Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

If you are on the critical path of a project, you often behave in ways that don’t seem to make sense.

The critical path of a project means a lot of things to different people. Wikipedia has a good explanation of the concept.

One way to think of the critical path is that the entire project team is waiting for you to finish something so they can continue working. If a task on the critical path “slips” a day, the delivery date for the entire project slips a day.

Those one-day slips cost a lot of money.

Hence, when you are working a task on the critical path, time is critical. All other factors are a distant second place. Spend resources to save time. Yes, that includes those resources as well. And yes, those resources, too. Yes, that means you can call whats-his-name to get help and you can call him on Saturday.

And if you are whats-his-name, you approve the payment of overtime so that people will work weekends to reduce slip on the critical path.

And if you are whats-his-name, you will hire someone to cut the grass and pick up the kids after school for the people working the critical path.

And if you are whats-his-name, you will do those other things that you’ve never done before or never thought possible and are not covered by company policies and the laws of common sense.

I suppose that is one reason they call it critical.