Critical Path and Longest Path

Critical Path
It is the longest continuous chain of activities (may be more than one path) which
establishes the minimum overall project duration. A slippage or delay in completion of any
activity by one time period will extend final completion correspondingly. The critical path by
definition has no “float.” By mathematical definition, any activity with a TF of 0 is a critical
activity. This is logical, since TF is the float available to an activity before it starts impacting
the finish date of the project. By application of this principle, the chain of all critical activities
will run straight through start-finish, thereby equaling the project’s duration. Thus, critical
path defines the project duration at the beginning.

Longest Path
It is the longest continuous path of activities through a project, which controls project early
completion. It is possible for otherwise defined critical path activities to not be on the
longest path and longest path activities to not show calculated critical float.

Activity A, 12 days
1

2
Activity B, 15 days

Consider the following example. A project involves 2 activities

A and B which take 12 and 15 days respectively. Here at the commencement of the project,
Activity B is critical, and the activity A has a float of 3 days. Now, if the start of project is
delayed by 3 days, the float of activity a gets consumed completely. The TF of path A now
becomes 0, and thus it becomes a critical activity by definition when we consider backward
pass for contractual finish date. However, the project duration is still calculated based on
the activity B, which was the original critical path. Therefore, irrespective of mathematical
definition, not all critical activities will affect the project finish. Only the activities on longest
path affect the project completion date.

However, the longest path may change from predefined route during the course of the
project. This is explained by the following example in the next page.
 A B
C
D E
START END
F H
G

Here in this example, let duration of activity A be 3, B be 4, C be 2, D be 5, E be 1, F be 2, G

be 4, and H be 1. So the critical path is ABC, with duration of 9 days. Path DE has a
shared float of 3 days, and path FGH has a shared float of 2 days. But if activity F gets
delayed by say 3 days, the shared float of FGH gets exhausted, and it now has a
negative float of -1. Thus, in this case G and H become critical activities, and the project
completion date now depends on the activities F, G and H. Thus, longest path gets redefined
during the course of the project, and the previously critical path now has a float of 1 day.