Benefits of Critical Path
- Identify activities that require more focus. Delay in these activities can throw projects off-track
- Determine activities that can be completed in a shorter time (crashing) and reduce project duration
- Use the critical path timeline as a benchmark and measure the actual progress against it
- Track multiple critical paths if available
- Identify non-critical activities and economize resources
All you need to do is create tasks, set duration, and establish task dependencies. Zoho Projects gives a visual representation of the critical path on a Gantt chart. You can also view non-critical activities and their slack time be hovering over the activity.
Critical Path in Zoho Projects
Constructing a house involves numerous tasks which are dependent on each other. Considering a broad level list of tasks, let’s see how Zoho Projects displays the critical path for the below schedule.
The critical path of the project is highlighted in red. Non-critical tasks are shown in blue. The dotted line denotes the slack for non-critical tasks.
Critical Path on Gantt Chart
Slack in Tasks
Slack in Dependent Tasks
- If there a multiple successor tasks, the slack line will be shown from predecessor task to the nearest successor task.
- SS dependency: Slack line will be shown from predecessors start date to successors start date.
- SF dependency: Slack line will be shown from predecessors start date to successors end date.
- FS dependency: Slack line will be shown from predecessors end date to successors start date.
- FF dependency: Slack line will be shown from predecessors end date to successors end date.