Critical path

Critical path

Critical path is crucial for project management. Critical path shows the longest stretch of dependent activities in a project. These activities or tasks cannot be delayed without delaying the overall project. Identifying critical path lets you effectively devote time and resources to such tasks.
Feature Availability: Enterprise plan

Advantages of Critical Path

  1. Identify activities that require more focus. Delay in these activities can throw projects off-track.
  2. Determine activities that can be completed in a shorter time (crashing) and reduce project duration. 
  3. Use the critical path timeline as a benchmark and measure the actual progress against it. 
  4. Track multiple critical paths if available. 
  5. Identify non-critical activities and manage resources economically.

All you need to do is create tasks, set duration, and establish task dependencies. Zoho Projects gives a visual representation of the critical path on a Gantt chart. You can also view non-critical activities and their slack time be hovering over the activity.

Critical Path in Zoho Projects

Constructing a house involves numerous tasks which are dependent on each other. Considering a broad level list of tasks, let's see how critical path can be viewed on the Gantt chart.


The critical path in the project is highlighted in red.