Critical path and slack
The critical path consists of tasks whose delay would delay the project’s end, shown in red on the Gantt diagram. It displays the float alongside other tasks.
- All users
What are the critical path and float?
The critical path consists of tasks whose delay would delay the project's completion, shown in red on the Gantt chart. Who can do this: All users. Slack is displayed next to other tasks. Shortening or parallelizing a critical path task advances the project's end date; speeding up a task with slack does not change the end date.
Steps
Open the project's Gantt tab.
Ensure the Critical Path checkbox at the top is checked 1.
Red bars and arrows indicate the critical path 2; +N next to the task name indicates that task's slack.
- 1Critical path
- 2Critical task
What is float?
Slack is the number of working days a task can be delayed without delaying the project's completion. Tasks with no slack are on the critical path. Calculation is done by tracing dependencies backwards from the project's latest-finishing task.