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SCHEDULING 75

including the resource loading plan and the budget. The schedule is also the basis
for progress and performance measurement. Obviously, with a poorly developed
schedule, it will be impossible for any other aspects of the plan to be very useful,
and project control is equally encumbered.

Bad schedules are, unfortunately, fairly common. And the effects of bad
schedules on project performance are terribly harmful. Poor schedules lead to
confusion and inefficient assignment of resources. The project team looks to
the schedule for guidance and gets discouraged when they cannot rely on that
document. Eventually, alternate versions of the schedule appear from sources
that are not satisfied with the official schedule, leading to even more confusion
and desertion.

The development of a valid schedule is not that difficult. It takes some knowl-
edge of scheduling conventions, and some patience to do it right the first time. All
too often, we rush to get that first schedule out, eventually wasting way more time
trying to fix the poor schedule later. We can’t help you with having patience, but
we can do something about the knowledge part. We do that with the next five
chapters, on project scheduling.