Shift Resources

Shifting a resource from one task to another can cause the project to finish at a later date. To avoid introducing these problems into your schedule, you want to shift resources from tasks with total slack to tasks without total slack.

There are two kinds of slack. Free slack is the amount of time a task can be delayed without delaying any other task. Total slack is the amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting the project finish date. Noncritical tasks have total slack time; critical tasks do not. Noncritical tasks can finish later than their scheduled dates without delaying the project finish date.

By identifying tasks with total slack, you can shift resources from noncritical tasks to critical tasks. The amount of slack in a noncritical task indicates what portion of its assigned resources you can remove before the task becomes critical. If you deplete all the total slack on one task, all the tasks that are dependent on this task lose their slack and become critical.

To find slack in your schedule

1. On the View Bar, click Gantt Chart .
2. On the View menu, point to Table, and then click Schedule.
3. Scroll or drag the divider bar to the right to view the Free Slack and Total Slack fields.
   In the Total Slack field, zero duration indicates a critical task (by default). Negative values in the Total Slack field indicate that there’s a scheduling conflict. (Typically, one task is linked to another task that can’t move, so Microsoft Project may not honor the link.)

Instead of viewing slack in a column, you might prefer to see it represented graphically.

To display total slack graphically

1. On the View Bar, click More Views .
2. In the Views list, click Detail Gantt, and then click Apply.
   The amount of total slack for a task is indicated by a thick dark line that is attached to the bottom-right corner of the task bar.

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