Project 2013 Intermediate

Project 2013

Lesson 4 – Working with the Critical Path

S HORTENING THE C RITICAL P ATH

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Discussion

After you create a project, you can evaluate it to see if it still meets your objectives before you actually start. For example, you may notice that tasks on the critical path will take too long to complete. To solve this problem, you could shorten the critical path in order to finish the project by the finish date. You can shorten the path before you begin a project, or as a project progresses and tasks are not completed as planned. You can use several methods to shorten the critical path, including decreasing task durations, adding lead time or resources, scheduling overtime, or increasing resource work hours. When you shorten the critical path, however, you should be aware that the cost of the project usually increases and may cause an overallocation of some resources. Each option for shortening the critical path has its own disadvantages. One disadvantage would be that it may be unrealistic to decrease the duration of a critical task because it cannot be completed in a shorter timeframe. Another disadvantage would be that adding lead time between critical tasks, which does not increase costs, could overallocate resources. If a task is effort-driven, you could add resources to it to shorten the task duration; however, you may not be able to find available resources and it could increase costs. Scheduling overtime can keep tasks on track if they are effort-driven; however, this would increase costs. If you increase the working hours for the resource, the critical tasks would finish sooner; however, this would also increase costs. All of these options are available to you to keep your project on schedule, but you will need to determine which options are the most effective and appropriate for your particular situation.

A SSIGNING O VERTIME TO A T ASK

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Discussion

Assigning overtime to resources is one way to shorten the duration of a task because the same amount of work can be completed in a shorter amount of time. You can assign overtime to tasks before you begin a project to eliminate any possible overallocations. You may also need to assign overtime as your plan progresses if it is not going according to schedule.

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