Project Planning: Building a Schedule That Survives Contact With the Calendar
Every guide to project planning describes the same sequence: define objectives, identify stakeholders, build a work breakdown structure, estimate, schedule, add a risk register. That sequence is correct and it is not where projects go wrong. Projects go wrong in the conversion between effort and time. A team agrees a piece of work is 30 days of effort, someone writes “six weeks” in the plan, and the project lands late without anyone doing anything wrong.