Schedules

I'm usually not in charge of scheduling. I've contributed to schedules, but someone else - usually someone from management - drives schedule creation.

I also can't remember a situation where the schedule actually worked. What I mean by this is, a lot of time was spent to create schedules for 2-3 months into the future - then not really revisited (adjusted) for a month or more. By this time something invariably happens (priorities change, initial tasks take longer than expected, vacations/time off weren't accounted for, etc.). This throws the entire thing out of whack and quickly makes it obsolete. A month or more will pass, then the whole process starts again with the creation of another schedule.

For the project I'm currently on we've spent a lot of time creating 2 schedules from scratch and are currently creating a third. The first two have been complete failures and I have low expectations for the third. It's frustrating to spend a lot of time and effort on something you just know has near zero percent chance of success. So, what's gone wrong and what can be done better?

• There's poor coordination between departments. Communicating and agreeing on priorities are a problem. We rely on another team to define our business requirements and acceptance test completed functionality. The big mistake is that, to this point, this other team has not been involved in the schedule creation process. Our dates slip when requirement definition and testing are not the highest priority for that other team. It's not their fault that their priorities are different than ours.
  

Better coordination is needed to get this team on board and committed to working with us to meet our deadlines. We cannot succeed without this. It seems too simple to keep getting wrong, yet it continues to happen.

• Our schedule is too vague. Many of the tasks are scheduled with monthly granularity. This is way to long. When a task is running long you don't find out for a month (when it's already past due). I've been doing some reading, and hours rather than weeks or months seem like a better breakdown for schedule tasks. This level of refinement provides a closer to real time status on the overall progress (and potential delays). It allows for a faster reaction to problem areas.

It doesn't seem that hard to me - get everyone on the same page and do a better job defining the steps to complete a task. As I get more involved defining this third schedule, those are the goals I'm setting for myself.