Forum Discussion
Team Planner in MS Project Professional
- kish27,
Taking a quick look at your screen shot it looks like task 44 has no successor and that's probably why it is not on the critical path. In a good plan every task should have a predecessor, with a few exceptions, but every task MUST have a successor, even if it's the final milestone.
John
Option for Critical Path is still checked. I added to the Total Slack Field and Critical Filed and did the leveling again. This is what I see:
All those critical task I had before leveling the Critical Field changed from Yes to No. The critical task before leveling the Total Slack field showed 0 and after the leveling all had 1 day in the field.
After leveling I had only one small task shown as critical which has a duration of 2 days, The project plan at the project summary line shows the project has a duration of 107 days and finishes about 5months from the start.
If the leveling had level most of the task and there is only one critical path as I mentioned what I am confused is how MS Project calculates the project end date? From my understanding is the longest path in the project is the Critical path and it is also determines the earliest date the project will finish. How does this information is derive for the one critical of duration of 2 days I have left.
I have attached the mpp file for your reference if u want to look at it. When u open the file you will see the resource conflicts red man and also the critical task highlighted in red. Just select resource level all and see what happens only one task remains that is critical.
Sorry could not attach the mpp I just can't see the attach option.
best rgds
Kish
You can't directly attach files to posts on this forum. You can either attach screen shots or you can make your file available via dropbox or other accessible places or you could e-mail me your file.
If after leveling, all tasks except one are showing a non-zero total slack then apparently the leveling process ended up injecting slack into your plan. Depending on the size and complexity of your file using "level all" can make finding out what happened a tedious process. You might try leveling just parts (i.e. selected resources) of your plan to narrow down the reason for the positive slack.
John
Hi John
The project is not complex and I could easily go through leveling one resource at a time. There are only two resources in conflict. One is David at two task higher up in the file and Patricia conflicting at the two shown in snap shot below at Task 44 and 45.
First I started to level David and no issues my critical tasks were all in tack with some slight variation on the dates etc which is expected. Looks like David and the two task higher up in my files is not the cause my problem. So I reverted back again just before I level David.
Now I started leveling Patricia at Task 44 all my critical tasks that I had was forced injected as you said by one day of slack except Task 46. I revert back again and repeated for Task 46 and the results was the same. The culprit is in these two tasks with Patricia. I looked at it I just cannot see what is the cause of it unless I missing something here.
I could resolve this issue just by re-scheduling Task 45 to start with one day of lag from its predecessor (44FS-1day). Then do Level all and all looks fine with no loss of my critical tasks.
But this does not answer my question as to why my original problem of losing my critical task during leveling. I am just curious as to why Task 44 and Task 45 with Patricia as shown below is an issue so I can understand this and not to repeat this same mistake.
Your input much appreciated to my query.
Best Rgds
- kish27,
Taking a quick look at your screen shot it looks like task 44 has no successor and that's probably why it is not on the critical path. In a good plan every task should have a predecessor, with a few exceptions, but every task MUST have a successor, even if it's the final milestone.
John- Hi John
You are right on this. **bleep** how I missed this link and it was glaring as well. I added the successor and all was good.
I guess this discussion can be closed. Thanks once again for your effort and being patience with my queries.
Just be before I end is there a utility/report where I can run to report on tasks that have missing successors so that in future we don't make the same mistake again.
Best Rgds
