Float is nothing but the bandwidth or buffer one has in the project schedule. There are lot of questions around float which troubles a project manager. Questions like, why do we need float? What are types of floats a project manager can have?
Whenever any project manager starts its project, the first thing he works on is amount of total work he has to complete. Definitely when we know the total work, to manage and track it efficiently, one breaks it down in the form of activities. These activities are what a project manager uses to understand the dependencies and come up with the complete schedule of the project. No project manager has luxury to do all the activities in row, therefore parallel tracks has to creating after understanding the dependencies.
Float in itself is nothing but a cushion every project manager has. This cushion can be at the level of activities project manager has identified or in total for the full project. Projects doesn’t work as planned due to which project manager keeps this flexibility with himself and track it along with project.
In PMP® terms, there floats at activity and overall project level are defined with different names.
- Total Float
- Free Float
As defined in project management literature:
Total Float is the amount of time that a schedule activity can be delayed or extended from its start date (early) without delaying the project finish date.
It is clear from this explanation that this type of float is providing the cushion to the overall project timelines. Project manager can use this kind of float to bear the hiccups without having any impact on the dates he has committed to the customer/client.
Free Float is the amount of time that a schedule activity can be delayed without delaying the start date (early) of any following activity.
Now it’s clear from this explanation that this type of float is providing the cushion for individual activities. Project Manager needs this as well. This has importance when due to some unforeseen circumstances input of on activity which was supposed to be delivered to following/dependent activity is delayed. This cushion helps Project manager to manage such hiccups and ensure the activities are starting as planned.
Float is generally calculating in number of days/hours. Depending on the measure a project manager has used to plan the project schedule. In PMP® terms its calculated as below:
Late Start – Early Start of activity
Or
Late Finish – Early Finish of activity
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