You can filter your view to show only the activities on a critical path to a selected activity. You can choose to view the activity-driven backward critical path, forward critical path, or backward and forward critical paths, or the resource-driven backward critical path. You must have scheduled your project to view the critical paths, however it is not necessary to have calculated multiple float paths during scheduling. You will see more realistic critical paths if the projects you have open have also been leveled together.
Completed activities, WBS Summary activities, and activities that are not on a critical path associated with the selected activity are filtered out of your view when you select to show activity critical paths.
- Choose View, Toolbars, Activity Critical Path.
- Select a not started or in-progress activity for which you want to view critical paths.
Click 'Show Backward Activity Critical Paths' to show the most critical path behind the selected activity.
Click 'Show Resource Critical Paths' to show the most critical path behind to the selected activity, and any activities whose resource assignments are contributing to the criticality of the selected activity (even if those activities are not on the activity-driven critical path to the selected activity).
Click 'Show Forward Activity Critical Paths' to show the most critical path forward of the selected activity.
Click 'Show Activity Critical Paths' to show the entirety of the most critical path of the selected activity.
At any time you can click 'Show More Paths' to add further critical paths to the view up to a maximum of 30 paths or click 'Show Fewer Paths' to remove from view activities on less critical paths one path at a time. Alternatively, choose 'Select Paths to Show' to specify the exact number of critical paths to show.
To apply your view's configured grouping and sorting, choose 'Enable Group and Sort'. - To return to seeing all activities visible in your view, toggle off the applied critical paths button.
Notes:
- Add the Critical Path Number column to the activity grid to see which critical path each activity is on.
- The criticality of each path is determined according to the latest early finish date of activities (or the latest early start date for start milestones) and then according to the lowest total float. If multiple activities on a path have the same early finish date and equal total float, Activity ID is used as a tie-breaker (in ascending order).
- The criticality of resource assignments to activities on the critical path is determined according to the latest resource assignment early finish date. If multiple activities have the same resource assigned with the same assignment early finish date, again the Activity ID is used as a tie-breaker (in ascending order).