Criticality Index Sensitivity report

You use the Criticality Index Sensitivity report to identify the tasks in a project that appear on the critical path most often in the iterations that are produced during risk analysis.

The critical path in the live data does not apply to all iterations; during risk analysis, the critical path can change with each iteration, as different durations are selected for tasks. The relative frequency of the alternative critical paths can tell you a lot about the nature of a project.

The Criticality Index Sensitivity report indicates the percentage of the iterations in which each task is on the critical path. The criticality index of a task is a measure of the importance of the task within a project: the higher the criticality index, the more important the task and the more likely the task is to affect the finish date of the project.

The report lists the tasks in descending order of percentage - whether the percentage is positive or negative. For example, any tasks with percentages of -100% and 100% are listed first, followed by tasks with percentages of -99% and 99%, and so on. You can specify the maximum number of tasks to include in the report. If, for example, you choose to include a maximum of 100 tasks in the report, the report lists the 100 tasks in the project that appear on the critical path most often.

In addition to viewing the Criticality Index Sensitivity report, you can view the criticality index of tasks in a project once you have carried out risk analysis by displaying the Criticality index field in the spreadsheet.

To access the Criticality Index Sensitivity report:

Click the Reports control on the Results tab of the Risk Analysis dialog and select Sensitivity. The Sensitivity Reports dialog appears.
Click the Criticality Index Sensitivity tab.