Primavera P6 Professional Longest Path

[Music] constraints from the longest path if you want to optimize your schedule you will need to be shortening activities that are on the critical path but what do you do if you have an activity or project constraint that causes Primavera p6 to either display too many critical paths or completely hide the critical path this video clip describes how to isolate the true critical and longest path in Primavera p6 professional in support of schedule optimization efforts let's begin with a definition of critical path the project management Institute's project management body of knowledge or PMBOK this edition defines the critical path as the sequence of activities that represents the longest path through a project which determines the shortest possible duration with that definition in mind let's look at our demonstration project in the Gantt chart we have red bars that represent critical activities the critical path is the sequence of critical activities from the start of the schedule to the end which according to our critical path definition denotes the longest path we have two packs one following experimental testing and the other following analytical modeling these two paths converge at model analysis where experimental and analytical data are compared now let's look at how Primavera p6 professional is defining our critical activities we select schedule from the Tools menu this brings up the schedule dialog click options which will take us to the schedule options dialog in the general tab go down to where it says define critical activities as the default toggle for p6 is total float less than or equal to zero hours the total float is the number of days an activity can be delayed without delaying the scheduled end date so a total float of three days means that you can delay the respective activity by three days and still not lengthen the schedules overall life cycle in light of this note that activities along the analytical path each have three days of total float and therefore are non critical however activities along the experimental path each have zero days of total float which makes them critical most important it is evident that the experimental path is the longest path through the network and should be the focus of optimization efforts this zero day total float definition of a critical activity works well for our schedule but what happens when we add a finish on ER before constraint to activity a1100 model motor geometry to add this constraint select status in the bottom pane in the constraints section where it says primary select finish honour before from the drop-down menu for the date it's like the same date as the activity finish date and finally recalculate the schedule now we see some more red bars on the Gantt chart we see here another path of critical activities that does not span the entire project what's going on here well it is generally stated that activity is critical if it cannot be delayed without impacting the scheduled end date there are exceptions to every rule and in this case the exception is that the activity may not be delayed without affecting an activity constraint date such as a finish on or before constraint date here the critical activity is not causing the project end date to split but it is impacting an interim activity constraint date so a critical activity may not necessarily be on the longest path through the network again note that critical activities do not necessarily have to fall along the longest path this is important to note because to optimize or shorten your schedule you want to shorten activities that are on the longest path through the network most schedulers want to display all critical activities whether they are on the longest path or not so every activity that cannot be delayed without affecting either defined project interim dates or the project completion date will be flagged this is the default setting in most scheduling software programs and in particular Primavera p6 professional but if you hope to optimize your schedule then you want to focus on the longest path alone p6 helps us out here with another setting in schedule options again we open the schedule options dialog this time we define critical activities as longest path and recalculate the schedule this removes the two critical activities due to the finish on or before constraint and we have the longest path displayed on the Gantt chart let's now remove the constraint and go back to our previous definition of critical activities look what happens however would we place a project constraint on our schedule that falls before the natural network logic end date to add the project constraint go to the project's tab highlight your project and set a must finish by date of 20 June 2016 now we have two paths that are critical and we do not know which one is the true longest path to rectify the situation again we change the definition of critical activities to longest path well now even though all the activities have negative float you still are displaying the one true longest path in red let's take another project constraint first switchback our definition of critical activity to zero day total float watch what happens when applying a project constraint that falls beyond the network logic say July 7th 2016 this time all our activities have flowed and the critical path is hidden again where do we look to shorten the schedule in both situations we can find the longest path or critical path by switching the schedule options define critical activities as default setting to the longest path setting so there you have it a fairly in-depth look at some examples of critical and longest path features in Primavera p6 professional summary to take away from this longest path input well when you are in the process of optimizing your schedule you want to set the schedule options to longest path this is particularly helpful for shortening schedules that has many activities again the longest path option defines all critical activities as being along the longest path later when your schedule is optimized set the schedule options to define critical activities as having zero total float this way you will flag all longest path activities and all activities up against an interim activity constraint date so all activities danger of delaying either interim constraint dates or the project end date are flagged finally make sure you document which schedule options critical definition is set with your schedule either longest path or total flow before sending it out to project stakeholders [Music]

Channel: Ten Six

Views: 11,675

Rating: 4.8899083 out of 5

Keywords: Longest Path, Primavera P6, Primavera P6 Professional

Id: ERYUi5k2izQ

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2017