With this in mind, making activities that are missing a successor critical did not seem like the best approach to finding open ends. But Primavera P3 had a report similar to what we call the Schedule Log in Primavera P6 that was a more definitive (and easier) way of identifying open ends in the schedule. Okay, that seems backwards, but the idea was that if some task showed up as critical that did not seem “right” the scheduler would investigate further. Some of my colleagues back in the 1980s figured it was an en easy way to identify activities that should not be critical. After all, why would I promote an activity to critical status solely because it is missing a successor? That seems akin to me declaring myself the winner of a contest that no one else entered. And for the longest time I dismissed it as a quirky feature surely not applicable to me. The concept of making open-ended activities critical was introduced many years ago in Primavera P3. You will find this feature under Schedule Options (Tools > Schedule > Options). Today I would like to address my reasons for using a feature in Primavera P6 that is rarely used by the typical scheduler: Make Open-Ended Activities Critical.
Primavera P6 is designed to handle a wide variety of projects. Different industries have unique requirements for their schedules as well.
I have consulted on projects that span as little as 35 hours to as many as 50 years.
Primavera P6 Professional is obviously a very powerful scheduling program so naturally some of its features exceed the needs of the typical project.