Main use of schedule

[pmkb]

Just curious as to your perception of the real use of a schedule in your projects...

[pmkb]

I originally published this poll mostly to get people to think about what they were doing with schedules. I ran across a couple of blogs that touched on the same issue I was raising here:

A business can use a project schedule in one of two main ways: as a weapon with which to beat the project team if they fail to deliver to schedule or as a general roadmap. To those who treat divergence from a schedule as a failure which must be punished: you’re going to get the team, the morale and the results you deserve (hint - they’ll all be crap). But if you acknowledge that your schedule is a best guess at where the key signposts are, that you’ll have to stop and ask for directions regularly and that you’ll find the journey taking you in strange and unexpected directions before you reach your destination, then you stand a chance of success.

Whose bright idea was scheduling?

As these steps suggest, the project plan and the original resource bookings are really forecasting and planning tools. Most projects experience a lot of changes that make the original plan obsolete. After the initial plan, what most project managers need is a good effort tracking system to measure the project's true cost and performance against the original or revised estimates.

But as Angry Aussie suggests, using a detailed project plan as a means to over-control a project from start to finish, or to cast blame as soon as reality deviates from the plan (which it always does), is folly. The effort expended to exert so much control over projects will blow out the schedule and budget (if it does not scare away any good people you have) just as surely as the "unknown unknowns" that derail every project plan.

Scheduling and Project Workforce Management: Management By Reality

[harrywaldron]

This is a great poll/discussion question and I voted for choice C ...

The schedule for us is a more of "guiding light" for the project ... It's not fixed in concrete (in case tasks are completed a little early or late), but it's also not a worthless document (i.e., choice D on the poll)

[cdevera]

Dear Friends

I'm sorry that I have to vote for the Toilet Paper for the following reason in my current project:

1. We could be using the wrong method to protect ourselves commercially and by submitting a schedule to our client which doesn't really reflect what has and is happening on the job.
2. The Construction team and subcontractors are not buying-in to the programme.
3. Document Control system is a blackhole.

[pmkb]

cdevera, you may be the first brave soul to vote for the toilet paper option, but you may just be the first honest one. I have witnessed too many projects where the schedule becomes obsolete and unused after the first few updates/stages of the project to believe that everyone is truly driving project execution with it.

[shivaprasadin]

hi Cdevera,

Could elaborate what went wrong in your current project as you voted for Toilet paper. Im working upon Requirements Management,your reply will have more importance to me.

[cdevera]

Shiva

It's not what went wrong but what will go wrong for the following reasons:

1. We don't submit a revised programme that incorporates all events (always keeping a mindset that a baseline programme cannot be changed)
2. Keep tolerating the subcontractor's will in terms of programme, quality issues and etc.
3. Managers keep nagging/blamming their staff but not improving its process nor providing a corrective action.

[projectmanager]

Knowing the critical path in a project greatly contributes to determining its delivery schedule. If you want to deliver on time, or shorten the project duration, focus your attention on the critical path. When the critical path is shortened, the project is finished early. When the critical path is maintained, the project is finished on time. When the critical path is extended, the project is delayed. It cannot be overemphasized here that if there is any task or tasks in the schedule that a manager should particularly pay close attention to, it is always those in the critical path.

Identifying your project’s critical path requires discipline and maturity. Its accuracy depends on how it is derived. It is quite funny to note that some managers simply stretch the bars in the Gantt chart so that all tasks finish in parallel; doing so simply clouds the entire project schedule and gives no useful information to the manager. Doing the right things and doing them right are two important ingredients to a successful CPM implementation.

[CaptainQuint]

I am contract PMing, my present company has a methodology that no one uses and a schedule only appears at the initiation of a project and is then updated to reflect what the management/customer want to see. The real schedule is the risk log and actions from minutes. They do use lots of pretty colours though!!!

Toilet paper is a goal only to be dreamt of!