Practice Standard for Scheduling

[pmkb]

PMI is currently working on a practice standard for scheduling:

Scheduling is a technique defined in the PMBOK® Guide, and PMI has seen significant interest from the project management community for detailed information regarding this technique. PMI needs to expand on this subject to keep its position as a leader in setting project management standards. In 2003 PMI Standards Program chartered a project to develop and deliver a document that can be adopted as a PMI Practice Standard for Scheduling.

What do you think should be included in an industry standard for scheduling?

[jjf_1975]

PMI is currently working on a practice standard for scheduling:

What do you think should be included in an industry standard for scheduling?

I'm embarrassed to say I'm on the PMI Practice Standard for Scheduling Team. To be honest, I'm feeling pretty nervous about having my name put to the document as one of the contributors. From what I've seen to date it not a lot more then merely a listing of scheduling components and what should and should not be mandatory....with a few pages of blurb at the front...it's pretty disappointing.

I would have preferred for the standard to be a little more practical and provide guidance of best practice in real terms, not a 1 sentence "this is the best way" but actually provide details of why compared to other options.

J

[Bernard]

I too am on the Practice Standard team, although other than participating a few of the team discussions, I have not been very active. I don't quite understand what the process is for developing the standard. It appears that there are a few key individuals that are developing the document and everyone else is just there to offer comments/opinions. I thought there was going to be a process of voting on issues by the team.

In any event, to the point:

What do you think should be included in an industry standard for scheduling?

I think a standard for scheduling should aim for two goals - to make schedules meaningful and transparent:

• Every task should have a hard logic predecessor and successor whenever possible. The hard logic predecessor and successors should be the most direct predecessors/successors available.
• Date constraints should only be used to model real constraints and not to push tasks around ("painting pictures") or play with float.
• Only one working calendar per task. Resource/crew scheduling is difficult if hidden buffers of time are included where tasks span calendars from multiple resources.
• Minimal use (yes, this is subjective and should be qualified) of leads/lags. Leads/lags should be identified as time based activities.
• Tasks should be discrete. Float paths become difficult to understand when tasks are not discrete (ie. they are spans from one resource's start to another's end). Also, critical path analysis is rather meaningless if tasks are just spans of time to cover work that occurs sporadically.

That's just off the top of my head. Feel free to add to the list or let me know that I'm all wet.

[pmkb]

PMI has released an Exposure Draft of the Practice Standard for Scheduling:

In accord with the PMI Project Management Standards Setting Policy and Procedures, the Exposure Draft of the Practice Standard for Scheduling is available at this web site for your review and recommendations. Your thorough review of the entire document and your submission of any recommended additions, deletions, or corrections are encouraged.