Critical Path

Critical path denotes to the path which requires the maximum time amount to be accomplished.

Here, the counting is started from the work started from day 1 having no predecessor and ends on

the final task required to make the project successful. Moreover, this certain path needs more

supervision because it takes the longest time and any delay in it may result the whole project

delayed itself.

The paths for our project are –

Route Total Time

Path A 1-7-8-13-14 97

Path B 1-9-10-11-12-14 102

Path C 1-7-8-14 67

Path D 1-13-14 52

Path E 4-5-6-9-10-11-12-14 107

Path F 4-5-6-13-14 57

Path G 4-5-6-14 27

Path H 4-6-14 22

Path I 4-6-13-14 52

Path J 4-6-9-10-11-12-14 102

In our project planning, we have got total 10 different paths which need accomplishment time

ranging from 22 days to 107 days. Among them, path E is our critical path because it takes the

highest time which includes activity 4-5-6-9-10-11-12-14. Hence, the activities in this route must
be evaluated in different review techniques and the predecessors and successors need to be

started and ended on exactly same days as planned in order to make the project on board within

due time.

Slack calculation

To calculate the slack, one needs to calculate the early start, early finish and late start, late finish

of an activity. Basically, slack denotes the time till which an activity can be delayed without

hampering the project accomplishment within time. Hence, the slack time is derived by

subtracting early finish from late finish or by subtracting early start from late start. However, the

activities which are included in critical path will have slack amount of 0 because they already

take the highest duration and so cannot be started any later date than planned.

The slack time calculation for our project is –

Activity LS ES LF EF Slack

1 5 0 20 15 5

2 67 15 77 25 52

3 77 25 107 55 52

4 0 0 5 5 0

5 5 5 10 10 0

6 10 10 20 20 0

7 25 15 40 30 10

8 40 30 70 60 10

9 20 20 40 40 0

10 40 40 60 60 0
 11 60 60 90 90 0

12 90 90 100 100 0

13 70 60 100 90 10

14 100 100 107 107 0

In our project, we could start 2 activities on day 1 which are our activity 1 and activity 4 and they

had no predecessors. Moreover, activity 3 is not predecessor of any other activity and so late

finish for it can be on the very last day of critical path which is 107. The highest slack time is 52

days which is found for two activities – activity 2 and 3. However, our most of the activities are

included in the critical path. As a consequence, all of them have a slack of 0 days and need to be

done accordingly to finish the project on time.