I'm speaking at the Denver Professional Development Symposium in April of 2012. The topic is Building The Perfect Schedule. LinkedIn has a thread on schedule float and margin. There are several other threads around on scheduling, margin and risk.
The place to start for guidance in scheduling is NDIA (National Defense Industry Association) Planning and Scheduling Excellence Guide (PASEG).
The PMI briefing is based on the notion that a schedule can be built that is credible.
This of course with the description of DONE is units meaningful to the buyer. It's the buyer that says what done looks like. Capturing that description of DONE in sufficient fidelity is a critical success factor.
DONE is not described by the tasks performed in the execution of the project. DONE is described by the tangible evidence from the Outcomes that fulfill the project's mission and vision in terms of a set of Capabilities that can be put to work by the buyer for their purposes.
When we see scheduling and the supporting planning as a mechanical process, then we'll end up with a typical schedule. A rats nest of tasks, linkages, dependencies. All failing to describe how we will recognize we're making progress to plan.
All successful projects must answer those 5 Immutable questions that must always be answered if the project has any probability of success.
No matter the project management or product development method, success comes from credible answers to those 5 Immutable Principles. In all cases the schedule support those answers. This means that the method used to schedule - from agile sticky notes to the 100,000 activity network - must also support those 5 immutable principles.
