub-project in P3; are you using master and sub-projects, or do you consider a part of your project as a sub-project?

Alexandre