CRITICALITY IN RESOURCE CONSTRAINED NETWORKS

Project managers readily adopted the concept of the critical path as a n aid to identifying those activities most worthy of their attention a nd possible action. However, current project management packages do no t offer a useful measure of criticality in resource constrained projec ts. A revised method of calculating resource constrained float is pres ented, together with a discussion of its use in project management. Wh ile resource constrained criticality appears to be a practical and use ful tool in the analysis of project networks, care is needed in its in terpretation as any calculation of such float is conditional on the pa rticular resource allocation employed. A number of other measures of a n activity's importance in a network are described and compared in an application to an aircraft development. A quantitative comparison of t he measures is developed based on a simulation of the process of manag ement identifying the key activities and directing their control effor ts. Resource constrained float appears to be a useful single measure o f an activity's importance, encapsulating several useful pieces of man agement information. However, there are some circumstances in which ot her measures might be preferred.