Schedule Conflict

This is a good time of the year. We are in the coding phase of development. I love to code. There is one huge problem though. Everything is behind schedule. Our team is management heavy. We got a ton of senior managers on the staff. You would think that they could manage the schedule for us while we code away. Not the case here though.

I have been instructed to keep an eye on the schedule to ensure there are no errors. I especially pay attention to the due dates for tasks assigned to me or my team. This should be pretty simple. For every major change we code, I provide detailed high fidelity estimates for the work. You could just take those estimates and plug and chug the schedule.

The high fidelity estimates actually make my schedule review real easy. I look at the tasks and due dates on the schedule. Then I just do a quick calculation based on my estimates to see if they are in line. If they are not, I just raise up the concern, referencing my original estimates.

I figure my job is to alert everyone to any crazy schedule failures. That way there is no surprise when someone thinks that a task will finish when it is actually taking a whole lot more time. Obviously something is going to have to give. Most likely it will be a schedule change to reflect the reality of the development durations. I expect there to be some pain before this can be achieved though.