Schedules Need a Logical, Hierarchical Structure

In my role as a guide and mentor to Project Mangers I’ve come across some large schedules that hadn’t used a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). All of the tasks were on the first indentation level in their MS Project Schedule. Project Managers or Schedulers that don’t use logical and hierarchical Work Breakdown Structures create schedules that are tricky to explain to anyone who isn’t interested in detailed activities which covers people like many executives

Your Schedule tasks need Predecessors and Successors (Dependencies)  Many schedules created by experienced Project Managers turned out to have only a few dependencies. Not surprisingly, those schedules had many schedule constraints that anchor the tasks to specific dates. Constraints however make a schedule very rigid or static. Every time a change occurs, the entire schedule needs to be reviewed and updated. This reminiscent of Henry Gantts days, you know the time when we made schedules on paper to hang on our walls. These schedules are nice charts of the project, but are certainly not useful dynamic models of the project