Scheduling — Don't Get Stuck on Senseless
By Kel Slone Mauldin, PMP, CPM

Imposed end dates. Deadlines. Mandatory finish dates.

No matter where I am in the travels of my job, I hear these same things. It is a reality that the world of business is moving at an excruciatingly quick pace. In a rush to meet time-to-market pressures there are more demands placed upon project managers to meet the time constraints of the business. So, I suppose it isn’t a shock that project managers have been beaten over the head so many times with business deadlines that they might get ‘stuck on senseless’ (an adaptation of General Honore’s famous phrase from 2005) when it comes to scheduling their projects.

Let me explain. Not too long ago I was asked by a student to take a look at a schedule she had built for a new project. It was quickly apparent that she had placed date constraint conditions on practically every task in her scheduling tool. I pointed this out to her explaining that she should let the tool calculate dates based upon the factors of dependencies as well as resource utilization and duration estimates.

“But, I can’t do that," she argued. “I have been given a mandatory end date for this project, and I have to make sure I will make the date.”

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