Question

Explain how to determine the slack for each activity in a project. Why is it important for managers to know where the slack is in their projects?

Answer 1

1. When we consider the critical path method, after defining the precedence and the relationship and duration of each task, we conduct a forward and a backward pass over the entire network chain based on the precedence. Using a forward pass, we calculate the easily start and early finish times for the activities in the project and using the backward pass we determined the late start and late finish times for the activities.

We, therefore, calculate the slack for each activity based on their ES, EF and LS, LF, by simply subtracting the early start from the late start or the early finish from the late finish.

2. For managers, it becomes important to manage the factor of slack in their organization in order for them to be able to complete the process on time. The idea behind this is simple. In order for a project to be completed successfully, the critical activities need to be completed based on their requirements. Any delay or slack when performing the critical path creates the process where we end up creating a delay for the entire project. This has both cost and time implications over the project and therefore, might affect its success.