As all of us know, being a planner or scheduler is a great job. Our discipline is at the crossroads of the project information highway.

Why is it then, when ever I speak with friends and colleagues, the conversation invariably turns to the lack of support many of us deal with on a daily basis?

Why do we have to struggle to get the basic information we need to set up and run a project schedule.

I’ve been involved with many different facets of planning and scheduling, from component repair, and maintenance of major assembly items through to software infrastructure projects and railways.

The common theme across all these areas, in my experience, is that planning and scheduling is not that important as the people employed on these projects were employed because they know what they’re doing and they just simply won’t follow a plan.

Now I’ve struck this type of resistance at many different levels of the organizations, in some it’s the workers, others it’s the middle managers, and even from senior management.

I’m not completely cynical toward project management; on the contrary, I see it as my job to not only provide a quality plan and schedule, but also to educate the masses in the benefits of having a good plan and schedule.

The other thing that I have found is that most places I’ve worked think you can just throw a schedule baseline together overnight (or in a week), then start producing reports all in the blink of an eye.

However there are many positive notes to my working life, as I mentioned, educating the masses has the biggest benefit, it not only gets people to understand what a correctly statused schedule can provide, but it invariably increases the quality of information you get back to do your work.

So after all that hot air from me;

Questions;
1. What has been your experience in developing plans and schedules?
2. Do you receive support from your project?, and how would you describe that support?
3. Do Project Managers allow us enough time to set up our plans and schedules?
4. Do you have enough staff on your planning team?
5. What is the meaning of life?