🐝 Activities

This screen enables you to:

1. Rank activities based on a range of criticality measures
2. Get the path of least float for every activity
3. Use smart filters to focus on high-value activities

Rank activities based on a range of criticality measures

Nodes & Links ranks activities based on a range of new and established measures, including

1. Path size
2. Total float
3. Delay inheritance
4. N&L Score

Path size corresponds to the number of activities that can be reached from your selected activity, following a path of least float (this may be the project’s critical path or some other near-critical path). A high value in path size means that a delay can reach - and is able to affect - a high number of downstream activities.

Total float is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the overall project duration. A low value means that even a small delay in the selected activity can cascade through and impact the project delivery date.

Delay inheritance is the delay that this task is likely to inherit if any of its upstream activities are delayed. We compute this by running multiple simulations to take into account the position of the selected activity in the project network, and the associated float of its upstream neighbors. High value means that the selected activity is likely to accumulate large delays from upstream activities, even if the activity itself is delivered on time.

N&L score is a weighted average on a number of activity parameters that we have seen to influence activity performance. The score is normalized and ranges from 100% (most critical) to 0% (less critical). This score is often correlated with total float but further takes into account the position of the activity within the broader network of activities

Clicking on any of the measures will give you a more detailed view on that specific measure. This includes a graph on how that measure is distributed across all activities and the score of the particular activity you have selected. In doing so, you can quickly assess how that measure of that particular activity compares to the overall project.

Technical note: When calculating total float, we take into account the nature of the relationships (FS, FF, SS, SF) and any additional calendars that may exist in the project. You can also control whether you want the computation to take into account account additional constraints when computing this, or not (see how by expanding the toggle below).

Technical note: The formula for computing the N&L score this is defined as follows = 0.75*(Total Float)+0.15*(Number of Successors)+0.1*(Max Duration - Target Duration)

Get the path of least float for every activity

You can find the most likely path that a delay will float, starting from your selected activity, by simply expanding the row.

By clicking on the expansion symbol, a new interactive visualization will emerge showing the sequence of activities that lies on a path of least float. This path may be the project’s critical path or some other near-critical path.

The path visualization is fully interactive - you can use your mouse to pan to the right and left in order to explore the path in its full length. Each bar between two activities corresponds to the free float, with the color ranging from grey (high free float) to deep red (low free float).

You can also directly interact with the path - simply left click on any of the activities and you have the option to see the neighborhood of that activity i.e., all predecessors and successors of that activity

Use smart filters to focus on high-value activities

You can narrow down your activity search by utilising the available filter functionality. One example use-case goes like this. As illustrated bellow, let’s search for activities that:

1. Have their Start date within August of 2018
2. Have their End date within the last 10 days of August 2018
3. Belong in the “Commissioning & Handover” WBS, and
4. Have 0 Total float