Buffer Incursion Guide

Displays the result of a calculation that determines the amount of acceptable buffer incursion after which a Critical Chain project is in danger of slipping past its deadline.

When working with a Critical Chain project, you typically evaluate project status by monitoring buffer incursion. When all available "extra" time has been consumed (that is, when your feeding and project buffers are exhausted), your project will likely miss its deadline. But how much buffer incursion is too much?

This field provides the answer based on a set of internal calculations, the result of which is the size the buffer should be at the present moment, which is then subtracted from the duration of the buffer itself, resulting in the value displayed in this field.

The Buffer Incursion Guide field is the complement of the Buffer Incursion field.

Note
  • If the current Chain Remaining is equal to the Original Chain Length, then Buffer Incursion Guide is 0.

  • For non-buffer tasks, Buffer Incursion Guide is blank.

  • When a buffer is inserted manually, the buffer calculation parameters default to the “Sum of Squares” method with an Additive Constant of 0.

  • If you create a task and then convert it to a buffer task, the information needed to calculate this field is not saved. In these cases, the field displays "Uninitialized." To display a meaningful value, first switch to Planning mode, and then either use the Insert Buffers command or select individual buffer tasks and choose the Update Buffers command. Thereafter, the necessary values to display this field's information are saved with the project.