'Critical activities' quality metric
Use this metric to check the proportion of critical tasks and milestones in a project. A high proportion of critical tasks does not necessarily point towards poor-quality scheduling, but can indicate a very high-risk schedule.
Example of critical tasks
In the following illustration, the critical path is marked in red; all tasks apart from Task 2 are critical, as Task 2 has float:
You can change the impact that this metric has on the weighted total result of a quality check by entering a factor by which the quality metric should be multiplied in the Weighting field. For the weighting to have any effect, a quality check must have more than one quality metric.
Pass and fail criteria
| Pass or fail? | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Pass |
A project passes this metric if the percentage of tasks that are critical is greater than or equal to the pass boundary percentage.
For example, if the pass boundary was set to 10.00%, a project would pass this metric if 10.00% or more of tasks were critical. |
| Fail |
A project fails this metric if the percentage of tasks that are critical is less than the fail boundary percentage.
For example, if the fail boundary was set to 1.00%, a project would fail this metric if less than 1.00% of tasks were critical. |
| Neither pass nor fail | If the percentage of tasks that are critical falls between the pass and fail boundary percentages, the result is neither a pass nor a fail, but somewhere in between. |
Suggested settings
- Pass boundary: 10.00%. A project will pass this metric if 10.00% or more of tasks are critical.
- Fail boundary: 1.00%. A project will fail this metric if less than 1.00% of tasks are critical.
The following table shows whether some example projects would pass or fail this metric using these settings:
| Percentage of tasks that are critical | Pass or fail? |
|---|---|
| 0.00% | Fail |
| 0.99% | Fail |
| 1.00% | Neither pass nor fail |
| 5.00% | Neither pass nor fail |
| 9.99% | Neither pass nor fail |
| 10.00% | Pass |
| 50.00% | Pass |
| 100.00% | Pass |
Does the metric force a project to be rescheduled?
Yes. If you include this metric in a quality check, the charts and summary groups that are included in the scope of the quality check are rescheduled automatically when you execute the quality check.
Suggested actions if a project fails this metric
If a project fails this metric, select the metric in the Quality Check Results dialog and click Show Failing Tasks to view the tasks that have failed the metric.
You could take the following actions to remedy the failing tasks:
- Work overtime on tasks that are on the critical path.
- Reduce the duration of tasks on the critical path.
- Add more resources to tasks on the critical path so that they are completed in less time.
- See if any linked tasks on the critical path can overlap instead of being linked from finish to start.
Introduction to schedule quality checking