What is the Critical Path in Clarity?

Products

• Clarity FedRAMP
• Clarity PPM On Premise
• Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

What is the Critical Path in Clarity? How is it calculated?

Environment

Any supported Clarity release

Resolution

Critical Path in Clarity
The Critical Path is a core concept in Clarity's scheduling functionality, particularly when using the Autoschedule capability.

1. What is the Critical Path?

The critical path is defined as:

• A set of tasks in an investment for which any delay or expansion lengthens the investment or causes investment deadlines to slip.
• It determines the investment's earliest finish date.

2. Purpose and Usage

Autoschedule: Autoschedule utilizes the critical path value to determine the tasks that drive the investment deadlines and constraints.
'Critical' Field: The 'Critical' field, part of the Task object, is updated based on the determination of the Critical Path Methodology (CPM) algorithm when the Autoschedule is published.

Note: The value of this 'Critical' field itself does not impact the CPM algorithm when Autoschedule is being used.

Key Characteristics of the Critical Field

• Automatic Calculation: When you use the Autoschedule feature and publish the results, the "Critical" field is automatically updated based on the determination of the scheduling algorithm.
• Significance: A task marked as "Critical" is part of the critical path, meaning any delay to this task will directly impact the project's finish date.