Whenever scheduling a project , check for the following
1) Padding of task durations
Team member will play it safe by buffering time required for tasks. This approach usually results in various time wasting practices, e.g., waiting until the last moment to complete a task. As a result, all the safety time can be wasted at the start of the task so that, if problems are encountered, the task over-runs.
2) Multi tasking
When the team has been assembled from various divisions, they don’t expect to stay busy with just this one task – so they plan working on several tasks at once by switching between them. The result is that everything takes a long time to complete and very little completes early.
To ensure effective plan,
Get the project sponsor to announce the go live date.
Get the team to schedule backwards from the go live date w/o built in buffer.As a rule, the team should reduce activity duration estimates significantly compared to the typical approach.
Plan for an overall project buffer and insert this at the end of the project.
Ensure critical resource unavailability by escalation and enough hell raising.
Focus on the core activities and leave standalone activities to the last.