Critical Drivers help please

filter for driving AND critical 

Schedule calculation options, Advanced, Calculate multiple float paths, free float, ending with your selected activity, no limit on number of paths to calculate.  Then group by Float Path and sort by Float Path Order.  done.

(duplicate)

Be reminded that Longest Path miserably fails at resource leveled schedules.  As you can see in the following sample schedule most activities are not linked but their use/consumption of resources will delay other activities.

  not resource leveled schedule

 resource leveled schedule

 resource dependencies shown

Note while resource dependencies are shown for renewable resources, dependencies for materials[consumable resources] are not. 

When this happens Longest Path breaks and will not tell you the reason for activity delay, a very convenient field available in Spider Project.  I wonder how P6 users answer this question when the schedule is resource leveled.

I suggest to use the Trace Logic Chart and change the Options to see numbers of Predecessors and Filter to Critical. 

chose both filters critical AND LONGEST path 

the other option is to create a activity code and name it mypath and give it a code value of CP

now filter for the last activity 

go to the predcessor tab and if the driving and critical boxes are not there then in the predcessor window right click and select customize predcessor columns 

expand the General category and bring both the DRIVING and CRITICAL categories to the right 

no look for the predcessor activity that has BOTH the driving and the critical boxes checked

now click on that predcessor and at the bottom of the window select GOTO

keep doing this until you get back to the data date. 

now select all of the activities 

then rigth click and select assign and select activity codes and select the newly added code of mypath and give them the code value of CP

now you can filter for activity code where mypath = CP and see the driving activities. 

Hi Raymond, 

I thought of that but it's so small I can't actually read it.  I can't seem to find a way of zooming the view to make it readable with the amount of predecessors some activities have and I can't seem to be able to print it to read elsewhere. 

Is there a way you know of being able to do either of these?

Thanks, 

Hi Thomas,

As suggested by Zoltan, Use the Filter Critical and Longest Path together but make sure to select "All selected filters" above the filter pane.

Then View from the the Gantt Chart to trace the Driving Activity along the Longest path.

Hope this will help.

Zoltan as always amazing.  Have you thought about running training courses?

thank you once again for digging me out of a hole. :)

I have developed  3 day training program and I teach in house Project managers, Project Engineers, superintendendts and foremen.

Its a 400 page manual with screen shots where you can basically teach yourself withe manual. I have taught over 300 people.