Common Scheduling Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

A project schedule is an essential tool for planning the project, monitoring progress, managing the impact of changes to scope and requirements, and ultimately achieving customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, three common mistakes can make schedules useless-or worse, even destructive to the project: (1) using date constraints when dependencies should be used; (2) using dependencies when resource constraints should be used; and (3) poorly structured work breakdown structures. Using a sample project schedule that has these common scheduling mistakes, Kenneth Katz illustrates their impact through different scenarios for handling them. He shows how revising the schedules with the right practices will result in benefits to the project and the team. Learn how project schedules can become a positive force in your projects.

• Project schedules that easily accommodate scope and resource change
• Sequence project activities and manage project resources with good schedules
• How to organize project activities in a logical sequence