"Dynamic Scheduling" by Patrick Weaver

Abstract:

Diagrammatic representations of activities or events plotted against a time axis has been around since the mid eighteenth-century. For the first 200 years, static bar charts were the norm; dynamic schedules were only developed in the late 1950s. Unfortunately despite the many advantages offered by a well constructed dynamic schedule, by the mid 1990s most schedules had reverted to static displays.

A schedule consists of series activities to create the project’s deliverables, dependencies between the activities (either inferred or as part of the model) and perhaps some hard dates. The way the schedule is created determines if the schedule is rigid or dynamic. If you enter the activities as ‘fixed bars’ in a Gantt Chart view (the default way of working in Microsoft Project and a number of other tools) fixed dates are created and you will end up with a rigid schedule; a Bar Chart or a Gantt Chart. Skilled schedulers know the core value of a CPM schedule lays in its ability to dynamically model data.