127Chapter six: Combining project investment tools
3. Identify the critical path among the ancestors and the total oat of
those that are not critical.
4. Calculate the drag of the critical path activities.
5. Compress the durations and fast-track the critical activities, start-
ing with those that have the largest drags, until the critical path
goes elsewhere.
6. Then recalculate the drags of the new critical path, rinse and repeat
until the delivery’s schedule is acceptable.
The overall purpose of this anecdote is to show that, although tradi-
tional critical path scheduling and analysis are of great value, the drag adds
crucial functionality that aids the project manager with what is frequently
one of the hardest parts of the job: schedule ...