New Feature in Primavera P6 Professional v. 21: Showing Backward/Forward Activity Critical Paths

Primavera P6 Professional version 21 introduces a powerful new feature that allows you to highlight different types of critical paths – making it easier than ever to analyze project schedules from multiple perspectives.

Let’s walk through how this feature works using a simple project example.

How to View Critical Paths

When you select to show activity critical paths, completed activities, WBS Summary activities, and activities that are not on a critical path associated with the selected activity are filtered out of your view.

1. Navigate to: View > Toolbars > Activity Critical Path.
2. Select an activity that is either not started or in progress (e.g., Activity J).
3. Choose one of the following options:

• Show Backward Activity Critical Paths: Reveals the most critical path leading up to the selected activity.

• Show Forward Activity Critical Paths: Displays the critical path extending from the selected activity forward.

• Show Activity Critical Paths: Combines both backward and forward paths for a complete picture.

• Show Resource Critical Paths: Highlights not only the activities leading to the selected one but also any activities whose resource assignments are contributing to the criticality of the selected activity (even if those activities are not on the activity-driven critical path to the selected activity).

Customizing Your View

You can further tailor your analysis with these options:

• Show More Paths: Add up to 30 critical paths to your view.

• Show Fewer Paths: Remove less critical paths one at a time.
• Select Paths to Show: Manually define how many paths to display.
• Enable Group and Sort: Apply your configured grouping and sorting preferences.

To return to seeing all activities visible in your view, toggle off the applied critical paths button.

Notes:

• The criticality of each path is determined according to the latest early finish date of activities (or the latest early start date for start milestones) and then according to the lowest total float. If multiple activities on a path have the same early finish date and equal total float, Activity ID is used as a tie-breaker (in ascending order).
• The criticality of resource assignments to activities on the critical path is determined according to the latest resource assignment early finish date. If multiple activities have the same resource assigned with the same assignment early finish date, again the Activity ID is used as a tie-breaker (in ascending order).

Learn More

For detailed documentation, visit Oracle’s official guide: Showing activity critical paths