The critical path is red (example) and the second critical path is blue (i.e. float less than ten days).Sometimes when you focus exclusively on the critical path you can miss the path of activities right behind the critical path. The critical path is the longest contiguous path that drives the end date for the project (i.e. the long pole in the tent).
Read MorePrioritizing a project portfolio. It’s not as complicated as you think and allows you to see the forest.
Read MoreHow can Zero-Based Budgeting be implemented? We will show you how using decisionAccelerator, part of FTTM Tools.
Read MoreWhy define a mission statement for a project? This post explains why.
Read MoreThe long pole in the tent holds the tent up. It determines the height of the tent. The long pole in a project is the critical path. It is the longest contiguous path, from start to end, that forms the overall project duration. The long pole in the project tent drives the end date.
Read MoreThe following is an overview of Critical Path Method (CPM). The critical path is the longest contiguous path to the end of the project.
Read MoreRefresh Planning is a core practice of fast teams. Refresh Planning involves three steps; update, break-down, and pull-in. It’s a weekly team activity. They look back in time to record what they did and didn’t get done, then decompose near-term long duration critical path tasks, and then use the more granular and detailed schedule to reconfigure the work in order to accelerate it
Read MoreDescribes how to determine your version of Excel.
Read MoreDescribes how decisionAccelerator prioritizes the alternatives using AHP.
Read MoreI get an error “Compile error in hidden module” when launching decisionAccelerator for the first time.
Read MoreShows how to determine your version of Microsoft Project.
Read MoreHow to kill an Excel process after a fastProject error.
Read MoreWe have been using this checklist to assess the effectiveness of team Refresh Planning. The checklist identifies 24 aspects or practices used in the Refresh Planning process. These include Timing, Participation, Pre-Refresh, Update, What Changed?, Pull-in, Post Refresh, Analysis, Follow-up, and Reporting.
It is designed to be used as a learning tool. Score your team and use it to improve.
Critical Path Method (CPM) Scheduling mistakes we observe in many schedules, those built prior to lateralworks FTTM Scheduling training. These include 1) no contiguous critical path, 2) negative float, 3) date constraints, 4) wrong updates (of actual progress), and 5) no successors. Each individually or together result is inaccurate / wrong critical paths, and therefore potentially wrong dates for key milestones. The result is a schedule that can’t be used as a management tool and can not be trusted. This post discusses each problem.
Read MoreThe Lookahead report is used to, 1) Gather update information for the Refresh and 2) List the coming tasks until the next Refresh. This post describes the Lookahead report.
Read MoreDescribes how to customize a Lookahead report.
Read MorefastProject behavior can be customized be setting various options.
Read MoreThis out describes how to import a PreFresh Lookahead Report.
Read MoreI just installed fastProject and it keeps crashing when I try and run it.
Read MoreSummary task durations in Microsoft Project can sometimes be confusing. This post explains how to interpret them.
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