Critical Path Map
When schedule risks are considered, the traditional deterministic critical path is often no longer the most critical one.
The Safran Risk Critical Path Map provides a detailed insight into the risk model's effects on the activities and paths through the schedule.
Four main sections of the Critical Path Map
Schedule (End of path activity)
The point in the project that you want to see the critical paths for. This point can be the entire project or an activity, typically a milestone. To see the critical paths for a particular activity, you find this activity in the tree and select it. You should now see how all the data in the rest of the view changes. It is impossible to see the critical paths for a summary—only the entire project or activity.
Critical Paths
The critical paths pane shows all the critical paths through the schedule during at least one of the risk simulations. The Frequency column indicates how often a path appeared as critical during the analysis, the color column corresponds to the points that are plotted on the path plot chart (see Path Plot), and the checkbox allows you to show/hide activities on the selected path in the Gantt View and also the related points on the path plot.
Gantt View
By default, The Gantt view pane shows all the critical activities during the analysis.
The data table shows how critical each activity was. '1' means the activity always appeared on the critical path and shows each activity's deterministic start and finish dates.
The Gantt chart shows these activities positioned according to their deterministic dates. It also shows all the paths that each activity was critical on, and this list is sorted initially on the criticality column (most critical first).
You can see all the activities on the selected paths or a subset.
- All Activities will show you all the activities on the selected paths.
- Common Activities will show you all the activities the selected paths have in common.
- Exclusive Activities will show you activities only on the selected paths and not on any other paths. (If all paths are selected it will show you the same as All activities)
Path Plot
The path plot pane provides a visual representation of where each listed critical path appears on the curve. Each dot represents one iteration colored by the path that was critical for that iteration and shows the relative duration of that iteration.
This can provide important information not traditionally available. For example, you may find that the path that appears to be critical with the highest frequency is primarily isolated to those iterations with a smaller duration. In contrast, critical paths less frequently are responsible for those iterations where the project is completed in the longest duration.
The path plot can be saved to a file (Export Graph) or copied to the clipboard (Copy).
The Gantt chart, shown centrally below, displays activities from the selected paths and how often each activity was critical during the analysis. The list can be filtered to display all activities exclusive to the selected paths or activities common to the selected paths.
'P' Dates and Durations
Viewing the values for your selected focus percentiles in the Gantt chart area of the Schedule tab is possible.
As shown in the following screenshot, the percentile dates can be shown in both columns and as bars alongside the deterministic bars in the Gantt chart. The example of narrow bars is shown above the deterministic bars for the P80 start and finish dates and below the deterministic bars for the P20 start and finish dates. The percentile durations can also be shown as columns.
For more information on how to set up new columns and bars, please refer to the 'Layouts' and 'Symbols' sections of the Scheduling Chapter of this guide.
