Conventional scheduling is needed. But it is not sufficient to effectively manage large, complex projects. Relying too much on conventional scheduling entails the risk of overseeing those critical items that might stall the project. In the White Paper 2012-03 we explain why that is the case specifically for complex projects and what we can do about it.
conventional scheduling
Conventional scheduling (Gantt charts etc) was developed primarily for manufacturing, at the onset of the 20th century. It does not address critical areas for project management: resource constraints and management, natural variation in the contributions timeliness, and the convergence toward the end product.
While conventional scheduling is needed, it needs to be supplemented by tools that focus on resource constraints, allow control of the natural variation in the duration of tasks, and allow to anticipate convergence points that might be failing. There also needs to be a change of mindset from project management as to the usage of scheduling.
