Use Critical to highlight work within a float threshold. Use Driving Path to investigate the chain controlling a particular activity or milestone. They answer related but different questions.

Highlight critical work

Open the schedule, choose the Critical options, and set the total-float threshold in days. Activities at or below that threshold can be highlighted along with the relevant bars and driving links.

A zero-day threshold focuses on zero or negative float. A larger threshold can include near-critical work for a risk review. Confirm the threshold before interpreting the highlight, especially when using someone else’s view.

Highlighting does not necessarily hide other activities. To show only a float-defined set, use an explicit Total Float filter. A task outside the highlight may still matter to a local milestone or a resource plan.

Trace a milestone’s Driving Path

1. Find the milestone or activity whose date you want to explain.
2. Select it and open Driving Path.
3. Add the target through the available task-selection controls and enable the path display.
4. Follow the highlighted work back through the network. Open Details on activities with unexpected dates, duration, calendar, or constraints.
5. Turn on Links if you need to inspect the relationship endpoints.

You can select up to five endpoint activities and use the available path colors to distinguish them. This helps compare, for example, the work driving equipment delivery, area turnover, and final completion.

A path to one milestone is not automatically the path controlling the entire project. Check which endpoint is selected before drawing conclusions.

Explore skipped activities

Driving Path’s Skip controls support an analysis of the path with selected activities skipped. This is a preview for investigation, not a command to delete the activities or their relationships from the working schedule.

Clear the skipped activities with the remove-skips control to return to the normal path. Clear the selected endpoint tasks or disable Driving Path when finished. Be explicit about whether a screenshot represents the normal plan or a skipped-activity scenario.

For an actual recovery proposal, create a schedule copy, make the intended logic or duration changes there, calculate it, and compare it with the original.

Investigate a surprising result

A highlighted predecessor is a starting point for review, not necessarily the root cause of delay. Check:

• Its remaining duration and actual progress.
• The relationship type and lag at the handoff.
• Both activities’ calendars and exceptions.
• Constraints or a Must Finish By target.
• Whether out-of-sequence progress is being handled by the expected calculation mode.
• Whether the schedule has been calculated since the latest edits.

Use Compare to determine when the relevant inputs changed. Use History for an individual activity’s recorded changes.

Example: explain a late turnover milestone

Select “Area A turnover” as the endpoint. Trace its driving work and inspect the first unexpected handoff. If equipment installation is waiting on delivery, check whether the change came from the delivery duration, its calendar, a new constraint, or an upstream predecessor. Compare with the previous issued schedule before proposing a corrective action.

For the meaning of float and calculation modes, see Calculate a schedule.