Critical Path not showing

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    • #409658
      Eddie Taylor
      Guest

      Hi,
      my file won’t show a critical path. I know you go to Gantt Chart Tools > Format > Tick Critical Tasks checkbox to see it.
      I did and also went to create a column called Critical. Everything is ‘No’ meaning no task is critical.

      I don’t think I am right.
      Please Help.

    • #409659
      Daryl Deffler
      Participant

      Eddie,
      Critical path depends on a couple things.
      In your File > Options > Advanced window, at the bottom (Project 2013), there is an option that defines what Project considers as a critical task. The option is “Tasks are critical if Slack is less than or equal to…”.
      This option means that you can decide that tasks with 1 day, 3 days, or 0 days (whatever value you choose) are considered as critical.

      With that in mind, add the Total Slack column to you view table. Chances are your total slack values on each task exceed the value you have in your “Tasks are critical…” option.

      Additionally, Project has a difficult time calculating critical path/slack if the project tasks do not have dependency relationships. If you’re familiar with forward/backward pass concepts used to calculate Slack, then you’ll understand how breaks in the dependency chain will impact Project’s ability to calculate Slack values.
      So verify that your tasks all have dependency relationships and that there are no dangling dependency chains that have missing predecessors at the front or successors at the end of the chain.

      Hope that helps.

    • #409663
      Sai Prasad
      Participant

      Insert Total Slack and since you mentioned Critical = No, you should see a positive slack across all tasks. Now, check if the last task has Start No Later Date constraint with constraint date set to date that is later than the finish date of the task; this will change the late start = constraint date creating a positive float – screen for your reference https://db.tt/82wRmUGkdA. Remove the constraint type and you should be able to see the critical path.

    • #483234
      Ryan
      Guest

      My Solution:

      After showing slack (format-slack tickbox) on my Gant the line showed my finish date like 4 months after my actual finish which nerfed my critical path.
      My file was a copy/paste of another one, maybe it still had some old end date data in it or something IDK.

      File –
      options –
      advanced –
      Calculation options for this project –
      move end of completed parts after status date back to status date.

      This reset the slack back and allowed my CP to work again. 🙂

      Sorry to gravedig, I found this thread which led me to my solution so thought I’d post. Hope this helps others.

      -Ryan

    • #483314
      Sai Prasad
      Participant

      Thanks @Ryan for sharing your solution.

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