Planning forward from today tells you when you might finish. Planning backward from the deadline tells you when you have to start — which is the only one of those two numbers that can be wrong in a way that hurts.
Critical path is the longest dependent chain through the work. Every task on it has zero slack: delay one by a day and the whole project moves a day. Tasks off the critical path have float, which is why "I'm behind on my bit" means completely different things depending on which bit you have.
Weekends are skipped. Holidays, exam weeks and lab closures are not — subtract those yourself, or add them as a task.
| Here | Jira / project tools | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Deadline | Version / fixVersion, or a milestone | The date the outside world cares about |
| Task duration | Duration in a Gantt view (Advanced Roadmaps, MS Project) | Not the same as an effort estimate |
| Depends on | "is blocked by" issue link | The link type most teams under-use |
| Critical path | Computed in roadmap tools; absent from a plain board | A Jira board deliberately hides this |
| Slack / float | No standard field | Usually lives in someone's head, badly |
Sprint boards and critical-path planning answer different questions, which is why teams often run both. A board tells you what is moving this week. A backward plan tells you whether the whole thing lands. Agile teams sometimes treat dependency planning as a relic of waterfall — but hardware, fabrication, procurement and anything with a lead time do not care what your process is called. A part that ships in six weeks ships in six weeks.
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Add tasks and a deadline.
| Task | Days | Depends on | Start by | Finish by | Slack | Path |
|---|
The bars above repeat the table visually. Solid bar is the task; the hatched extension is its slack.
Add a few tasks and observations will appear here.