Critical path

Last updated Jun 5, 2023

The list of project milestones you must reach to meet the project goal on schedule, as well as the mandatory task that contributes to the completion of each milestone.

It includes the bare minimum number of tasks and milestones you need to reach your project goal.

To determine the critical path:

• Capture all tasks
  • List all the tasks and milestones.
  • Reference Work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Set Tasks dependencies
  • Determine which task cannot begin until another task is completed
• Create a network diagram
  • To visualize the Tasks dependencies
  • Identify which tasks can happen in parallel vs. which tasks can happen sequentially.
    • Parallelism create efficiency
• Find the critical path
  • Make time estimates for tasks to know the critical path length
  • Work with the team to estimate the time required for each task to complete
  • Determine which project tasks have a fixed start date
  • Determine which tasks have a fixed start date
  • Identify if a task has Float or Slack.
    • Tasks on the critical path have zero float
  • Forward pass
  • Backward pass

The forward pass refers to when you start at the beginning of your project task list and add up the duration of the tasks on the critical path to the end of your project. When using this approach, start with the first task you have identified that needs to be completed before anything else can start.

The backward pass is the opposite—start with the final task or milestone and move backwards through your schedule to determine the shortest path to completion. When there is a hard deadline, working backwards can help you determine which tasks are actually critical. You may be able to cut some tasks—or complete them later—in order to meet your deadline.